Method & corrections
How this guide was made, what the five evidence labels mean, what is inference, how to correct a record, and what the corrections form stores.
This guide is a set of claims with their evidence attached. This page explains where the claims come from, how they are labelled, what we do when they are wrong, and what the one form on this site stores.
How the guide was made
- Sources first. Each venue rule was read from the venue's own rules page, moderator announcement, or policy document. Each growth case was read from the company's own account or an independent write-up. Each quote was copied verbatim from a public thread. Everything was checked on 2026-08-26 and carries that date until it is rechecked.
- Labelled, not smoothed. Every factual row was classed as evidence (something you can go and read), inference (a conclusion drawn across sources), or hypothesis (a proposal not yet tested). Inference is written as judgment on the page, never as fact.
- Cached where necessary. Some sources — notably Reddit moderator posts — could not be loaded live from where this guide was built. Their text comes from cached copies and is marked as such. Cached means "this was announced", not "this is still the rule today".
- Kept small. The guide prefers seventeen venues with real rules to a directory of hundreds with none.
The five evidence labels
| Label | Meaning | How much to trust it |
|---|---|---|
| Direct rule | Published by the platform, community, marketplace, editor, or venue owner. Source, scope, and checked date shown. | Strongest available — and still rechecked before you act. |
| Observed practice | A recent example of what a venue accepted or rejected. | Context. Never stronger than a current explicit rule. |
| Reported outcome | A first-party or independent account of what happened, with time window and causal limits when available. | Promising, usually multi-causal. Not a recipe. |
| Inference | A reasoned conclusion from the available evidence. | Judgment, labelled as judgment. |
| Unknown | Missing, contradictory, stale, paywalled, or permission-dependent evidence. | Unknown never silently becomes a green light. |
Fit, where the guide expresses it, is strong, conditional, or not recommended — with the reason. There is no numeric fit score anywhere on this site, because the inputs would not justify one.
What is inference here
- That contribution-led paths outperform broadcast tactics for early products is an inference from thirteen first-party cases and seventeen rule records — a pattern, not a law.
- That "not here" is often the right answer is an inference from how many venues restrict promotion outright and how often builders report empty rooms after ignoring that.
- The five-part path structure (ground, soil report, seed, season, weeds) is a method, not a finding. Use it because it forces the questions, not because it is proven.
Corrections
If you moderate or own a community, marketplace, publication, or programme cited here and the rule, scope, or observed practice we recorded is wrong or out of date, tell us below. A venue asking not to be listed is honoured. We will recheck the source, update the record with a new checked date, and note the correction on the page.
Privacy & data
This site has no accounts, no analytics scripts, and no advertising trackers. The only data collected is what you type into the corrections form above.
- Stored: the kind, subject, message, and email you enter, a timestamp, and the country reported by the network. Your IP address is used only to limit repeat submissions for an hour and is not stored with the message.
- Where: a private key-value store on Cloudflare's infrastructure, readable only by the operator of this site.
- Why: to verify and apply corrections, and to answer questions.
- How long: until the message is handled, or until you ask for deletion.
- Deletion: send a message of kind "Something else" with the subject DELETE and the email you used. We delete the record and confirm.
- The Soil Tester runs entirely in your browser; the text you paste is never sent anywhere.
Contact
The form above is the contact route. It is read by a person; there is no auto-reply and no newsletter.
Sources & dates
Every rule, case, policy, and quote on this site links to its source and states the date it was checked (initially 2026-08-26). Where the source could only be reached as a cached copy or a search snippet, the page says so. When a record is corrected, the correction and its date are added to the page rather than silently overwriting it.
Method last updated 2026-08-26.