From a star rating to a Standing

1. One record for each person

Every creator, journalist, commentator and public figure gets one record, with each of their accounts (YouTube, Instagram, X and the rest) linked to it. News outlets, forums and sites have records too, filed as organisations; they sit second, and a journalist’s record links to their outlet’s.

2. People rate them

A rating is one to five stars, with a few words if you want to say why. For journalists, commentators, politicians, outlets and anyone in a high-stakes field (finance, health, politics, news) the rating also asks whether they get their facts right and which way they lean. For people, there are three quick traits: Funny, Originality and Cringe.

3. The ratings become a Standing

The Standing is the weighted average of the stars, turned into a number from 0 to 100: (average − 1) ÷ 4 × 100, rounded. One star is 0, three stars is 50, five stars is 100.

• 80–100 High standing
• 60–79 Good standing
• 40–59 Mixed standing
• 0–39 Low standing

Nothing is published until a record has 20 ratings. Before that it says “No standing yet” and how many ratings it has, never a number. A new rating shows on the record straight away, but it only counts toward the Standing after 36 hours, so a sudden push is visible before it can move anything.

4. Not every rating weighs the same

Each rater is weighted by their own record on the site:

• Trust, from 0.1 to 1.0. It grows with account age, helpful votes from other people, detailed ratings and accepted tags, and drops when a rating is removed for breaking the rules.
• Recent ratings count more. A rating slowly loses weight as it ages.
• Helpful ratings count more. Up to 30% more when others mark it helpful, up to 30% less when they mark it unhelpful.
• Verified accounts count 20% more.

You can tap a quick answer without an account. Those taps never publish anything on their own, and the taps from any one day weigh at most a quarter of what the signed-in raters weigh. Accounts less than 7 days old can vote, but they do not yet decide the things the crowd files (a record’s category and role, or which controversies rank as most credible).

5. Raids freeze the number

Every record is watched for coordinated pushes. The check fires when it sees any of these:

• More than 20 ratings in an hour.
• More than 10 lean votes in an hour with 80% of them on one answer.
• More than half of an hour’s ratings coming from low-trust accounts under a week old.

When it fires, the Standing freezes at its previous value and the record says Standing frozen until a moderator reviews it. A lasting change needs lasting support, not one raid.

6. Traits, accuracy and lean

Traits (Funny, Originality, Cringe) are on people’s records, each a meter from 0 to 100. A trait shows once 5 signed-in raters have answered it.

Accuracy and lean are only on records where they mean something: journalists, commentators, politicians, outlets and high-stakes fields. An entertainer shows neither. When the public finds the facts wrong, the number stays but the word beside it becomes Facts disputed.

7. Controversies

Anyone signed in can raise a controversy on a record: what happened, and the sources if there are any. It is an allegation by a member of the public, and the record says so. Established accounts mark each one credible or doubtful, and the person it is about can claim their record and respond beside it.

What we don’t do

• We don’t fact-check single posts. A Standing is the public’s measured opinion of a person over time, not a ruling on one video or article.
• We don’t allow AI-written ratings. AI is used only to catch spam and abuse.
• We don’t remove ratings for being negative. Only for breaking the community guidelines.
• We don’t sell standing. Claiming your record is free and lets you respond. It never changes the number.

Ready to use it?

Look someone up, browse the standings, or rate someone you actually follow.