Reference
Corrections
Every correction this site has made to a published fact, in date order, with what was wrong and what a reader could have done with it.
This site has corrected nineteen things it published. Each one is below, in date order. Each entry gives what the site said, what it says now, and what a reader could have done with the wrong version.
This page exists because a reference site must not edit itself quietly. You may spend money on what this site says. So you need to see where it has been wrong, and how it found out.
Two corrections could have cost you directly. One moved restricted battery data into the public tier. One told you that the transition period was a floor that the law does not set.
The two that could have cost a reader money
Restricted test data sat in the public row. Corrected 15 August 2026. Two pages put the results of the test reports in the public tier of the battery passport. Annex XIII point 3 of the battery regulation holds that item, and point 3 reaches notified bodies, market surveillance authorities and the Commission. An exporter acting on those pages could have published data that the regulation restricts. See access tiers.
The transition period was written as a floor. Corrected 15 August 2026. Two pages said that the law sets 18 months as a minimum. Article 4(4) permits an earlier date in a duly justified case. Fifteen other documents carried that qualification, and the two that a reader is sent to for the arithmetic did not. An exporter reading a floor that does not exist defers the work. See how to read the timeline.
Every correction, in date order
| Date | What was wrong | What it says now |
|---|---|---|
| 15 Aug 2026 | The transition rule was a floor on two pages | Article 4(4) permits an earlier date in a duly justified case |
| 15 Aug 2026 | "Most New Zealand exports are food", in the front matter of the New Zealand pillar | Food and feed are excluded, so a food exporter should not plan for a passport |
| 15 Aug 2026 | The source register told a reader to check the law and linked one of three instruments | Every named instrument carries its Official Journal address |
| 15 Aug 2026 | The sector timing table had drifted between copies, on furniture and electronics | One copy, transcluded, with the Article 4(4) qualification on every use |
| 15 Aug 2026 | EN 18222 appeared in twelve wordings | One short subject, with the official title only where a page quotes the Decision |
| 15 Aug 2026 | Test report results sat in the public access row on two pages | Point 3, restricted to notified bodies, authorities and the Commission |
| 15 Aug 2026 | The site said the electronic seal makes direct registration impractical for you | The site read two regulations and found no condition on the holder of a seal |
| 15 Aug 2026 | A deadline three days in the future was written in the past tense | Every page reports the search, its date, and the two index limits |
| 15 Aug 2026 | Two headings asserted an absence as a fact | Both say that this site found none |
| 15 Aug 2026 | Four pages gave one iron and steel consultation closing 12 August 2026 | The planning record gives two, a call for evidence and a public consultation |
| 15 Aug 2026 | Directive (EU) 2024/2853 was given as 9 December 2026 on the liability page | 8 December 2026, after a corrigendum of 7 May 2026 changed Article 2(1) |
| 15 Aug 2026 | The wine page cited Article 119(4) and 119(5) against the 2013 text | The rows say "as amended", and the amending act is named and linked |
| 15 Aug 2026 | The home page contradicted its own chart on how many dates are fixed | Two dates are fixed, and the product table carries a status column and a toys row |
| 15 Aug 2026 | A parser fault deleted a year from twelve pages, some of them legal deadlines | Only a list that starts at 1 may break into a paragraph |
| 16 Aug 2026 | EN 18217 and EN 18218 had a table row and a status | The numbering runs 18216 then 18219, and the jump is self-evident |
| 16 Aug 2026 | Four sentences asserted what the reader had been told | Each states the fact, or puts it as a condition |
| 16 Aug 2026 | A price appeared with no source beside it | Both mentions name the distributor listings |
| 16 Aug 2026 | Eighteen pages said one MFAT report was the only New Zealand material | Three agencies have published, and a search read 104 separate pages |
| 16 Aug 2026 | Two pages said no official source supports the end of 2026 textile impact assessment date | GS1 gave that date on 5 May 2026, and said the Commission shared the schedule |
Eighteen pages called one report the only New Zealand material, and five findings disprove it
This is the largest correction, and it ran on eighteen pages for months.
This site searched again on 16 August 2026, in fifteen searches, and read 104 separate New Zealand pages. The old claim named a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) market report of October 2025. It called that report the only New Zealand document on the subject.
