# Common Annotation Errors Reference

**Version:** 1.0 · **domainXpert Quick References**

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## The 20 Most Frequent Mistakes

### Evaluation Errors

1. **Length bias** — Preferring longer responses because they seem more thorough.
2. **Formatting bias** — Preferring responses with headers and bullets regardless of content quality.
3. **Anchoring** — Letting the first response set your standard for the second.
4. **Recency bias** — Favoring the response you read most recently.
5. **Sycophancy blindness** — Failing to penalize responses that agree with false premises.
6. **Overuse of Tie** — Using Tie to avoid a difficult judgment.
7. **Vague justifications** — Writing "A is better" without citing specific evidence.

### Factual Errors

8. **Accepting plausible-sounding claims** — A claim that sounds right is not the same as a claim that is right.
9. **Missing omissions** — Failing to flag material facts that are absent.
10. **Outdated information** — Not checking whether a claim reflects current knowledge.
11. **Hallucination acceptance** — Failing to verify citations or statistics.
12. **Conflating correlation and causation** — Accepting causal language for correlational findings.

### Domain-Specific Errors

13. **Missing jurisdiction (legal)** — Accepting legal claims without jurisdiction qualification.
14. **Missing evidence level (medical)** — Accepting clinical claims without evidence grading.
15. **Missing units (engineering)** — Accepting numerical claims without units.
16. **Overstating consensus (science)** — Treating a majority view as universal agreement.

### Process Errors

17. **Rushing at end of session** — Quality drops in the last 20% of a session. Slow down.
18. **Skipping re-reads** — Not re-reading the prompt before submitting.
19. **Ignoring the checklist** — Skipping your personal quality checklist when fatigued.
20. **Not flagging ambiguous tasks** — Guessing instead of flagging when instructions are unclear.

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