Keeping this help centre current

Step by step

1. Read the review dates Every guide prints the day it was last read against the live screen. A reader can see for themselves how fresh it is.
2. Watch the stale list The console lists guides past the review window. The window is a setting — help_review_days, six months by default.
3. Re-read the screen, then the guide Reviewing means opening the page the guide describes and checking each step against it. Changing the date without doing that is worse than leaving it old.
4. Ship the change Guides are a file in the release, not database rows, so a correction is reviewed and deployed like any other change.
5. Let the tests hold the line The test suite fails when an article has no review date, when a date is in the future, or when a cross-reference points at a guide that does not exist.

Worth knowing

• The point of a printed date is that it goes stale in public. A help centre nobody can tell the age of is the one that quietly describes last year’s screen.