Standards
Editorial policy
How ShikkhaPath sources, verifies, corrects and retires admission information — and where advertising stops.
Sourcing standards
- A public record must cite an official university, board or government source. Coaching-centre posts and unverified screenshots are not sources.
- Each record stores the source name, the source URL and the last verified date. A record without all three does not publish.
- When the source states a range or a conditional fee, the record says so. We do not collapse it into a single number.
- International records keep the source time zone. Every deadline display also states the time zone it uses.
Verification workflow
- Documents are captured with a content hash. A re-upload with an unchanged hash creates no review candidate.
- Extraction returns success, needs_ocr, needs_manual_review or failed. Only success may create a candidate. Failure never publishes an empty record.
- A reviewer sees the old and new value for each field, plus the evidence. Every proposed value is validated against that entity’s schema before it is applied.
- Changes to application, circular or website URLs require an administrator. A moderator cannot approve a new outbound URL.
Dates, deadlines and expired records
- All date logic uses Asia/Dhaka (BST). Midnight boundaries are tested for open, closing soon and closed states.
- A date-only source renders with no time. We do not invent an 11:59 pm cutoff that the circular does not state.
- Once a deadline passes, the record becomes historical. It stays available for reference but is never labelled open or closing soon.
- Countdowns are computed at render time from the verified timestamp, not cached as static text.
Eligibility and machine checks
- The eligibility engine returns eligible only when a program is marked machine-checkable and every published subject and GPA threshold is met.
- Missing subject grades, quota conditions, medical checks and practical tests always produce check required.
- We never infer a threshold from a previous year or from a similar program.
- The result page always shows the checks that produced the verdict.
Corrections and updates
- Anyone can report an error through the helpdesk, including the official source URL.
- A correction is reviewed against the source before the record changes. The review keeps the old value, the new value and the evidence.
- Material corrections update the verified date. Silent edits are not permitted.
- If a source is withdrawn, the record is archived rather than deleted, so links and citations remain honest.
Sponsors and advertising
- Every sponsored placement is labelled “Sponsored” and is limited to the eight contained formats in the advertising spec.
- Ads load client-side after the page renders. Public HTML never contains per-user ad decisions.
- Sponsors never influence eligibility verdicts, verified badges, rankings or editorial coverage.
- Advertising is not permitted in chat, dashboards, authentication screens or admin tools.
Privacy and data
- Audit logs hash client IP addresses and store only allowlisted, non-personal fields.
- Account deletion removes personal application notes and checklists; only non-personal audit history remains.
- Contact-form messages are used only to answer the request and are never sold.
- Service workers never cache authenticated API responses or personal pages.
Report an error
If a deadline, fee or eligibility rule is wrong, send the official source URL with the correction. We publish the change only after it is verified.