Trust
When projects say the Sato Score got them wrong
We publish a number about other people's work. This is where those people answer — in their own words, with their own evidence, including the times we disagreed with them.
Filing a dispute does not move a score, and nothing here feeds the scoring run. Where a dispute shows an input was wrong, the input is corrected through the listing and the next run reflects it, dated, in that listing's history. Before disputing, the score can be recomputed from the published inputs.
No project has disputed a published score yet. That is a fact about the log, not a claim that every score is right — the route to file one is on every listing's score report.
Questions
- Who can dispute a Sato Score?
- Someone who has proven control of a domain the listing itself points at, by DNS TXT record or a well-known file — the same proof the claim flow uses, and the candidate domains are derived from the listing rather than nominated by the claimant. Anyone else can report a problem through the form on the listing page; a dispute is published under the project's name, so it has to come from the project.
- Does filing a dispute change a score?
- No. Nothing in the dispute record feeds the scoring run. If a dispute shows that an input we used was wrong, that input is corrected through the ordinary listing path and the next scoring run reflects the correction — which appears as a dated event in that listing's history. A score that moved because somebody objected would not be a score.
- Are disputes you disagreed with published too?
- Yes. A declined dispute appears here with its statement, its evidence and the reason we declined. Publishing only the disputes we conceded would make this page marketing rather than a record.
- Can I check the score myself instead of disputing it?
- Yes, and it is often faster. The inputs behind every published score are at /api/export/score-inputs.json and the rubric is on the Sato Score page, so the number can be recomputed independently. If the arithmetic disagrees with what we published, that is our bug rather than a judgment call, and we want it reported.
Related: Sato Score methodology · Transparency report · House rules