Methodology / version 0

Rules before results.

Entries are observations, not predictions or financial advice. The criteria are recorded before outcomes so the ledger can be audited on the same terms over time.

Pre-registered HIT criteria

Boundary cases are recorded as MISS. This conservative treatment prevents ambiguous outcomes from being promoted as successes. Misses are published in the same format as hits.

Criteria changes are versioned and never applied retroactively. A call keeps the criteria version recorded when it was opened.

What the thresholds imply by size (v0.1)

The absolute floor of +50 ratings is not size-neutral, and we would rather say so than let it flatter us. A call opened on an app with a handful of ratings has to find fifty new ones inside three weeks, which for an app that small is not a growth curve — it is a discovery event: a feature, a video, a link that lands. Those calls are lottery-grade, and we mark them as such when we open them.

A call opened in the range of roughly 500 to 2,000 ratings can clear the same bar on sustained growth alone, without needing luck. That is where the ledger's hit rate is actually being measured, and from the second batch onward it is where most calls come from. The early, tiny, mechanically-interesting apps keep one slot per batch, openly labelled as the lottery ticket it is.

This version changes no threshold. It records what the existing thresholds mean at different sizes. An open call always keeps the criteria version it was opened under.

How a call gets opened

From the second batch, a growth-based nomination requires a positive interval in two consecutive observations — three timestamps, not two. One interval cannot tell a burst apart from a trend, and we would rather miss a fast start than log a call we could not distinguish from noise. A nomination made on novelty rather than measured growth says so on its own page, and carries no velocity claim at all.

Corrections and source record

Corrections are appended with timestamps, never silently edited. The source record uses Apple's public iTunes and RSS endpoints, with snapshots recorded daily. Every velocity claim names both timestamps that define its interval.

Conflicts

We may hold interests in competing apps. Conflicts are disclosed on the relevant entry so readers can evaluate the observation with that context.