Five findings killed the old claim.
| The finding | What it shows |
|---|---|
| MFAT published a market report in March 2025 that names passports | MFAT wrote on this seven months before the report the site called the only one |
| MBIE names passports twice on its circular economy page | A second department, and not a second MFAT page |
| HERA published on a digital steel passport on 12 August 2025 | An industry body wrote two months before MFAT |
| GS1 New Zealand published a feasibility study in February 2026 | The material did not stop in October 2025 |
| Standards New Zealand sells all six European passport standards | A New Zealand government source does name them |
None of the five is obscure. Each one sits on a public website, and each one answers an ordinary search.
The search was six agencies wide, and the claim was a country wide
This site searched MFAT, MBIE, MPI, NZTE, the Ministry for the Environment and Standards New Zealand. Two of those six hold material that the search missed.
The larger fault is the space between the two. The search looked at six organisations. The sentence it produced spoke for a country. That country holds industry bodies, standards bodies, universities and trade publications. The search reached none of them.
A claim of absence can never be wider than the search behind it. That rule now sits in the writing guide and in the corroboration register. Where a search names six agencies, the sentence names those six agencies.
The site had the rule already, and applied it to everybody else
The writing guide has required for months that an absence is written as a search and never as a fact. It gives the form. Say what was searched, say on what date, and say what came back.
The wrong claim broke that rule on eighteen pages. It then got worse. Somebody wrote the claim into the guide itself, as the evidence for a different rule about what a reader has read. So a wrong statement about the world became a reason for writing the site a certain way.
No date moved
Warning: this correction covers sources, and it does not cover the law.
The European position is the same today as it was before the second search. The Commission has adopted no ecodesign delegated act for any product group. Three kinds of battery need a passport from 18 February 2027. Toys need one from 1 August 2030.
The second search strengthened one claim rather than weakening it. Thirteen of the 104 New Zealand pages give 2027 as the year an ecodesign passport duty starts. This site used to say that the wrong year was common without having counted. Now it has counted, and the list is published. See what New Zealand industry has published.
The site owner found it, and that is the wrong way round
The site owner supplied the sources. He sent a list of New Zealand pages on digital product passports, and asked why the research had not turned them up. This site did not catch its own wrong claim. No checker caught it either, because no checker existed for that class of error until the day somebody found it.
That is the wrong way round for a reference site. The repair is a build check that fails on an absence with no search beside it. It found 38 the day somebody wrote it.
An automated fetch that returns nothing is not an absence
Three of the corrections above share one mechanical cause, and it is worth knowing if you check sources yourself.
| Source | What it answers a robot | What a browser gets |
|---|---|---|
| EUR-Lex | HTTP 202 with an empty body | The document |
| MBIE | HTTP 403 | The page, which names passports twice |
| GS1 New Zealand | The site header, with no article | The full article |
The GS1 New Zealand case is the one that did damage. This site recorded a real address as an invented citation, because a fetch returned no article. That article is dated 2 July 2026, and it was published six weeks before the check.
So the site accused a draft of fabricating a citation that was correct. Open a page in a browser before you record it as missing.
Four patterns produced most of the corrections, and three now fail the build
Four patterns produced most of the nineteen.
- A plan read as a duty. An adoption year, a Commission programme or a category list becomes a deadline or a scope.
- An absence asserted from a narrow search. The search was real, and the sentence was wider than it.
- A copy that drifted. One fact in many documents, retyped, and the copies stopped agreeing.
- A citation that was not opened. A number without an act, or an article number checked against the wrong version of the text.
Three of the four now fail the build. check-citations.mjs fails where a document names an instrument it does not link. check-corroboration.mjs fails where a claim has no source and no attribution. check-writing.mjs fails on an absence with no search beside it. A block that appears on many pages lives in one file, and the build transcludes it.
The first pattern has no checker, because a machine cannot tell a plan from a duty. That one is still a person's job.
What is not in this register
This page records corrections to what the site published. Three kinds of change are not here.
- Draft-stage catches. The fact-check pass before publication found 15 problems across five drafts, and no reader ever saw them.
- Presentation and build changes that altered no fact.
- Gaps this site still has. Those are in what this site does not know, which reports what was searched rather than what was fixed.
The parser fault is in the register even though it was a build defect. It deleted a year from twelve published pages, and some of those years were legal deadlines.
How to use this page
Warning: read this register before you rely on an old copy of anything here.
- Check the date beside a correction against the day you read the page.
- Take a legal date from the Official Journal, and never from a summary.
- Treat a claim about what nobody has published as a claim about a search.
- Ask which sources were searched, and over what period.
Those four apply to this site as much as to the pages it corrects. Every document carries the date it was last checked and the date it is due again. See the sources this site uses.