Freshness and Maintenance Policy

Content needs maintenance too

A website is like a garden: planting is not enough, tending is required. For us, a published page is not a finished job but a responsibility added to the maintenance list. Maintenance covers checking information against current sources, repairing broken links, refreshing dated examples, and folding reader feedback back into the content.

How we prioritise

Content does not all age at the same speed, and our review rhythm reflects that. High priority: health-related content and calculators, where stale information carries the highest cost. Medium priority: fast-moving areas such as technology. Lower priority: slow-aging fundamentals such as how lunar phases arise or how cognitive biases work; these are still reviewed, just less often. Reader reports can jump this queue at any time: a reported problem does not wait its turn.

Making updates visible

Where an update affects the meaning of a page, we note it, so readers can judge which period the information belongs to. Small maintenance work, such as spelling, formatting or link repair, is not separately noted. Fixing information that was wrong at publication is a different process, governed by our Corrections Policy; we deliberately keep the two apart.

If you find something out of date

Despite our efforts, you may come across a page that has fallen behind. We ask two things: first, before making any important decision, confirm the information against primary sources; second, tell us, so we can move that page up the list. As our Health Content Policy stresses, health decisions should never rest on information that may be out of date.

A working version

This policy is a working version. As the site grows, our maintenance routine will mature with it, and changes will be reflected here. Readers who point out pages our system has missed are the most valuable part of this policy.