Corrections policy
If something here is wrong, we want to fix it and say that we did.
Updated
Reporting an error
Email hello@weightlosscalculator.co.uk with the page and what you think is wrong. Calculation errors are treated as urgent, because people act on these numbers.
How we handle corrections
- A reported calculation error is checked against the test suite and reproduced before anything is changed.
- If confirmed, the fix is made and a test is added so the same error cannot return unnoticed.
- The page updated date changes.
- Where the error could have materially changed what someone did, a note is added to the page describing what was wrong and for how long.
Minor fixes, typos, clarity, broken links, are made without a note. Anything that changed a number a reader might have acted on is recorded.
How quickly
- A wrong number, anything where the calculator returns a result that is not what the published method says it should be, is the highest priority. If it cannot be fixed the same day it is found, the affected calculator is taken down rather than left running.
- A wrong source, where a figure is real but attributed to the wrong guidance or quoted out of context, is corrected as soon as the correct source has been read at source rather than in a summary of it.
- Everything else, wording that misleads without being untrue, a stale date, a broken link, is handled in the ordinary course.
Where corrections appear
On the page that carried the error, not on a separate log nobody visits. A correction note says what the figure was, what it is now, and the dates between which the wrong one was shown, so anyone who used the page while it was wrong can work out whether it mattered to them.
Reports are welcome from anyone, and no report is dismissed for being wrong: a figure that reads as an error to a careful person is at minimum a figure explained badly, which is its own thing to fix.