Errata

An erratum is a short, RFC-style report about a problem in an existing decision. It is a record of its own, with its own UUID, digest and approval history, and it never changes the decision it corrects (0015: Errata are separate records reviewed like decisions). The parser is app.domain.errata; reading errata for a decision is app.services.errata_view and app.services.record_relationships. How authors write an erratum file is covered in Users.

Model

A file is an erratum because its frontmatter has erratum-for, not because of where it lives (the recommended location is doc/decisions/errata/). It goes through the same discovery, poll and push intake, hashing and storage as a decision; record_kind is then erratum.

Frontmatter

uuid (its own identity), erratum-for (UUID of the corrected decision), type (technical or editorial), and optionally section, reported-by (free text, never treated as an identity), date and title. Without a title it is titled “Erratum: <section>”, else “Erratum: <humanised filename slug>”.

Body

Split on ATX H2 headings “Original text”, “Corrected text” (required) and “Notes”, matched case-insensitively with an optional trailing colon. Headings inside fenced code blocks are content. Text before the first heading or under any other H2 is kept as notes with a warning; a repeated heading appends to its section with a warning. Known limits: a setext heading does not start a section, and an unclosed code fence swallows every later heading.

Storage

The link is stored as links.corrects (the internal name predates the erratum-for spelling). record.erratum (JSONB, migration 0003) holds the type, section, reporter, date and the sanitized HTML of the three sections; the raw Markdown stays in the revision snapshot. The partial expression index ix_record_links_corrects serves the reverse lookup “errata of this decision”.

Rules

The corrected decision is never touched

Filing, verifying or rejecting an erratum changes neither the decision’s digest, nor its approval state, nor its history.

Resolution uses the normal link tiers

erratum-for resolves like any link: same project first, then same registration, then global. An erratum belongs to a decision when its link resolves to a row of that decision’s identity, so it shows on the published row and on candidate revisions alike. An ambiguous link belongs to no decision.

Errata correct decisions only

An erratum never lists errata of its own. If erratum-for resolves to another erratum the link is kept but flagged erratum_target_is_erratum.

Errata are not decisions in search

Search defaults to record_type=decision; erratum or all include them. Facet counts cover decisions only. An erratum hit carries the title of the decision it corrects.

The old shape is refused

kind: erratum or any corrects key yields legacy_erratum_format; there is no alias.

Counting errata on a decision

The detail page’s errata_summary counts published errata by the approval state of each erratum’s own identity and digest:

• verified: accepted, and also not_required, because both stand as published without further action (the notice therefore reads “verified or not requiring review”);

• reported: pending and policy_missing;

• rejected: rejected;

• changed: changed_since_acceptance.

total is the sum of these four. Candidate errata are proposals and are counted separately as proposed. The decision events of all errata of a record are read with one query, so the detail request does not grow with the number of errata.

Issue codes

erratum_without_targeterror

erratum-for is missing or not a valid UUID; the erratum is not linked.

erratum_targets_itselferror

erratum-for equals the erratum’s own uuid.

bad_erratum_typeerror

type is missing or not technical or editorial.

erratum_missing_corrected_texterror

No non-empty “Corrected text” section.

erratum_unknown_section_headingwarning

Text before the first heading or under an unknown heading; kept as notes.

erratum_duplicate_sectionwarning

A section heading appears more than once; the parts are joined.

erratum_relationship_ignoredwarning

updates, obsoletes or deprecates on an erratum; they are dropped.

erratum_target_is_erratumwarning

Computed when read: erratum-for resolves to another erratum.

None of these block a decision on the erratum; like any record, only a missing UUID or bad encoding does.