How are knowledge base answers checked?

The rule is simple: every sentence in an answer comes from your own pages, your own help centre or your own words. Nothing goes out that we can't trace to one of them.

Every fact is a quote

When we read your site and your help centre, each fact is kept as a quote, word for word, with the page it came from and the date we read it. If the quote isn't on the page exactly, the fact is dropped. What you type in answer to a question is kept the same way, dated and marked as yours.

Every sentence is checked against its quote

The writer may use only those facts, and marks each sentence with the fact it comes from. Once an answer is written, it is split into sentences, list items and table rows, and each one is checked:

• Its numbers, dates and names must be in the quote it cites.
• Its policy words (refund, cancel, guarantee, within, no, not, never) must be in the quote too, so a refund rule can't be turned around.
• A word such as safe, proven or guaranteed stays only when your own page uses the same word.
• A second read by a model can only make the check stricter. It can never let through a sentence the rule stopped.

What we can't trace is cut before you see it

A sentence that fails the check is cut. The answer stays as long as its direct answer survives and no more than half of it goes. What was cut is noted at the foot of the answer's page, so you can put it back in your own words if it's true.

If the cut would take more than that, the answer isn't in your list. Its question waits under Not in your knowledge base yet, where you can answer it yourself if you like. See Why isn't a question in my knowledge base?.

So the list on the Answers tab holds only answers whose every sentence comes from your own site or your own words. You don't need to check them one by one: read any you like, untick what you don't want, and publish.

Prices and policies are quoted word for word

Prices, refunds, cancellations, shipping, warranties and guarantees are written from your page's own words, so the answer says what your page says. If your site states one of them two different ways, we use neither until you pick the right one on the Facts page (Every fact the answers use, at the foot of the Answers tab).

When your site changes

Every week we reread the pages behind the prices and policies in your published answers, free. If a page no longer says what an answer relies on, that answer comes out of what gets published, so the old wording doesn't go out again, and you get one email. Open the answer and rewrite it from what your page says now, or in your own words, and it goes back in.

On medical, legal and money sites

On a site about money, health, legal matters or safety, there is one more step: a named person reviews the answers before they go out. Press Review and Publish on the Answers tab. On the Publish page, enter the reviewer's name and role, tick that they read the answers and agreed to be named, and press Approve N Answers (N is how many answers are ticked). That one step approves every ticked answer at once and confirms the prices and policies those answers quote, recorded with your email and the time. The reviewer's name and role appear with the answers.

On these sites, a word such as safe, proven or guaranteed is cut even when your page uses it, unless it comes from your own words, or your reviewer has approved the answer.

Changing an answer yourself

On an answer's page, Edit opens the whole answer. Anything new you write that states a fact is saved as your own words, so the answer still comes from your site or from you. On an answer that isn't in your list yet, each sentence we couldn't find on your site has Remove Sentence and It's True, Keep It, which saves the sentence as your own words.