How a Standing is made
Every Standing comes from the same place: one-to-five-star ratings from the public, each weighted by the rater’s own record, held for a day and a half and checked for raids. No editor adjusts the result.
5 min read · New here? Start with how it worksIn short
- Ratings are 1–5 stars. The Standing is their weighted average on a 0–100 scale.
- Nothing publishes below 20 ratings, and a new rating counts after 36 hours.
- Every rater is weighted by their own record on the site.
- Anonymous taps never publish anything on their own.
- A detected raid freezes the Standing at its previous value until a moderator reviews it.
The Standing
Every rating gives one to five stars. The record takes the weighted average of those stars and maps it onto a scale from 0 to 100:
One star is 0, three stars is 50, five stars is 100. The band is read from the whole number, so the word always agrees with the figure beside it: 80–100 is High standing, 60–79 Good standing, 40–59 Mixed standing and 0–39 Low standing.
The quorum. A record publishes nothing until it has 20 ratings. Below that it reads “No standing yet · 7 of 20 ratings”, never a number.
The hold. A new rating shows on the record straight away, but it only counts toward the Standing after 36 hours. A coordinated push arrives within hours, so the hold makes it visible before it can move anything.
Who counts, and how much
Each rating’s weight is the product of four things about the rater and the rating:
- Trust, 0.1 to 1.0. Built from the rater’s own record: account age, helpful votes received, detailed ratings and accepted tags, less a penalty for ratings removed for breaking the rules.
- Recency. A rating slowly loses weight as it ages, so the Standing follows what people think now.
- Helpfulness. Up to 30% more when other people mark the rating helpful, up to 30% less when they mark it unhelpful.
- Verification. A verified account counts 20% more.
Anonymous taps. The quick answers you can give without an account never publish anything on their own: nothing appears until enough signed-in raters agree. Each tap weighs half of the least-trusted account, and the taps from any one day weigh at most a quarter of what the signed-in raters weigh.
New accounts. An account under 7 days old can rate and vote, but it does not yet decide the things the crowd files: a record’s category and role, or which controversies rank as most credible. Its votes start to count on their own once the account is a week old.
Raids and the freeze
Every record is checked for coordinated pushes. The check fires on any of these:
- A spike: more than 20 ratings in one hour.
- A lean pile-on: more than 10 lean votes in one hour, with 80% of them on the same answer.
- Throwaway accounts: more than half of an hour’s ratings from low-trust accounts less than a week old.
When it fires, the Standing freezes at its value from before the incident, the record says Standing frozen, and a moderator reviews it. Ordinary limits apply on top: 20 ratings a day per account, duplicate detection, and spam and abuse filtering. AI-written ratings are not allowed.
Traits
People’s records carry three traits: Funny, Originality and Cringe, each a meter from 0 to 100. A trait publishes once 5 signed-in raters have answered it; anonymous taps count toward the meter but never toward that minimum. Organisations have no traits.
Accuracy and lean
Accuracy and lean only appear where they mean something: journalists, commentators, politicians, outlets, and any record in a high-stakes category (finance, health, politics, news). An entertainer shows neither.
Accuracy asks whether the person gets their facts right: Accurate, Mixed or Misleading, stored as 5, 3 or 1. The record shows the trust-weighted average on a scale from 0 to 100. When it is 50 or below, or 70 or below on a record rated 4 stars or more, the Standing keeps its number but its word becomes Facts disputed.
Lean is the trust-weighted median of five-step votes from far left to far right, published on seven steps (“Leans left”, “Leans slightly right”). A median resists a raid in a way an average does not. It shows from 20 votes.
Controversies
A controversy is an allegation raised by a member of the public, with sources where they have them, and the record labels it as one. Established accounts (a week old or more) mark each one credible or doubtful, and those marks decide the order. The person it is about can claim their record and publish a response beside it. Controversies never change the Standing by themselves; the ratings do.
Frequently asked questions
How is the Standing calculated?
Raters give one to five stars. The record takes the trust-weighted average of those stars and maps it onto 0–100: (average − 1) ÷ 4 × 100, rounded to a whole number. Bands: 80–100 High, 60–79 Good, 40–59 Mixed, 0–39 Low. Nothing is shown below 20 ratings.
How is each rater weighted?
By their own record: a trust weight from 0.1 to 1.0 (account age, helpful votes received, detailed ratings, accepted tags, minus ratings removed for breaking the rules), times an age factor so recent ratings count more, times a helpfulness factor of up to ±30% from other people’s helpful and unhelpful marks, times 1.2 for a verified account.
Why is a Standing sometimes missing?
Two reasons. Below 20 ratings a record has no standing yet and says how many it has. During a raid freeze the record says “Standing frozen” and shows the value from before the incident until a moderator reviews it.
How is accuracy scored?
Where accuracy applies, each rating says whether the person gets their facts right: Accurate, Mixed or Misleading, stored as 5, 3 or 1. The trust-weighted average is shown from 0 to 100. If it is 50 or below, or 70 or below on a record whose stars are 4 or higher, the Standing keeps its number but its word becomes “Facts disputed”.
How is lean placed?
Where lean applies, each rating places the person on five steps from far left to far right. The record publishes the trust-weighted median (not the average, which a raid can drag) on seven steps, so a median between two steps reads as a slight lean. It shows from 20 votes.
Can the person on the record respond?
Yes. Claiming a record is free. A claimed record can answer each controversy publicly, beside it and labelled as theirs, and can reply privately to the people who rated it. Neither changes the Standing.