Sourcing · Red flags

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Sourcing › Red flags mislabelling underdosing documentation quality

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s.leclercTL4 Moderator21 Feb 2025#1

Community wiki post. Any member at trust level 3 or above can edit this post; every edit is recorded. Last edited by hana.sato on 7 May 2025.

25 Apr 2025 — s.leclerc: Removed a claim that the cited source did not support.
6 Aug 2025 — mira.patel: Replaced an unsourced figure with the published one and cited it.
7 May 2025 — hana.sato: Added the worked example and a unit label to the table header.

Editors: s.leclerc, mira.patel, hana.sato

Staff post. Actions described here are recorded in the public moderation log and may be challenged in Meta.

Patterns that reliably precede a problem. Documented, dated, and free of accusation without evidence.

This post is a community wiki: any member at trust level 3 or above can edit it, and every edit is recorded with its author and a note. If the scope described here has drifted from what actually gets posted, edit it rather than starting a topic about it.

What belongs here

Questions specific to red flags, with the units and the context stated.
Reports and datasets, with the collection method stated.
Disagreement about the substance, conducted in public.

What belongs elsewhere

Anything urgent belongs in Safety, immediately, and not here.
Anything about how this site works belongs in Meta.
Requests for a maintained page belong in Wiki requests.

Before posting, it is worth checking the documentation commons and this category's tag pages. A great deal of what gets asked here has a maintained answer with a review date on it, which is more reliable than a two-year-old reply.

4 likes 17mo

j.mwangiTL4 Moderator25 Feb 2025#2

Staff post. Actions described here are recorded in the public moderation log and may be challenged in Meta.

Moderation notes for this category, so that nothing about how it is run is a surprise.

Topics get moved into and out of here regularly. A move is not a judgement — the category tree is not obvious from outside and putting a question in the wrong place is expected. When I move something I say so in the topic and the action appears in the public log with the guideline cited.

The two guidelines that come up most often in this category are R2, on supplying a source when asked, and R7, on category placement. Neither is used punitively.

8 likes 17mo

taper_tableTL3Regular1 Mar 2025#3

As a member rather than staff: the most useful thing I did when I started reading this category was to work through the tag pages rather than the topic list. The topic list shows you what is recent. The tags show you what is settled.

27 likes 17mo

s.vanheckeTL2 Moderator3 Mar 2025#4

Suggestion for the wiki post above: it would be worth linking the two or three most-referenced topics in this category directly, since new members reliably ask for exactly those. Happy to make the edit myself if nobody objects, with a revision note.

0 likes 17mo

f.ibarraTL2 Moderator6 Mar 2025#5

Unresponsiveness: a supplier that does not reply to reasonable requests for documentation or clarification is showing you something about how they operate.

4 likes 17mo

This topic was referenced in

Why we hide unevidenced fraud accusations and log the hidingSourcing › Red flags · 106 replies

This topic was closed 60 days after the last reply. Closing is automatic for quiet topics so that a settled answer does not collect new questions underneath it. If you have a follow-up, open a new topic and link back to this one — that keeps both readable and gives your question its own title.

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