We messed up with the Windows 12 article. What we got wrong and how it happened

Earlier this week, PCWorld published a roundup of Windows 12 rumors translated from PCWelt that does not meet our editorial standards. We’re deeply embarrassed by it, and I personally apologize that the article was published. It should not have been, but we’re keeping the article live (with an editor’s note at the top) so it remains in the public record.

Windows Central published a response detailing its errors. Thanks for keeping us accountable, guys — genuinely. In the same spirit of accountability, I want to explain how this happened, and what we’re doing to ensure a mistake like this never occurs again.

Let’s start by discussing how PCWorld handles translated articles, and then I’ll dive into the issues with the article itself.

Translations

PCWorld is part of a group of tech-focused websites that includes Macworld in the US, as well as European sites like PCWelt (Germany) and PC for Alla (Sweden). We all use the same content management system, and can easily publish DeepL-translated English language versions of German and Swedish content. This allows PCWorld to publish PCWelt-authored stories in English in minutes, and vice-versa.

Windows Central and others have wondered if this article was written by AI. The author says it was not. We must note, however, that DeepL uses AI for translation.

As part of our post-mortem on this article’s evolution, PCWelt’s executive editor pointed out that the translation makes the article sound more definitive than its native German. He says that in the context of the article, the German word “soll” signals a rumored expectation, but the English translation used “will” instead of something more akin to “is rumored to.”

This exposes a weakness in our publishing process and we’ll be more vigilant about translated phrasing going forward.

How this article was published on PCWorld

We usually give translated articles a lighter edit, and focus mostly on voice and structure. We put a lot of trust in the judgement of our sister editorial teams. Nonetheless, the poor sourcing in this article should have been identified and raised as an issue by the U.S.-based PCWorld staff. Sadly, it was not raised because of a confluence of miscommunications. To be clear, this is an explanation, not an excuse – we own our errors here.

We launched translation capabilities in 2023. Since then, I’ve been the person who identifies which German and Swedish articles get pulled in. That changed two weeks ago, when I handed off that process to a collection of other staffers.

I won’t go into all the details, but the team thought I had approved this Windows 12 article, when I had not. They agree the lack of sourcing should have tripped their own editorial sensors, and that alone should have compelled them to hold the article for a follow-up conversation. It was a failure to schedule this article without double-checking with me first.

But, crucially, I was on leave for personal reasons from last Wednesday until this Tuesday, and largely unable to communicate. Questionable articles usually get flagged to me for inspection, but I wasn’t around.

As executive editor, I act as the final line of defense on PCWorld. I schedule our top stories for the following day, and give each a thorough read to ensure they meet our standards. But the system broke down in this case.

Again, this is an explanation, not an excuse. This story never should have published on PCWorld and I’m sorry that it did.

Going forward, I will communicate role responsibilities clearly to all staff, and I’ve reminded our editorial team that potentially problematic stories always need to be raised to senior leadership before going live. If I’m not around, they will flag our editorial director, Jon Phillips. Assumptions aren’t good enough.

The problems with the Windows 12 story

Finally, the elephant in the room – the story itself.

I do not lead PCWelt’s editorial team, only PCWorld’s, but I want to speak to why that particular Windows 12 article doesn’t meet PCWorld’s editorial standards. We’re committed to leaving it live on the site for posterity – we earned this, we’ll eat it, we’re sorry – and will link to this explanation atop it. Here is a link to the original German version, which has since been updated.

The first version did not include any source links or attributions outside of the introduction, and was written in a way that suggested it was original reporting. It was not. That’s obviously bad, and should have precluded publication on PCWorld until someone escalated their concerns.

PCWorld staffers noticed its problems Monday afternoon, before the Windows Central response published, and we asked PCWelt to provide sourcing for the claims. PCWelt added sourcing to its article Tuesday morning, and we added them to PCWorld’s version as well.

That sourcing was not good enough, and in fact casts more doubt on the article.

The PCWelt author linked to many sites of dubious quality. One links to a ChatGPT-generated forum comment, published the same day as our Windows 12 roundup, that clearly uses our erroneous report as its source. Other links the author claimed as sources were published after the original PCWelt article went live. I do not trust the validity of these claimed sources or that they were truly used to research this article.

Several elements of this Windows 12 rumor roundup included old and invalid information, such as references to a CorePC initiative, “Hudson Valley,” and UI claims based on ancient information. Again, Windows Central did a painfully wonderful job at listing all its flaws.

My pledge here: PCWorld will apply much more scrutiny to translated articles going forward. We’ll scrutinize the sourcing, the analysis and the translations. We’ll make sure the same level of interrogation we apply to English language assignments is applied to all content.

A breakdown like this is deeply embarrassing and cannot happen twice. We will treat all translations as “fresh” editorial that requires a full top-to-bottom edit. PCWorld will also no longer translate articles from the author of the PCWelt Windows 12 piece.

Bottom line

We screwed up. We’re sorry. I’m sorry.

PCWorld is better than this. Most of our staffers have been journalists for more than a decade. We apply serious effort and resources to bringing you good information backed by veteran experience and original reporting. Each and every member of PCWorld is here because we’re geeks ourselves. We care and hold great pride in maintaining editorial standards.

We value your trust – witness the way we literally ‘eat our words’ every year on The Full Nerd podcast, holding ourselves accountable for earlier predictions gone wrong. This has been a painful couple of days for everyone at PCWorld, but I hope the transparency in this post-mortem starts to rebuild the trust we’ve lost by publishing this mess.

We made a mistake. A bad one. It won’t happen again. The core PCWorld team will keep bringing you the same insights and analysis we’ve been delivering for over 40 years at this point, and I’m confident we’ll be able to regain your trust going forward.

~Brad