About › Corrections
Corrections
A wrong sentence on a public page about a contested document is not a small thing.
We try hard to get this right. But we will still get some things wrong.
If you spot a mistake, tell us. Write to contact@readthemandate.org. It helps if you say which page it is on, and what the book really says.
We keep a record of every change we make. Anyone can look at it. We do not fix things in secret.
Some mistakes cannot get through at all. A computer checks each quote against the real book first. If the words do not match, the site will not go up.
How to report one
Write to contact@readthemandate.org. The most useful reports name the page, quote what is wrong, and say what the source actually says. A correction that comes with a citation gets made quickly.
What counts as an error
A misquotation, a wrong page, a wrong citation, a summary that carries a claim the source does not support, a match described more strongly than the evidence allows, or a plain English rendering that changes the meaning of the sentence it renders.
A disagreement about whether a proposal is wise is not an error here, because the site does not take that position. A disagreement about whether an action really corresponds to a proposal often is worth recording, usually by marking the reading contested and setting out both sides rather than by picking one.
Why the history is public
The data behind this site is kept as plain files in version control, so every change is recorded: which sentence changed, when, and alongside what else. A correction is a visible change to that record, not a silent edit. For a site whose only claim is that it can be checked, a quiet rewrite would defeat the purpose.
What the build already prevents
Some errors cannot reach the site at all. A quotation that does not appear verbatim on the page it cites fails the build. So does a citation that disagrees with the Federal Register record, a plain English rendering above a fifth-grade reading level, an action recorded against a proposal that does not exist, and a match with no explanation of how it matches. These checks have each caught real mistakes.