Transparency

Your home feed shows activity from people and animals you follow and communities you've joined. It is sorted strictly by time — newest first. There is no engagement-based ranking, no "relevance" score, and no machine learning deciding what you see.

What appears in your feed

• Activity from owners you follow (posts, comments, tags)
• Activity involving animals you follow
• Activity within communities you've joined (breed groups and animal types)
• Your own activity is included so you can see your posts in context

What does NOT appear

• Raw photo and link gallery uploads (these appear in galleries, not the feed)
• Content from accounts you don't follow or communities you haven't joined (unless you have no follows yet, in which case we show a global feed)

Search queries your typed terms against four content types: animals, owners, articles, and communities. Each search term is treated as a prefix, so typing "gol ret" will match "Golden Retriever." Results are merged and ranked by a simple relevance score.

How results are ranked

Each result gets a score based on how well the name matches your query:

When results tie on relevance score, they are sub-sorted by content type in a fixed order: communities first, then animals, owners, and articles last. Within the same score and type, results are sorted alphabetically by name.

What fields are searched

• Animals: name, summary, details, awards & recognition
• Owners: name, info, details, organization, city, state, country
• Articles: title, summary, details, keywords
• Communities: name, description

Animal search uses full-text indexing for faster results. All other content types use standard text matching. No search results are paid, promoted, or boosted.

Photo, link, animal, owner, and article galleries are all sorted by date added (newest first) by default. There is no algorithmic curation or engagement-based promotion.

Alternative sort options

• Animals: newest, most photos, most descendants
• Owners: newest, most animals, all members

Explore page

The Explore page shows a curated overview of recent content: the 6 most recent animals, photos, and links, plus the 4 newest articles and all communities. Everything is sorted by recency. Nothing is promoted or hidden.

Articles

The article listing page may feature one article at the top, chosen manually by site administrators. All other articles are shown in reverse chronological order.

When you view a photo, link, or article, you may see "related" content in the sidebar. Here is how it is selected:

• Related photos/links: Up to 4 other items by the same owner, sorted by newest first.
• Related articles: Up to 3 articles that share the same animal type categories, sorted by newest first.

There is no collaborative filtering ("users who liked X also liked Y"), no engagement scoring, and no machine-learning recommendations. Related content is based entirely on explicit relationships: same author or shared categories.

We rely on community reporting to keep BestInShow safe and welcoming. Any logged-in user can report content they believe violates our guidelines.

How reporting works

• You can report photos, links, and articles by clicking the Report button on the content's detail page.
• When you report something, you choose a reason (spam, inappropriate content, harassment, misinformation, copyright violation, or other) and can optionally add details.
• You can only report each piece of content once. You cannot report your own content.

What happens after a report

• Every report is reviewed by a site administrator.
• If a piece of content receives 3 or more reports from different users, it is automatically hidden from public view until an administrator reviews it.
• Hidden content is not visible in galleries, search results, feeds, or to other users. Only the content owner can still see it, along with a notice explaining that it is under review.
• An administrator can dismiss the reports (making the content visible again) or approve them (keeping it hidden).

Transparency guarantees

• If your content is hidden, you will see a clear warning banner on it explaining why.
• We do not silently remove or suppress content. Hidden content is always visible to its owner with an explanation.
• Reports are never used to affect search ranking, feed order, or any algorithmic sorting.

BestInShow is built around communities — breed groups, animal types, and the people who care about them. These measures exist to protect those communities from spam and automated abuse, so the content you see is real.

Email verification

Some actions — commenting, adding links, tagging content, and writing articles — require a verified email address. Adding animals and uploading photos does not — we want you to get started right away.

Account age requirements

Writing articles requires your account to be at least 48 hours old. This prevents newly created spam accounts from publishing high-visibility content.

Invisible spam detection

We use industry-standard techniques (Cloudflare Turnstile and form-level checks) to detect automated bots. These are invisible to real users and do not collect personal data.

Rate limiting

To prevent flooding, there are limits on how many comments, uploads, and articles you can create in a short period. If you hit a limit, you'll see a friendly message explaining why. These limits are generous for normal use and only affect rapid-fire activity.

What we don't do

We don't use phone number verification, government ID checks, invite-only gates, or any system that requires you to prove your identity beyond a working email address.

As an owner on BestInShow, you have full control over your content and how it appears on the platform. Here is what you can do:

Profile and account

• Edit your profile information, name, location, and bio at any time
• Change or remove your profile photo
• Manage your email notification preferences (comments, tags, ancestry updates)
• Delete your account

Your animals

• Add, edit, and delete animal profiles you own
• Manage pedigree relationships (add or remove parents and descendants)
• Remove your animal from another animal's pedigree (if someone added your animal as a parent or descendant)

Photos and links

• Upload and delete your own photos and links
• Untag yourself or your animals from any photo or link
• As a media owner, remove any tag from your photos and links

Articles

• Create, edit, and delete your articles
• Remove photos from your articles (the photo itself is not deleted, only the link)
• Manage cover photos on your articles

Comments

• Delete any comment or reply you wrote, anywhere on the platform
• Delete any comment or reply on content you own — your animal profiles, photos, links, articles, and your owner profile — regardless of who wrote it
• Delete any comment or reply on activity feed posts about your content, regardless of who wrote it
• You are always in control of the conversation on your own content

Following and social

• Follow and unfollow owners and animals, and join and leave communities freely
• Save and unsave content
• Report content that violates community guidelines
• Your follows and memberships directly control what appears in your feed — nothing more

• No engagement-based ranking. We don't boost content based on likes, shares, or time spent viewing. Everything is sorted by time or explicit relevance.
• No behavioral tracking for recommendations. We don't track which posts you linger on, what you scroll past, or build a behavioral profile to feed an algorithm.
• No paid content promotion. No one can pay to have their animal, photo, or article ranked higher in search results, galleries, or feeds. We display third-party ads (Google AdSense) to support the site, but these are clearly separate from user content and never affect how your posts are ranked or displayed.
• No shadow banning. We never secretly hide your content while making it look visible to you. If your content is hidden due to community reports, you will see a clear warning banner explaining why. See Content moderation above for full details.
• No data selling. We don't sell your personal information, activity data, or content to third parties.
• No infinite scroll tricks. While galleries use infinite scroll for convenience, your feed does not use algorithmic re-ordering, injection of suggested content, or other patterns designed to maximize time on site.

This page reflects how BestInShow works today. As the platform evolves, we will keep this page updated. If our algorithms ever become more complex, you will find the explanation here.