How pages are checked

How is a page on this site checked?

Against a named source, sentence by sentence, before it is published. The rule is stated on the editorial policy page: every factual sentence is asked three questions, whether it names a source, whether the source actually says it, and whether the sentence describes rather than advises. A sentence that fails any of the three is rewritten or removed, and a page that cannot pass is not published. The source list itself is short and published: the NHS, the Royal College of Radiologists, the UK Health Security Agency, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the Health and Care Professions Council, the Society of Radiographers, the Care Quality Commission, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and legislation.gov.uk.

The same checking discipline, applied to buying a website rather than writing one, has its own literature. Mrežni plan, a Serbian-language guide, covers commissioning a website from the brief and the choice of supplier through pre-launch checks, accessibility and the ownership questions, domain, files, access, that decide who controls the result. The checklist differs in subject; the posture is identical: verify before publishing, and know who answers for what.

Which sources are allowed onto a page?

Only primary ones, and they are named in the text rather than gathered at the bottom. The method is described on the sources and method page: a figure appears only when it has been read at its source, with the source named beside it and the date of the reading recorded. Where a source publishes a range, the page prints the range; where no accepted source publishes a figure at all, the page says so instead of estimating.

That list exists because of what it excludes. Commercial imaging sites, private clinic pages, encyclopaedias, forums, news reports and machine-written summaries are all refused, however accurate any of them may be on a given day. The reason given is that a second-hand figure cannot be dated, and an undated figure on a health page ages without anyone noticing. The NHS and UKHSA pages used across this site carry review dates for exactly that reason.

What happens when a source changes?

The page changes, and the date changes with it. The correction rule is that nothing is backdated and nothing is given a future date: the date on a page describes the day the work was done, and a correction is made in the page itself and dated the day it was made. The contact page is the route in, and the privacy page states what happens to anything sent there, which is very little.

The same convention governs what is not said. Where an accepted source does not publish something, the missing material is marked rather than filled in: the history of the discipline, for instance, is told only through the dates the bodies themselves publish on the institutions page, and the gaps are described as gaps.

Why a health page needs this more than most

Because the cost of a wrong sentence is higher here. A page about imaging sits next to questions that are properly clinical, and the line between explaining a procedure and advising a person is the site's whole editorial position: no page says what a particular reader should ask for, worry about, or do next. The checks exist to keep every sentence on the explaining side of that line. The framework the pages describe is itself built on verification, the regulations, the registers and the published guidance, so the writing follows the same rule the subject does.