Notes / 9 December 2025

When a benchmark should not be shared

The Retention Ledger includes a module that makes people uncomfortable: sometimes the rigorous output is a blank cell. Softmatrixhub is not a PR shop. If the peer set collapses to one named app, or legal will not let you describe inclusion rules, or your SDK samples logged-out users into invisibility, a published delta is a kind of fiction.

Thin peer sets are the common case. A regulated utility with two UK competitors cannot pretend it sits in a “category of twelve”. You may still compare internally, year on year, with a stable window. That is a trend. It is not a benchmark against others, and the heading should not say it is.

Coverage footnotes belong on the page the director sees, not in an appendix they will not open. If 40% of sessions lack a user key, say so next to D7. If you cannot say so, do not put D7 on the slide.

Legal review is slow in some GB firms. We would rather you miss a board date than invent anonymous “industry” figures while counsel is still reading. The atlas critique will mark those figures in red even if they look tidy.

Withholding is not the same as hiding a bad week. A bad week with a defined window and a named peer set is information. A beautiful chart with no peers and no coverage note is the thing we teach people to leave in the draft folder.