Transparency

When a category is decided under combined scoring, its results page shows the full picture: the finalists' fan vote shares, the Editorial Board's aggregated ranking, and the combined final scores computed under the published methodology. Anyone can retrace how the winner won.

A small number of early cycles closed before the Editorial Review stage was activated, and their results pages carry the label Decided by public vote. No result is published that way now: a category that has not reached ten submitted ballots stays in Editorial Review until it does. The label is a commitment. iFANN never dresses a fan vote up as an editorial one, and never announces a winner before the board has ranked the finalists.

Each January, iFANN publishes a transparency report covering the previous year: the number of categories run, total valid votes cast, votes voided by integrity review, nominations received and accepted, participating Editorial Board members and countries represented in submitted ballots, and conflict declarations and recusals in aggregate.

Every figure is computed directly from platform records. Nothing in the report is estimated, projected, or rounded up to look better, and where a figure does not exist yet the report omits the section rather than inventing one. Reports remain online permanently once published, and this page is where they appear.

Individual Editorial Board ballots are permanently confidential, which protects members from campaign pressure and targeted harassment while the aggregated ranking keeps every outcome explainable. Members who serve confidentially are counted in every report but not named, a standard courtesy to working journalists. Contact details of members are never published. Exact fraud detection thresholds are not published, because doing so would teach manipulators how to evade them.

Everything else about the process is public by default: the methodology, the charter, the ethics code, the conflict policy, eligibility rules, and the enforcement aggregates.

The iFANN Awards are operated by Rock Digital LLC as part of the iFANN social media platform. The organizer's role is operational: it funds and runs the platform, and holds no vote in any category. Physical iFANN trophies are individually numbered, engraved after acceptance, and carry a verification code that resolves to the winner's official certificate page, so a real trophy can always be matched to a real, published result.