This page explains who writes the explanations on The 12 Axes, what they are based on and how we fix them when they are wrong. It covers the axis pages, the ideology explainers, the political figure profiles and the blog.
Who we are
The 12 Axes is written and maintained by Axes Explorer, a small independent team with no ties to any party, campaign, government or advocacy group. We are not paid to place anyone on the axes, and nobody can buy a better or worse placement. The site is funded by its owners; if we ever show ads, advertisers have no say over what we write.
What is ours and what is not
The test statements and the scoring come from the open-source 12Axes quiz (MIT licence) and are left unchanged so that results stay comparable; see Credits. Everything else is our own writing: the history of each axis, the ideology explainers, the figure profiles with a reason for every axis, the comparisons with other tests and the blog.
Sources
- Reference works first. Background facts come from standard reference works such as Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, from official biographies and archives, and from the thinkers' own writing.
- Records over reputations. A figure's placement is our estimate from what they wrote, the laws they passed and what they did in office, not from labels other people give them. Where the record points both ways, the note says so.
- Living politicians are placed from their public record and stated programme, and the note names the record we used.
- Each figure and ideology page lists its main sources at the end.
Neutrality
- Every axis is described the way the supporters of each side would describe it.
- Every ideology explainer and full figure profile gives its supporters' case and its critics' case in their own terms.
- We do not rank ideologies, endorse parties or candidates, or tell readers how to vote. A result is a description, not a verdict.
How a page is written
- We check what readers search for and which questions the existing pages leave open.
- We draft the page with the help of AI writing and translation tools, which also produce the first Spanish and Portuguese versions.
- Before a page is offered to search engines, a member of the team reads it against the sources listed at its end. Claims we cannot support from those sources are rewritten or removed, and the reason given for each placement must point to something the person actually said or did.
- All three language versions carry the same facts and the same reasons.
- A page is only offered to search engines once it has its own written background and a reason for every axis it shows. Pages without that remain available to readers but are marked
noindex.
Corrections and updates
If a fact, a date or a placement looks wrong, email support@12axes.site with the page and, if you can, a source. We check the claim against our sources, fix the page when it is wrong and reply to tell you what we changed. Figure pages are reviewed again after elections and changes of government, and each page shows when it was last updated.
Contact
Editorial questions, corrections or suggestions for a figure or an ideology we should cover: support@12axes.site.