Growing without diluting the cartography.
A directory loses meaning when it stops being curated. As CHNGMKR grows, we commit, in writing, to slow ourselves down whenever quality is at risk. This policy describes when we accelerate, when we pause, and what triggers a hold.
Most directories scale by removing friction: more entries, less verification, less context. We scale the opposite way. Every additional curator multiplies our editorial surface; every additional entry must still be defensible by a name and a written rationale. The Responsible Scaling Policy makes this commitment operational, not aspirational.
Four tiers of growth
Each tier is defined by a count of curators and a level of automation. Higher tiers unlock new capabilities (mass briefings, AI-assisted discovery, partner integrations) only after explicit safeguards are in place.
Where we stand today: Tier 1, ten curators. The founding corpus was researched and signed by the founding curator; that is what seeding a map by hand looks like. The balance rules below apply to new entries as the curator ring grows, and the founder's share falls with every curator who joins.
What triggers a hold
We will pause new entries, public-facing or otherwise, if any of the following becomes true. Holds are public, dated, and announced on this page.
- Verification capacity exceeded: when the editorial team cannot fact-check within the standard 14-day window.
- Removal rate above 3% per quarter: sustained retractions signal a curation drift, we stop and review.
- Curator-conflict ratio above 5%: measured by curators withdrawing endorsements of past entries.
- Geographic over-representation: when any single country exceeds 30% of new entries in a quarter, intake from that country pauses.
- Single-curator dominance: when any single curator authors more than 15% of new entries, their intake is throttled until balance returns. The hand-built founding corpus sits outside this ratio; every entry from here on counts toward it, the founder's included.
What it means in practice
This policy is not a marketing artifact. It is the reason we cannot promise an open API tomorrow, a recommendation engine next quarter, or a bulk import for any partner, including ourselves. Each of those capabilities is conditional on a tier we have not yet reached, and a control we have not yet written down.
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