Issues
Issue scores and sponsored issues
How an issue's score works, when it appears, and how sponsored issues are compared with regular ones.
Updated
The score
Every issue gets one number from -100 to +100:
(positive votes - negative votes) ÷ all votes × 100
- +100 means every vote was positive. -100 means every vote was negative.
- Neutral votes count in the total but pull neither way.
- Because it’s a share rather than a count, a big send and a small one compare fairly.
Whether a link counts as positive, neutral or negative is up to you. Set it next to each label in Edit topic. See Edit link labels.
When it appears
An issue shows — until 5 readers have voted on its links. A score built on two or three votes would look precise and mean very little.
Sponsored vs regular
Tick Sponsored issue on any issue a sponsor paid for. The Issues page then compares the average score of your sponsored issues with the average of your regular ones, for example “Sponsored issues score 8 points lower than your regular ones”.
The comparison waits until you have at least 3 scored issues of each kind. Until then it tells you how many more it needs.