How the charts work, and who can't touch them

Ranking

Charts are judgments, not polls

Each chart — Watch, Listen, Follow, Play, Stocks — is ranked by cultural significance: what a story, work, person or company means to the community right now, weighed by our editors with the help of our curation engines. Recency breaks ties and retires items; it never buys a rank.

Partners and sponsors have no input into where anything ranks — that is policy, in writing, below. Fandom campaigns can make noise; our editors weigh evidence, and manufactured momentum is treated as noise, not significance. When we get one wrong, the fix is public: the chart changes.

Sources

Sourced, or omitted

Every item on every chart carries real sourcing — a release, a publication, a record we can point to. If we can't source a claim, the item doesn't run. There is no "we heard."

Face

What Face is — and isn't

Face is recognition given by members of our community to the works and contributions that deserve respect. It's a real signal from real members of an invited community.

It is not market research, and we don't dress it up as such. Our community is young and growing; while it grows, Face is directional — an honest early read, not a statistic. Face cannot be bought, gifted by us, or weighted by anyone's spend.

Sponsorship

What sponsors can and cannot do

Partners can present the environment around the culture: a time-bounded franchise (always distinct from the standing charts), an event, an editorial series, a module beside the work. Their support is always labeled, plainly.

• No sponsor presents a chart itself. The Watch, Listen, Follow, Play, Stocks and Today surfaces — including the homepage — are never "presented by" anyone.
• No sponsor appears on a person's page. The people we chart never carry a brand's logo beside their name — recognition is not an endorsement, in either direction.
• No sponsor touches Face. Not the signal, not the counts, not who can give it.
• No preview, no veto, no input. Partners never see independent coverage or rankings before the community does. On clearly labeled sponsored deliverables, partners may review only facts about themselves — never our judgments. Interference ends the partnership.
• Conflicts are disclosed. If a partner's film, product or person appears on a chart, it earned the spot the same way everything else does — and the relationship is noted right there.

Limits

What we do not claim

We don't claim the charts are the objective truth of Asian American culture — they're our best, sourced, daily judgment of it. We don't claim Face is a representative survey. We don't claim to speak for a community of tens of millions; we claim to listen to it every day, in public, where anyone can tell us we got it wrong.

Company and stocks coverage is educational, not investment advice. Questions about anything on this page: editors@nextshark.com. Partnership inquiries belong on the partners page.