THE RULE BOOK
How ranking actually works, in full.
The short version lives on How it works ↗. This page is the complete reference.
1. The basic rule
Real engagement moves a listing up the board. Nothing else does: not payment, not staff opinion, not being first. Every eligible listing starts at zero and rises only when real people act on it.
2. What LEFT UP ↑ means
LEFT UP ↑ is the one organic action on Left Up. It means “I want more people to see this.” It is one per anonymous browser session, per listing. No accounts, no repeat-clicking your way to the top.
3. What can be ranked
Reviewed, approved community organizations, clubs, events, volunteer opportunities, community projects, creators, media, newsletters, podcasts and resources are eligible for organic ranking once independently reviewed and approved.
4. What cannot be ranked
Candidates, campaigns, political parties, public officials, policies, proposed policies, legislation and ballot measures are permanently excluded from organic scoring, regardless of category or popularity. Unknown or unreviewed classifications never enter ranking either. These entries may only appear in the separate, unranked neutral directory: no rank, no score, no LEFT UP count, no popularity ordering.
5. The four boards
Trending weighs the last seven days, favoring recent activity. Today resets at 00:00 UTC. This week resets Monday at 00:00 UTC. All time preserves every qualified event since launch. Each board only counts real, qualified engagement inside its own window.
6. What affects visibility
Three actions carry weight: a qualified unique visit to a listing’s website, a LEFT UP ↑, and starting a share. Each counts once per anonymous session per listing. Newer listings may carry a NEW badge for 7 days after publication (ADDED TODAY on the day they’re approved), and the top 10 scored listings on a board carry a TOP 10 badge. Badges are informational only. They don’t change score.
7. What does not count / abuse prevention
Sponsor impressions and clicks never enter organic scoring, under any circumstance. Detected bot traffic is discarded. A burst of activity on one listing (60+ qualified actions in a minute) triggers automatic review instead of counting. Sessions younger than a second can’t register a scored action. Sharing a link to yourself, or copying it without it ever being opened, is not measured as growth. We distinguish share initiation from detectable completion.
8. Sponsorship: clearly separated
Every sponsored placement is labeled SPONSORED, shown unnumbered and outside the rankings, and requires independent editorial approval plus an active, paid publication window. Payment, sponsor impressions, and sponsor clicks can never buy organic rank, change an organic score, alter a ranking snapshot, or add to a listing’s LEFT UP ↑ count. See Sponsor discovery ↗ and the sponsorship terms ↗.
9. Moderation / removal
Every first submission requires human review before it can appear publicly. Administrators can approve, reject or suspend a listing at any time, and reclassifying a listing as ineligible clears its engagement history, shares and ranking snapshots immediately. Repeated broken-link signals are tracked, but a failed link check never auto-deletes a listing. A person reviews it first.
10. Sharing and privacy
We use a random, signed browser identifier for deduplication and first-party operational measurement. The identifier is not a verified person and is never used to infer political beliefs, build political-interest profiles, or fingerprint a device. Shared links carry a random referral token so we can tell a real referral from a self-open, without reading anything about who clicked it.
11. Detailed ranking methodology ↓
Weights
Qualified unique visit: 1 point(s). LEFT UP ↑: 3. Unique share initiation: 4. Sponsor events and payments contribute nothing, ever.
Trending formula
Trending sums weighted qualified events from the last seven days with a 24-hour exponential half-life (each event’s weight is halved for every 24 hours since it happened), plus 0.5 for every distinct participant in the last 24 hours, plus 0.25 for every positive increase in event count between the most recent and preceding six-hour windows. Today, This week and All time sum raw weighted events in their window with no decay.
Ties and unranked entries
Equal nonzero scores tie by earliest submission time, then by stable identifier. Zero-score entries remain unranked and are listed newest-first. A listing needs a nonzero score to receive a rank at all.
Snapshots and movement
A ranking snapshot is taken at most once every 60 seconds, across every category and board. Movement compares the current rank to the most recent snapshot at least one minute old, in the same period, category and weight configuration. No comparable snapshot means no movement arrow is shown. We never invent trend data.