# Talking with a writer about a flagged result

> A fair, five-step way for teachers and editors to follow up on a low human score without accusing anyone.

Canonical page: https://winstonai.ai/help/discussing-a-flagged-result

Help center: Scans & results. Updated 2026-10-08.

A detector can tell you where to look. It can't tell you what happened. The fairest follow-up treats the scan as one piece of evidence and gives the writer a real chance to explain.

1. **Re-read the work yourself.** Note what stood out before you saw the score: shifts in voice, generic claims, sources that don't check out.
2. **Check where the highlights are.** Are they clustered in one section, or scattered single sentences? Clusters mean more.
3. **Compare with earlier work.** A sudden change in style, vocabulary or quality tells you more than any single score.
4. **Ask open questions.** “Walk me through how you wrote this section” works far better than “Did you use ChatGPT?”
5. **Ask for process evidence.** Drafts, version history, notes and outlines usually settle the question quickly.

## Things to avoid

- Presenting a score as proof in a disciplinary process without other evidence.
- Re-scanning until you get the result you expected. The same text gives the same score; changing the text changes the result.
- Comparing scores between different detectors. They use different models and different scales.

> **Tip:** Many schools now state what AI use is allowed for each assignment, from brainstorming help to none at all. When writers know the rules up front, conversations about results are much easier.