About › Corrections
Corrections
A wrong sentence on a public page about a contested document is not a small thing.
This site is built to get things right. Some things will still be wrong.
If you spot a mistake, write to contact@readthemandate.org. It helps to say which page it is on.
Every fix is written down, with the date and what changed.
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 version that changes the meaning of the sentence it stands for.
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.
Mistakes That Cannot Reach the Site
Everything is checked before it is published. If a quotation does not appear on the page it cites, if a citation disagrees with the Federal Register, if a plain English version reads above a fifth-grade level, or if an action is linked to a proposal that does not exist, the site will not go out until it is fixed. Each of those checks has caught a real mistake.