Corrections & Complaints

Everything here is a draft in public. That means errors, and it means I need a way to hear about them that ends in something changing.

Here is the standing policy, and then the specific cases.

The policy

Nothing gets taken down. Not the videos, not the documents, not the parts I have since decided were wrong. A deleted mistake teaches no one anything, least of all me. The error and its repair stay together where you can see both.

Corrections happen in public. When something here is wrong, a correction goes up, and links to it go in the description of the original - alongside links to whatever showed me I was wrong. You should be able to walk from any claim I have made to its current status.

Bring a source and I can act. Not because I want credentials. Because a source is the thing I can do something with - I can read it, and then the document changes. Tell me the argument is bad and I will think about it; show me where and I will fix it. Both are welcome. Only one of them reliably ends in a rewrite.

Unsourced notes still get read. They go in the log. They may not produce a change on their own, and I would rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise.

The form is here. A running log of what has been submitted and what it changed is kept alongside this page.

The cases

Nothing in this video is correct. It should be taken down.

It stays up, and I will not pretend to agree that removal is the remedy. But “nothing in it is correct” is a claim about a specific video, and I would genuinely like to know which parts you mean. Fill in the form with whichever ones you can. If the answer really is all of it, a corrections video is the outcome - and yes, the original stays monetised while that happens. I would rather be paid for work I am visibly repairing than quietly delete it and keep the reputation.

A grievous factual error is made in this video that distorts its argument.

This is the most useful thing you can send me. The form asks for a source because a source is what turns your objection into my rewrite. Facts get corrected faster than anything else on this list.

An argumentative error is present.

Give me the timecode and the sentence. Every video has its script linked - control-F, copy, paste. I ask for the exact sentence not to make it hard, but because “the argument doesn’t work” and “this step doesn’t follow” are different messages, and only the second one tells me where to look.

Check “argumentative error” on the form.

An interpretative error is present - you have misread your source.

Tell me who you think I have misread, and where. A secondary source helps enormously and is not required; a page number is often enough. I have made several of these errors that I know of, and I would assume there are more. Reading badly in public is one of the risks of working in public.

You are writing from a dominant position, and the work reproduces that - by what it says, by what it leaves out, or by your saying it at all.

The first two I can work with, and want to.

If it is what the work says - point me at the passage. Timecode, or paragraph number. I will look at it, and if you are right the passage changes.

If it is what the work leaves out - name the writer, the book, the tradition you think is missing. That is the version of this criticism I can act on fastest, because the action is simple: I read it, and then the document is different. You are not obliged to hand me a reading list, and I am not asking anyone to teach me for free. I am telling you that a name is enough, and that a name will get used.

If it is the third - that I should not be working on this at all - then we disagree, and I would rather say so directly than pretend to be persuaded. I think the work is worth doing and I intend to keep doing it. You are welcome to think otherwise and to say so publicly. I will not delete you for it.

A note on tone, since an earlier version of this page had one. I wrote it braced for an argument that had not happened yet, and it read as contempt for the people I most want reading me. The policies above are the ones I actually hold and have held all along. The hostility was doing no work. It is gone.

Thanks for taking the time. — Shae