How we review posts before they go live

Every post on this site passes the same review. The steps are short, and they run in the same order each time.

Draft in the open

A writer creates the post with draft set to true. A draft is visible while developing the site and is removed from the production build, so work in progress never appears on the live site by accident.

Automatic checks

Each commit runs two checks:

• Schema. The title, summary, date, author, and tags must match the content schema. A missing field or an unknown author fails the run.
• Build. The production build must finish without errors. A broken image path or a broken internal link stops it here.

Neither check reads the prose. They only prove that the post is well formed.

Editorial read

An editor reads the post once from start to finish and looks at four things:

1. Does the summary describe the post that was written?
2. Does the first paragraph tell the reader what they will get?
3. Are the claims supported, with a link or a number where one is needed?
4. Does the post end, rather than stop?

Accessibility and images

The editor checks the alt text on every image and the heading order in the body. Headings in a post body start at level two and never skip a level.

Publish

The writer sets draft to false and sets publishDate to the date the post goes public. The next build publishes it, updates the RSS feed, and adds the page to the sitemap.

What we do after publishing

Small corrections are made in place. When a change affects the meaning of the post, the writer adds an updatedDate. The post page then shows both dates, and search engines see the update through the structured data on the page.