Inclusion rule: what earns a place in a table
An inclusion rule is the sentence beside every table saying what earns a row. Without one, a reader cannot tell whether something is missing because it failed a test or because nobody looked. As of 2026-09-22.
| The term | Inclusion rule |
|---|---|
| What it names | The stated test a row has to pass to appear in a table |
| What it is not | A description of what the table's values mean |
| Where the register uses it | Beside every table on the site, without exception |
Inclusion rule. Words this site uses in a narrow sense, where the ordinary sense would lead a reader to misread a cell. No vendor statement appears on this page. Order. Fixed order: what the word names, what it excludes, then where it is used here.
1The question a table cannot answer about itself
Any selection implies a rule, and an unstated rule is indistinguishable from bias. A reader looking at a list of generators has no way to know whether a missing product was excluded on a principle, overlooked, or judged unworthy, and those are very different situations.
So every table here prints its test. Generators whose own public pages state, in English, whether output carries a mark and what removes it: that is checkable, and a reader who thinks a product qualifies can say which part of the rule it passes.
2What a good rule looks like
It names the evidence required rather than the conclusion wanted. A rule that said significant products would be a judgement; a rule that names a kind of published page is a test somebody else can apply and get the same answer.
It also has to explain the borderline cases the table actually contains. Where a vendor is silent on a field but keeps its row, the rule says so, because a reader otherwise reasonably assumes silence disqualifies.
3Why it sits beside the order rule
The two together say what is in a table and in what sequence, which are the two things a reader needs before trusting a position in it. A table claiming alphabetical order and listing something else is a small dishonesty with a large effect on how a list reads.
Both are printed rather than kept in a methodology page, because a table quoted elsewhere takes its immediate context with it and loses everything a reader would have had to click for.
Nothing on this page is a vendor statement; the values it helps read are on the support table, with the page and the date each one was read from. See also the protocol page, what earns a row. Nearby terms: re-encode, transcode, metadata strip.