Independence and conflicts
Rankings are calculated from eligible AI answer observations using the published methodology. A vendor cannot buy a rank, score, citation, roster position, or favorable editorial conclusion. A Slate customer, partner, or prospect must pass the same public evidence and publication gates as any other entity.
Where a commercial relationship could reasonably matter to a reader, it should be disclosed close to the affected editorial statement. The measured ranking itself is not adjusted to create a favorable commercial result.
Evidence and attribution
Observed AI answers, external citation domains, vendor facts, third-party reporting, and Slate calculations are distinct source classes. We attribute public sources when the source contract supplies a crawlable URL and avoid presenting a source's marketing claim as an independently verified fact.
A citation domain indicates that an eligible answer cited that domain. It is not an endorsement of the whole domain. Editorial summaries should preserve relevant qualifications, dates, and source limitations rather than flattening mixed evidence into a stronger claim.
AI assistance and human oversight
Automation and language models may support collection, extraction, normalization, or drafting. Public facts and material claims still have to pass deterministic source, entity, completeness, and publication checks. Ineligible answers are omitted; missing evidence is not replaced with synthetic filler.
Ambiguous entity matches, failed quality gates, claims, and corrections can be routed to review tasks. Human approval does not authorize a reviewer to fabricate evidence or override a false statement merely to keep a page published.
Updates and page sufficiency
Material ranking updates enter through a new validated snapshot. Material profile corrections enter through the correction workflow. Pages remain indexable only when they have a valid canonical entity, a unique purpose or dataset, applicable provenance and date, and enough page-specific evidence to stand alone.
Word count is not a publishing target. A concise page can remain public when it provides a unique, useful dataset with clear provenance. A page without sufficient evidence should be noindexed, unpublished, or consolidated only with an exact equivalent target.
Corrections
Readers and represented organizations can submit a correction with the affected entity, requested change, explanation, and a public evidence URL when available. The request is reviewed before any catalog change. Accepted corrections update the relevant public timestamp; rejected requests remain separate from the published evidence.