Editorial rules

Each ranking has a byline, so you can see who stands behind it. The about page gives the desk's bio, its credentials and the 3 review passes every article gets. The byline links to a permanent author page, as a print magazine would do, so every claim traces back to a person and not just a logo.

Our six research steps, from building a field to scoring it, are on the methodology page.

Award errors tend to be real mistakes and not typos. Wins turn out to be nominations. Hall of Fame entries that spread online turn out not to exist. A "win" that nobody ever received under that name gets repeated for years. When we find one, we correct it and record it in the public log, on the article it affects.

A social or platform link goes into a record only if we have seen it on a trusted page: her own site, a verified account, the external links on her Wikipedia page, a Wikidata property, or a Linktree she runs herself. We never enter a guessed address. In this field a handle that looks right often belongs to an impersonator, and once a wrong one sits in a database it looks just like a checked one. When we cannot confirm a link, we leave it empty and list it as unverified in that record. We do not fill it with a best guess.

This rule has a visible cost. For a good share of the performers we cover, we could not confirm an adult-platform account from a trusted source, so we show none. The slot exists. The checked address is missing. We would rather show nothing than show a guess.

We say when an allegation is untested and never suggest it is proven. If someone was acquitted, we say so. We call a person a performer only when a reliable source does. We never place a photograph next to a correction that names someone.

The full policy, and the way for anyone named here to ask for removal, is on the ethics and consent page.

Before a new ranking goes live, it must meet two rules. First, it may share only a limited number of names with any existing article, and the aim is none. Reusing a performer's record is fine because her facts stay the same, but we do not move names between lists just to fill space. Second, its pillar weights must differ from the default, with a reason printed on the page. If a category cannot justify weighting the six pillars differently from every other, it probably should not be its own article.

Whenever a ranking changes the weights, the reason is listed on the methodology page.

47% of the 129 performer records behind our rankings fall short of our top confidence level. Most are rated "medium", which means at least one detail rests on one source instead of two. We are not hiding this. It reflects a database built from public records that were never consistent. Each performer's entry shows her own confidence level, so you can read it per person and not rely on our average.

Audience Demand is the clearest weakness in the method itself. This is the weakest pillar in the method, and we would rather say so than disguise it. When a performer's name draws measurable search interest, we use that number directly. For now this covers only some of the performers we score. For the rest, we start from the performer's own computed record and adjust by hand, and we flag each estimated value for review before publication. A performer whose Demand figure was set by hand instead of measured carries a note that says so.

Every known limit, pillar by pillar, is listed on the ethics page and the methodology page.

We fix factual errors within 48 hours of confirming them, then log them with the date and a description at the bottom of the article. We log changes to the scoring method in the same way, including any change in the order that results.

We review everything in full every six months. We update the award pillars within 14 days of each major awards ceremony. Our next full review is 2027-02-20.