Vision
The Stance begins with footballers and public evidence related to Palestine and Israel. That is only the starting point.
The long-term goal is to build a structured public-record system for tracking what prominent public figures have actually said and done on major geopolitical and humanitarian issues.
Not rumors. Not fan assumptions. Not fake screenshots. Not private beliefs. Documented public evidence.
More footballers
The first version focuses on players featured in the Football World Cup dataset. Future versions will expand beyond that initial group to include more club players, national team players, women’s footballers, youth prospects who become prominent public figures, and players from leagues that are underrepresented in the first release.
Coaches and retired players
The Stance should not be limited to active players. Coaches, managers, executives, federation officials, pundits, and prominent retired players also shape the public conversation around major issues.
Other sports
The same problem exists far beyond football. Public stances, symbolic gestures, deleted posts, disciplinary actions, and fake viral claims also circulate around athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, tennis, combat sports, Olympic sports, and other major leagues.
Other public figures
Over time, The Stance may also expand to other prominent figures whose public statements and actions influence culture, politics, and humanitarian awareness, including actors, musicians, chefs, writers, streamers, media personalities, influencers, public intellectuals, and business figures.
More issues
The first issue area is Palestine and Israel. Future issue areas may include Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, and other major conflicts or humanitarian crises where public figures take visible positions, face pressure to speak, or become part of the public record.
The goal is not to track every social issue or every vague cause. The focus should remain on major geopolitical and humanitarian events where public evidence can be collected, reviewed, categorized, and debated responsibly.
Better evidence infrastructure
As the database grows, The Stance will need stronger systems for handling evidence: source quality labels, archived links, evidence confidence levels, change history, duplicate detection, case grouping, correction workflows, and better handling of deleted posts and screenshots.
Community discussion
The Stance should give people a way to discuss evidence without turning the database itself into a chaotic comment section. One possibility is a message board or talk page attached to players, issues, or evidence events. Another simpler option is a Discord server, subreddit, or other external discussion space where users can suggest sources, debate classifications, and flag corrections.
The core database should remain carefully reviewed. Community discussion can help surface evidence, but it should not automatically become part of the record.
Volunteer editors
If The Stance grows, the amount of submitted evidence will quickly become too large for one person to handle. Future versions may include vetted volunteer editors who help review submissions, check sources, identify duplicates, translate material, preserve archives, and flag uncertain cases.
Editors would need clear standards. The project should distinguish between people submitting leads and people trusted to review evidence. Not every submission should become an entry. Not every editor should have the same permissions.
What success looks like
The Stance succeeds if it becomes harder for fake claims to spread unchallenged.
It succeeds if fans can look up a public figure and quickly see what evidence actually exists. It succeeds if journalists, researchers, organizers, and ordinary users can separate documented public actions from viral misinformation.
The Stance is not meant to be the final word on what anyone believes. It is meant to make the public record easier to see.