Eligibility rule

Publication and counting are separate on Christian Rated. A submitted review follows the moderation process; a published review counts only when it meets the eligibility rule. The rule decides whether a review moves the headline share and the meters. It does not decide whether a review is shown. A review that is not counted stays live, with the reason printed beside it.

The counting rule

A written review counts when all of the following are true:

1. The author’s account is at least 14 days old.
2. The body is 200 characters or more.
3. The author declared no connection to the maker.
4. The author is not an insider.
5. It is a review, not a theological note.
6. It has not been replaced by a later review of the same resource by the same person.

A one-tap vote carries no body, so rule 2 does not apply to it. The account rules do: a one-tap vote counts when the account is 14 days old, no connection to the maker is declared, and the voter is not an insider.

The rule looks only at these facts. It does not look at the answer, the tradition shown, the tone of the text, whether the maker is Christian-made or general, or whether we agree with the review. Nobody can count a review that fails the rule, and nobody can uncount one that passes it.

The reasons printed beside a review

When a review is published but not counted, one of these lines is printed beside it. The same reason is written to the public vote log as a review.not_counted event.

Printed beside the review	What it means
Account newer than 14 days	The clock below has not run out. The review will count on the date shown.
Body under 200 characters	The text is too short to carry meters. Edit it to 200 characters or more and it goes through the checks again.
No REVA reading or study activity yet	The activity rule. It is off at launch, so this reason is not applied to anyone. See below.
Declared connection to the maker	The author declared a connection. The review stays visible with a label and does not count toward this maker’s resources.
Insider (works on REVA)	The author is an employee, contractor or household member of REVA. Insider reviews are badged and never counted.
Earlier review of the same resource replaced	The author wrote a newer review of the same resource. The newer one is the live one.
Theological note	The author or a moderator marked it as a note. Notes stay visible and attributed and never move the meters.

The 14-day clock

The clock starts when the account was created. If you sign in with a REVA account that REVA reports as already 14 days old, your review counts at once. If your REVA account is newer than that, the review is published now and counts on the day the account turns 14 days old. The composer tells you the date before you publish, and until then the review carries a line naming the date it will count from. On that day the count happens by itself and writes a review.counted event to the log.

The clock is checkable from the outside. Every new account writes an account.created event to the public log under a pseudonym. A verifier can see that the account event is at least 14 days older than the review.counted event. The join between an account and its votes is ours to assert; it cannot be made from the outside, and that is deliberate. The privacy page explains the pseudonyms.

The activity rule, and why it is off

The scoring configuration defines an optional activity rule: 10 chapter reads or 3 study artifacts (notes, highlights or bookmarks) in REVA before a review counts. The rule is printed with the constants as off, and at launch it is not applied to anyone.

It is off for two reasons. First, the facts it needs exist only for people who signed in with REVA and consented to share their reading and study counts. Applying it at launch would make whether a review counts depend on a consent box rather than on the review. Second, those counts are not in the public log, so nobody outside could check the rule the way the 14-day and 200-character rules can be checked. Switching it on would be a scoring change: a new version label, a date, a line in the changelog, and the constant printed as on.

Connections

The composer asks for your connection to the maker: none; I work for the maker; I served on the translation committee; I am an author or editor of this work; I am affiliated with the publisher; I received a free copy; a close relative is connected; other. A declared connection keeps the review visible, labels it, and stops it counting toward that maker’s resources. An undeclared connection is removed as suspected fake and logged with its sentiment in the takedown log.

Insiders

Employees, contractors and household members of REVA are insiders. They cannot review or vote on REVA at all; the composer refuses, and each refusal is counted on the REVA line of the transparency page. Everywhere else they abstain until 4 April 2027. After that date their reviews carry an “Insider” badge and are never counted. The full list of what we took away from ourselves is on the conflicts page.

One per person, three a day

One review per person per resource. If you write a second review of the same resource, it replaces the first, which is marked as replaced and stops counting. One one-tap vote per person per resource; you can change it, and the change is logged. Three reviews a day. We do not pay, reward or thank anyone for writing a review, and we never ask for a positive one.

Edit or withdraw a review at any time from My reviews. An edit goes through the checks again. A withdrawn review loses its text and keeps its hashed event in the log, as described on the privacy page.

The vetted track

The same rule applies to vetted reviewers. A vetted review with a declared connection is labeled and not counted for that maker, the same as any other. Vetted and community reviews are counted separately and never blended; see the methodology.

Why a REVA account

The rule uses account age, and later may use reading activity, to keep fake reviews out without a paid gate or a phone check. Those facts live in REVA. Reading Christian Rated needs no account; writing, voting and reporting require sign-in using the available options. When REVA sign-in is configured, it uses the account associated with the REVA app. What we read from it, and what we never read, is on the privacy page.