Nothing. Your record, verification, the browser extension, the full history, and the public address come with any account, and there is no paid tier behind them. The costs of running the record are what patronage is for.
We already publish our standards on our own site. Why add the record?
A page you host says only what it says today. The record keeps what your standards said on every date: versioned, public, with diffs, at an address that does not change, backed by a browser extension that proves the domain is yours. Your site shows your word today; the record keeps the receipts.
Why does this matter?
Because whoever publishes today is judged by standards nobody agreed to: when nobody publishes their own, whoever grades them fills the vacuum. A public record of self-declared, checkable standards puts the publisher’s own word back at the center, where readers and machines can hold it to account. Every record added, and every patron behind the record, is a step toward making that the norm.
What does a patron actually get?
A hand in a healthier information ecosystem, and your name on that effort: the public supporters list carries your name and your tier, with Founding in front of it if you join before incorporation. Beyond that, deliberately, nothing. What no amount gets: nothing inside the product, nothing on any record, verify page, or index entry, no priority, and no say in what the registry does or in what any record says. A patron is a name on a list and nothing else.
Where does the money go?
It will pay for hosting, verification, the full version history, and the work of building and running the record. The books will be public, including what that work is paid. How the record is funded →
Can I fund a specific thing?
Not through the site yet. Every pledge on this page is unrestricted: no amount steers the work. After Publishing Policy incorporates, a registry of declared needs will open, where a person or an organization can fund a specific line item. Sponsorship is disclosed in the public books, the funded work carries no funder’s name, and sponsors choose among declared needs rather than proposing them. To sponsor one of the first initiatives, write to team@publishingpolicy.org.
Is this a charity?
Not yet. Publishing Policy is one person’s work today. The plan is to incorporate as a 501(c)(3) so the record is governed independently of any person or company, and the founding era exists to get it there. Until that happens there is no charitable status here.
Can money change what a record says?
No. Nothing anyone pays us changes a single thing about a record: not the record, not the browser extension, not the history, not a place in the index. And nobody, at any price, can have a record taken down or a change hidden.
Does being a patron appear on the record?
Never. No name, no mark, no note, on any record, on any verify page, or in the index. The supporters list will live on one page of its own and nowhere else: names and tiers, set in one type, with no amounts on it.
Does being a patron give me any say in what the registry does?
No, and that is deliberate. The registry does not adjudicate and does not grade, and if it could be steered by the people funding it, it would be worth less to everyone, including you.
Can an organization pay to look better here?
There is no better to look. A record is recorded or it is not, and the registry publishes no score, no grade, and no ranking. An organization can fund the record, and that funding appears nowhere a reader looks. Organization support is disclosed in the public books, and no organization is ever credited on a record or on the supporters list: the subjects of the record cannot be the faces of its funding.
I am not here to write a policy. Why would I have an account?
Because the account is where your support lives, and where the record will reach you: following the records you care about, and being told when one of them changes, will live there. Asking an organization for its policy needs no account at all, and never will.