Corrections
When BeerHQ is wrong
Some of this will be wrong. Beer facts go stale, sources disagree, and editorial judgement is judgement. Here is what happens when that is pointed out.
The kinds of wrong
- Stale. A strength that has changed, a brewery that has closed, a beer withdrawn. Every reference beer records when its strength was last checked and how fast its facts are expected to move, so these are found by review as well as by report.
- Unsupported. A statement whose source does not actually say it. This is the most serious kind, because the citation makes it look checked. Claims like this are demoted to unverified immediately rather than after a rewrite.
- Jurisdiction-blind. A regulatory threshold stated as though it were universal. BeerHQ audits for this automatically, but the audit only knows the countries it has records for.
- Contested. Beer history in particular is full of confident claims with thin evidence. Where the evidence is genuinely disputed, the right fix is usually to say so rather than to pick a side.
What happens to a report
A factual correction that can be checked is applied and the underlying claim re-dated. A correction that changes what a claim rests on also changes its evidence state, which is visible on the page rather than only in the edit history.
Where BeerHQ cannot establish which version is right, the honest outcome is to narrow the statement rather than to keep the stronger version because it reads better. See about for how evidence states work.
Telling BeerHQ
hello@hekno.co.uk. What helps most is the page, the statement, and — if you have one — where the correct version comes from. A correction without a source is still worth sending; it just takes longer to act on.