The Internet is filled with low-quality, spammy, promotional listicles. They all say these are the “best”, without any objective proof.

We don’t want that at HackerNoon. Thus, if you are saying something is the “best”, you need to  tell us why.

If you are writing a listicle about the Best X Companies or the Best X Tools. You need to tell the reader why they are the best, what they are the best at, and give us objective proof and reasonings for your rankings.

Ex: Are these the companies with the highest reported revenue last year? Do these companies have the most active users? Are those the tools with the cheapest subscription fees?

As you can see, every metric example above can be verified by the reader with a simple online search. If you list your rankings in such a way, they cannot be disputed or called out on social media.

Editing Protocol Index:

1. Editing Protocol Overview

   1. Second Human Rule

      1. Verified Writers

   2. Time to Review

2. Standards of Quality

   1. Originality Score
   2. 6 Ws Score
   3. Objectivity in ranked listicles
   4. Unranked listicles
   5. Actionable advice

3. Red Flags

   1. Subject Matter

      1. Subject matter saturation

   2. Plagiarism

   3. Sources and Citations

   4. Formatting is bad or broken

   5. Grammar level: gibberish

   6. Story is Too Short

4. Backlink Rules & Guidelines

   1. Backlink Limits

   2. Backlink quality and diversity

      1. Diversity of sources
      2. Internal linking
      3. Changing links

   3. Reposting and Canonical Linking

      1. Canonical links to company domain
      2. Canonical links to blog networks or social networks