Welcome — questions, disputes, and how this document changes

[DelanoJoey]

This repository holds the versioned text of The AEO Standard — the 100-point Answer Engine Optimization rubric. Canonical home: isimplifyme.com/labs/aeo-standard. A quick map of where things go:

Discussions (here) — questions about applying or interpreting the standard: does X count as an atomic answer block, how to score a page type the rubric doesn't obviously cover, what a check is actually measuring.

Issues — ambiguities, contradictions, or evidence for or against a specific check or weight. These feed revisions.

How the document changes. The standard is versioned like software — point releases clarify wording, minor versions adjust thresholds, major versions restructure sections — with every change in CHANGELOG.md. Revisions land on a deliberate cadence; a measurement that moves every week is not a standard.

Common questions:

• Can I use it commercially? Yes — CC BY 4.0. Use it, adapt it, score against it, with attribution to iSimplifyMe and a link to the canonical home.
• Is there a tool? aeo-scan (MIT) scores the mechanical checks. The judgment half — including all of Substance & Originality — deliberately isn't automated, because whether content is worth citing cannot be measured by regex.
• What's the evidence behind the weights? Experiential — several years of operating a seventeen-site production network against this rubric, and the standard says so plainly. If you have evidence a weight is wrong, open an issue; that's exactly what the versioning process is for.