Corrections and Reporting an Error

Directories go stale. The useful question is not whether a site contains errors but what happens when someone finds one.

Two kinds of error, two routes#

A club record is wrong. The address, the contact, the classes, the programs, the facilities, the affiliation status. These come from the YouSail database, and the fix belongs there — correcting it at the source means every place the record appears is corrected at once, rather than one page being patched while others stay wrong.

The fastest route is for the club itself to correct its own record, because a club is the authoritative source for facts about itself.

An editorial page is wrong. An incorrect explanation of a handicap system, an out-of-date program name, a broken description of a pathway, a dead link, a typo. These are corrections to this site and are fixed here.

What counts as a correction#

Anything factually incorrect, out of date, or misleading. Also:

• A link that no longer works or now points somewhere unexpected
• A framework or program name that has changed
• A rule cycle or regulation reference that has been superseded
• Something written in a way that is ambiguous enough to mislead
• An accessibility problem with the site itself

What is not a correction#

A disagreement about editorial judgement is not an error. Reasonable people differ on whether a particular trade-off is worth making, and this site takes positions — that crewing is undervalued, that fleet health matters more than club reputation, that "not verified" should never be presented as "no".

Those positions are argued rather than asserted, and they are open to being argued with. But they are not corrected simply because someone disagrees.

Requests to remove accurate but unflattering general information are also not corrections. This site does not publish criticism of named clubs, and the editorial pages describe categories rather than organisations, so this should rarely arise.

What happens to a correction#

A reported error is checked against the sources described in the source register. Where it is confirmed, the page is corrected and its review date is updated.

Where two sources conflict and the matter cannot be resolved, the affected fact is recorded as not verified or as conflicting rather than guessed at. Publishing "we do not know" is preferable to publishing something that looks confident and is wrong.

If you are a club#

The most useful thing a club can do is keep its own public sources current — the website, the calendar, the training registration page, the membership page and the race documents. Those are the sources this site prefers, in that order, and a club with current public information tends to be recorded accurately without anyone having to intervene.

Clubs are also the right source for the things a database cannot read: whether a fleet is genuinely active, what a program looks like after the introductory course, and whether storage is actually available.

Review cycle#

Editorial pages carry a last-reviewed date. Time-sensitive material — racing rule cycles, safety regulations, national program names and affiliation structures — is checked at least annually and whenever the governing body publishes a significant change.

Club records carry their own separate verification dates, because a guide reviewed this month tells you nothing about when a particular club was last checked.