Contact

One address, read by a person. There is no contact form, no ticket queue and no chatbot.

What this inbox is good for

• Corrections. The single most valuable message this site gets. If a claim is wrong, or a source does not support what we say it supports, say so. A link to the source you are relying on makes it much faster to act on.
• Data errors. A breed whose weight range looks wrong, a missing breed or variety, a size class that contradicts the numbers next to it, an alias that does not find the breed you expected in the search box.
• Questions about the method. How a figure was derived, why the model does something, what a confidence level or a warning actually means. If the answer is not already on the methodology page, it probably should be, and the question helps.
• Permissions and press. Reuse of the model, the growth curves or the breed dataset, and anything to do with citing BarkMath in your own work.
• Privacy requests. Anything covered by the privacy policy, though it is worth reading first, because the site collects far less than most and there may be nothing to action.

What this inbox cannot do

Give advice about your individual dog. BarkMath is written by Michael Evans, who is not a veterinarian. See About for the full statement of what that does and does not mean. No one here can assess whether your puppy's weight, growth rate, diet or symptoms are normal for your dog, and answering as if we could would be worse than not answering. Those questions belong with the vet who can put hands on the animal.

What we can do is explain what the tool calculated and why, and point at the research behind it, which is often what makes the conversation with your vet more useful.

How corrections are handled

1. The claim gets traced back to its source and checked against it.
2. If it is wrong, the page is fixed, and if the same error appears elsewhere on the site, those pages are fixed in the same pass.
3. A correction that changes the substance of a page is noted on that page rather than edited away silently. The updated date changes with it.
4. If a claim turns out to be unverifiable rather than wrong, it is removed or the uncertainty is stated. It does not stay up because it sounds right.

Response times

BarkMath is one person, so a reply can take several days, and a correction that needs the underlying paper re-read can take longer. Corrections and data errors get looked at first. If your message has not been answered in a couple of weeks, sending it again is reasonable: it means it went astray, not that it was ignored.

Why there is no contact form

BarkMath is a static site with no server and no database of its own. A contact form would mean adding a third party that receives and stores whatever you type into it, purely for the convenience of not opening a mail client. A plain address keeps the site's data footprint at what the privacy policy describes, and keeps your message between you and the mailbox.