The AskedWell Manifesto
By Paulo de Vries · 2026-05-20
Most websites publish first and hope. They guess at what readers want, write a thousand thin pages, and pray that Google ranks them. The result: the web is drowning in template-padding, AI-slop, and articles nobody asked for.
AskedWell inverts the order. We start from questions people are already asking, and we do not publish until we can answer them from sources.
The mechanism
Every page here had to earn its place twice — once as a question worth answering, once as an answer we could actually back. A person picks the question from a written editorial plan. Then a rule decides whether it survives: we look for at least three cited sources, and if they are not there the question is dropped.
That is what “earned its place” means here. Not that a machine measured demand and spawned a page — it does not. It means no page exists that we could not back up.
What we won't do
We've seen what bad publishing looks like. We refuse:
- Template-padding. If a page can't be written by a real person with real research, it doesn't ship.
- AI-slop. Every page must survive a quality bar before publish. AI helps us draft; humans + sources verify.
- Dark patterns. No popups that block reading. No fake-scarcity. No confirmshaming.
- YMYL drift. We deliberately stay clear of medical, financial, and legal advice. Wrong answers in those fields hurt people.
- Verdict labels. No “BUY this stock” or “take this dose.” We're a reference site, not an advisor.
Why this matters in 2026
AI Overviews now eat 50–90% of search clicks for extractable queries. Humans increasingly read answers inside ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity without ever visiting a source. Two failure modes are killing publishers:
- Sites optimized only for humans-via-search die when AI Overviews replace clicks.
- Sites optimized only for AI training have no direct revenue path.
AskedWell is built dual-axis from Day 1. We're trustworthy enough that AI cites us (citations bring readers back). We're structured enough that humans find us via search. Those turn out to be the same job: give the direct answer, give the conditions it holds under, and name where it came from.
Who we are
AskedWell is one person — Paulo de Vries — running a small experiment in demand-driven publishing. More on me. Built with the help of AcePilot, an AI co-builder that respects the rules we set.
What earns a page
One rule, and it is not about popularity: at least three cited sources have to support the answer before it ships. Every answer on this site clears it — the fewest cited on any single one is three. A question nobody can source does not get published here, however often it is asked. A question we can source does, eventually.
What does not earn a page: volume. There is no counter watching for ten asks in thirty days and no crawler log deciding what gets written next. Which questions get reached first is a judgement call, made by a person from a written editorial plan. How it works sets out the whole method.
The list is deliberately small. It compounds.
Every page earned its place.