Editorial standards at Debt Collection Index
By Kai Greenspan, Founding Editor · Last updated: September 21, 2026
Who is accountable for this site?
Kai Greenspan, Founding Editor, is the named person accountable for everything published on Debt Collection Index. Questions, challenges and corrections about any published fact land with the editor, and the corrections policy sets out how they are handled.
What must every published fact pass?
| Rule | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| A public source | Every fact links to the public record it came from. No source, no publication. |
| A last-checked date | Every fact shows when it was last verified against that source, by a person or by an automated re-check. |
| Verified at the source | Nothing gathered automatically is published on its own word. Every record must clear a fixed battery of checks against the issuing source, and a check that could not run never counts as a check that passed. |
| A person on the exceptions | Anything that raises a question stops and is ruled on by a person, and published work is audited back to the source by sample. |
| Positive framing | Agencies are ranked on positive, verified measures. We never name and shame, and never publish "worst of" lists. |
| No invented data | A missing value stays blank. We never estimate, extrapolate or fill a gap to make a page look complete. |
How is AI used, and how is it not?
Automated agents collect candidate facts from public sources (the CFPB complaint database and state regulator registers) and help draft page copy. What they cannot do is lower the bar. Every record is put through the same fixed battery of checks against the issuing source, a check that could not run never counts as a check that passed, and anything that raises a question is ruled on by a person rather than published. Published work is audited back to the source by sample. The editor is accountable for every page as if it had been written by hand, and that does not change because a machine drafted it.
What about paid relationships?
Buyers never pay. Agencies can pay for clearly labeled featured placement or for buyer leads, and any such placement is marked as paid wherever it appears. Paid relationships never change a merit ranking and never soften a verified fact. The full rules are on the methodology page.