Three people stand behind every name here

1. You cannot join on your own. A member invites you, and every member has fifty invitations, ever.
2. You write your own profile. The invitation is the consent.
3. Nobody can see it until two members endorse you. Two members other than the one who invited you have to say they know you. The second endorsement opens the page, with no admin in between.
4. The three names stay on your page. A reader can follow the line upward, all the way back to a founding seat.
5. Recommendations are signed and specific, carrying a name, what the work was, and roughly when.

Founding seats

Ten people were invited by the founder before there was anybody to endorse them. They are marked as seats on their pages.