How this site is made
The machine does the reading. A person does the deciding.
Every article here passes through the same eight steps. Four belong to the machine and four to the editor. Here they are, in order, with nothing left out.
- 01 Machine
Find the problem
Scan forums and public posts for problems people keep asking about. Score them on repetition, disagreement and how concretely people describe their situation. Skip anyone in distress; never quote or name an ordinary user.
- 02 Machine
Read the studies, not the headlines
Start from peer-reviewed research, clinicians and long-standing practitioners. Listicles, content farms and anyone selling the thing they recommend are excluded. Where experts disagree, the disagreement goes in the piece.
- 03 Machine
Grade every claim
Each major claim gets one grade, shown in plain language. Popularity never raises a grade.
AGrade A: Well supported BGrade B: Promising CGrade C: Early or mixed DGrade D: Practitioner wisdom, not well studied - 04 Machine
Draft, then check every line
A first draft uses only what the research found. It then goes through three checks: one for writing that sounds like a machine, one that tests each sentence against its source, and one for health claims the site isn't allowed to make. A piece that fails any of them doesn't move on.
- 05 Human
Pick the angle
The editor chooses which problems are worth writing about and what the piece should say. Nothing gets written because it would do well in search.
- 06 Human
Try the practice
Where an article recommends something, the editor tries it first and writes down what happened, including when it didn't work. A piece earns the Tested mark only then. Until it does, it says Researched .
- 07 Human
Edit every line
The editor rewrites until it reads like a person, and every edit is kept. Those edits teach the machine what to stop doing next time, so the drafts get closer and the editing gets shorter. The first article needed about a fifth of its words changed; the second, under a tenth.
- 08 Human
Decide what ships
Nothing publishes automatically. Two or three pieces a week at most, and a draft that would take more than fifteen minutes to fix gets killed instead.
Rules the machine can't break
- It never invents an experience, a quote or an anecdote. Where only the editor's words will do, the draft leaves a marked gap.
- It never writes "I read the studies." The editor's "I" is reserved for things the editor actually did.
- It never says a practice, device or supplement treats, cures or prevents anything.
- It never names or quotes an ordinary person from a forum.
- It never posts anything, anywhere. Every post from this site is sent by a person.
Why say all this
Because hiding it would be the inhuman part. The thesis of the site is that machines should take the work machines are good at so people have more attention left for the rest. A site that preached that while pretending a person did all the reading would be making the opposite argument.
If any of this changes, this page changes first.