False positives

Automated checks are wrong sometimes. A check that is never wrong is a check that is not looking hard enough.

Setting one aside

Any finding can be dismissed as a false positive. Dismissing requires a reason, which is recorded against the decision.

The reason is not bureaucracy. Six months later, somebody — possibly you — will want to know why a finding is not on the list, and “because somebody clicked a button” is not an answer. It also matters if you are ever asked to show your working.

Doing it everywhere at once

Where a fault is one piece of markup repeated across many pages, findings can be grouped and the whole group settled in one decision.

Dismissing site-wide:

• lists the pages it covers first, so you see what you are deciding about
• requires a reason
• requires permission to edit other people’s content, since you are making a decision on their pages
• can be withdrawn in one step

That last point matters. An irreversible bulk dismissal would be a good way to hide a real problem permanently.

The False positives screen

Everything you have set aside lives on its own screen, with its reason and what it covers. From there a finding can be put back on the list.

Earlier versions only offered the undo on the card you had just dismissed, which disappeared as soon as you left the screen or re-scanned the page. That was a bug, and it is fixed: the undo is permanent and lives where you would look for it.

The screen used to be called “Set aside”. It is called False positives now, because that is the term people already use.

Decisions survive re-scanning

A dismissal, and its reason, stay attached to that finding across every future scan. Re-scanning a page does not quietly resurrect things you have already judged.

Controlling it in code

Two filters govern who may dismiss what:

Filter	What it decides
wsak_can_dismiss	Whether this user may dismiss this finding
wsak_can_dismiss_site_wide	Whether they may settle one piece of markup everywhere it appears

A site that wants dismissals restricted to a single role, or wants site-wide dismissal reserved for administrators, does it here.

When not to dismiss

If you are dismissing the same check repeatedly across different pages, it is usually not a false positive. It is more often a theme fault, and the better answer is a site-wide fix or a change to the template.

Dismissing in volume is how a report becomes fiction.