§ Journal
Security
5 min read
Permissions are part of the answer
An answer engine that ignores who is asking is a data leak with a friendly face.
Jonas Ekwueme
If you can not open a file, you can not get an answer that quotes it. That sounds obvious. It is surprisingly easy to get wrong.
Check at question time
Ostler checks access when a question is asked, not when a file is indexed. If you lose access on Monday, Monday’s answers stop using the file.
Show what was left out
When useful sources are out of reach, the answer says so, and offers to send an access request to the owner.
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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.