Corrections policy

01How to report something

If anything here is wrong, out of date, or reads as though it means something we did not intend, tell us. You do not need to be sure, and you do not need to explain why it matters.

It helps if you can include the page, the sentence, and what you think is wrong with it. If you are correcting a figure or a source, a link to the better source saves a round of questions.

02What happens next

1. We read it. Every report is looked at by a person. Nothing is auto-closed.
2. We check it against the source. Not against what we remember writing, and not against another website — against the thing the statement came from.
3. We correct what is wrong. If the source says something different, the page changes. If the source itself turns out to be unreliable, the statement comes down rather than being softened.
4. We tell you what we did. Including when we concluded the page was right, and why.

We do not state a response time here, because committing to one we have not resourced would be a worse promise than none. Reports are worked in the order they arrive, and anything that could affect a decision someone is about to make is pulled forward.

03A correction is not an update

These are treated differently on purpose.

An update is new information: a newer dataset, another reported case, a rewritten explanation. Pages carry the date they were last reviewed, and updating one does not require announcing it.

A correction is us having been wrong. Where a correction changes what a page meant — a figure, a source, a statement about how something works — we note on the page what was changed and when. We do not edit a number quietly and leave the page looking as though it always said that.

Typographical fixes that change nothing about the meaning are made without a note.

04Corrections to reported figures

Every figure we publish is one case, recorded exactly as its source stated it, with a link to that source and the date it was reported. If a figure here does not match its source, that is our error and it is corrected.

If the source was wrong, or has since been corrected or withdrawn, the record comes down. We do not keep a figure standing because it is interesting, and we do not replace it with our own estimate.

Some of the records we hold are deliberately unpublished for exactly this reason: a record with no date, or one whose source cannot be reached, stays unpublished until that changes. We would rather show fewer figures than ones we cannot stand behind.

Every figure we publish, with its source and date

05If a legal statement is wrong

A statement about the law is the most serious thing on this site to get wrong, and it is handled separately. It is taken down first and corrected second, rather than left up while we look into it.

Statements of law are held as records with their source and the person who verified them, and may only be published after a licensed attorney has approved them. How that works is set out in our legal review policy.

06What we keep

Changes to review status, verification status and publication are written to an append-only log that records what changed, what it changed from and to, who changed it and why. The log cannot be edited or deleted from.

That means a question about whether a page was changed, when, and by whom has an answer that does not depend on anyone’s memory.

07What we will not do

• Remove accurate, properly sourced information because someone would prefer it were not there.
• Alter a figure to match a different source without changing the source shown with it.
• Publish a correction that blames the person who reported it.
• Quietly change a page and leave the previous reviewed date in place.

If you disagree with a decision not to change something, say so and it will be looked at again by someone else. Our wider approach is in our editorial standards.