Editorial policy

1. Purpose and scope

This policy applies to every page that reports a fault-code label, a table, a model-year record, a manual source, or a coverage count. It also applies to the site-information pages. It records the standard used for the current archive; it does not approve a page, change a gate, or certify a safety-sensitive page.

2. Who compiles the archive

Powersports DTC is independently compiled and edited by Azmi Mhamed, who is also the publisher. The work is solo. The site does not claim a review board, a credentialed team, a mechanic, or a diagnostician. No named safety reviewer is claimed. The publisher selects the public OEM owner's manuals, checks the extracted rows against the cited chapters, and maintains the corrections log.

3. The label-only boundary

This site lists code labels and source citations. It does not provide repair procedures, parts recommendations, or a determination that a machine is safe to operate. Those decisions require the OEM service information and the appropriate tools.

A code label is a short record of what the cited OEM chapter prints. It is not a statement about the condition of a specific machine. The manual for the exact model year, trim, and configuration remains the source for that machine.

4. What a page may publish

• The exact code and short label printed in the cited OEM chapter.
• The manual P/N, chapter, source URL, model-year coverage, extraction date, and table fingerprint.
• Counts with a denominator: model-year records, table rows, code keys, printed labels, and source records.
• Label variance, format variance, table-family relationships, coverage gaps, and correction history.
• Navigation links to the cited source, the relevant table page, the code index, and the decoder.
• A statement of what the page does not cover.

5. What a page must not publish

• A page does not diagnose a machine.
• A page does not link one code to a condition or a symptom.
• A page does not publish test, inspection, or repair procedures.
• A page does not publish parts, prices, or product recommendations.
• A page does not provide clearing, reset, or limp-mode instructions.
• A page does not rank codes by severity, likelihood, or urgency.
• A page does not make a safety determination.
• A page does not claim that two labels, codes, or tables are the same.
• A page does not assign one fixed FMI interpretation to an OEM label. The separate standards-context page carries the cited standards paraphrase and labels itself as standards context.

6. Source verification

Every published row must trace to a public OEM owner's manual chapter and a manual P/N. The page records the chapter, the model-year coverage, the table fingerprint, the extraction date, and the QA status. The build reconciles the parsed row count with the source chapter and compares fingerprints across manuals.

Short labels are kept as printed. Whitespace and punctuation may be normalized; a normalization that changes a printed label is disclosed on the page. The archive does not copy the manual's long-form repair prose. Where a public chapter is missing, the model stays out of the library rather than being filled from a generic list.

7. Automation, AI assistance, and QA

The build reconciles parsed row counts with the source chapter, compares table fingerprints, checks redirect targets and anchors, rejects empty cells and template tokens, checks internal links, and confirms the source URL, manual P/N, and model year. Those checks are automated; they do not replace a human source check.

AI assistance is used for drafting and recasting non-diagnostic prose, for editorial and policy checks, and for suggesting normalization and duplicate-review rules. The published rows are extracted with scripts and checked against the cited OEM chapter; AI does not generate the labels. AI does not make the final source-verification decision, approve a page or gate, or serve as the named reviewer for a safety-sensitive page. The full statement is on the AI disclosure page.

A human checks the exact label text, manual P/N, chapter, model year, table fingerprint, source link, and policy result. The current QA record is the 2026-11-03 publication baseline, maintained against editorial policy v1.0. It records the automated checks, the completed 20% human QA sample of 10 of the 50 pilot pages, and the 18-page Wave 1 publication. A completed random sample of every row in the 17,638-entry archive has not been recorded; that gap is stated here rather than presented as completed review.

8. Corrections and response target

Send a correction to [email protected] with the page URL, model year, manual P/N or chapter, the exact printed label, and a photo of the code or table if available. The correction is checked against the cited chapter. If the chapter supports the change, the page and the changelog are updated; if it does not, the page stays as published.

Target: acknowledge a source-backed request within 5 business days and record a decision within 10 business days. A source check that takes longer stays open, and the changelog records the reason. The corrections page is the public record of changes.

9. Safety-sensitive systems

Brake, ABS, steering, EPS, throttle, and pedal-position records are safety-sensitive. A record that names a brake, steering, throttle, or EPS component or circuit is also safety-sensitive. Ambiguous records are treated as safety-sensitive.

The default is an anchor on the relevant table page or hub. A standalone page requires the evidence gate, the differentiation gate, a named reviewer with relevant experience, and the safety notice after the H1. No safety-sensitive standalone page is published without that record. The archive does not provide a diagnosis, a test or repair procedure, or a determination that a machine is safe to operate for these systems.

10. Anchor gate and differentiation

The default treatment for a key is an anchor. A standalone key page requires at least two semantic labels, two table fingerprints, and either two brands or three model families. It also passes the differentiation gate, QA, and any safety review.

The differentiation gate compares editorial prose after tables, navigation, header, footer, shared notices, and boilerplate are excluded. This archive uses 5-gram Jaccard on the remaining prose. A page needs at least 200 comparable words, no same-type or cross-type pair at or above 0.85, at least 150 words or two fifths of its non-table prose as unique page-specific text, and at least one page-specific fact. Table pages also need no more than four fifths row overlap with another indexable table page unless the pages are canonicalized as year variants. A page that does not pass stays an anchor or remains noindex.

11. Indexation

A page is built before it is promoted. It starts noindex and outside the sitemap and primary navigation. It becomes indexable only after the source, policy, differentiation, QA, and safety checks are recorded. The sitemap contains indexable URLs only. Wave 1 of the per-code pilot is published under its batch manifest; later waves remain staged until their own manifest is approved.

12. Takedown and copyright

The archive publishes short labels, source metadata, and citations. It does not host OEM PDFs. If you believe a page infringes a right you hold, use the takedown and DMCA policy and include the page URL, the work, and the basis for the request. A takedown request is separate from a label correction.

13. Contact

Editorial questions, source submissions, and correction requests: [email protected]. The publisher page records who compiles the archive.

Policy version 1.0. Content updated: 2026-11-03. This page describes the editorial standard; it is not a per-page verification date.