Why I Stopped "Cleaning" Bad Data and Started Flagging It Instead

Automated excerpt

An outcome value of "maybe" — which isn't a valid enum value in any outcome-tracking system I've seen. The "maybe" outcome value never gets written into the outcome column — because doing so would corrupt every trend and count query downstream that assumes outcome only ever holds valid enum values. The rule isn't "never touch invalid data. " It's "never let invalid data quietly become valid-looking data. " The other design decision that shaped everything: outcomes aren't stored as a single mutable field that gets overwritten every time someone corrects it.

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