§ Journal
Engineering
9 min read
How we check that a source really says what we claim
A citation that points at the wrong page is worse than no citation. This is the checking step we run before an answer is shown.
Jonas Ekwueme
Finding the right file is the easy part. The hard part is proving a sentence in the answer is supported by a sentence in the file.
Two passes
First, Ostler writes the answer while holding on to the exact passages it read. Second, a separate check compares each claim with its passage and drops any claim it cannot match.
What we measure
We keep a set of 2,400 questions with hand-checked answers. Every release must match or beat the last on how often a claim is supported by the passage it cites.
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Keep reading
Engineering
How we check that a source really says what we claim
A citation that points at the wrong page is worse than no citation. This is the checking step we run before an answer is shown.
Guides
Writing a company handbook people actually search
Seven habits that make a handbook easier for people, and for tools like ours, to answer questions from.
Research
What we learned from 40,000 unanswered questions
Most unanswered questions are not hard. They are missing a document nobody wrote down.
The Ostler letter
Notes like these, once a month.
New articles, release notes and one useful link.