Methodology Desk

The Methodology Desk owns the scoring model behind the Withdrawal Watch board, the disclosure language, and the protocol articles that describe how a withdrawal claim should be tested before anyone publishes it. Its remit is the arithmetic and the honesty of the arithmetic: choosing the five criteria, setting and publishing their weights, checking that each operator's five per-criterion scores multiply out to the headline score printed on its card, and making sure the disclosed commercial placement is never presented as if it were an earned one. The desk also maintains the corrections route and the standing instruction that an inconvenient finding about the commercial partner is published under exactly the same rules as a flattering one. What this desk does not do: it does not run withdrawal tests, it does not accept scoring input from operators, and it does not publish community vote counts, user-submitted payout times or any aggregate the site did not compute from published sources. It has never commissioned a funded payout study, and it says so on the methodology page rather than leaving the absence to be inferred. When a criterion cannot justify a score, the desk changes the score or the criterion, in public, and re-dates the page.