Ranked listing engine

A ranked list that shows its working.

topsites.dev runs ranked directories for niche gaming communities. Rank is earned from the traffic a listing sends and the votes it receives, judged by a six stage method called Plumbline, and every listing publishes a receipt showing exactly how its own score was reached, including every event that was turned away and why.

How the ranking works See the networks

Private access

topsites.dev is not open for signups, and it is not sold or hosted for other operators. The engine runs a small number of invited communities while the ranking is proven on real traffic. This page exists to explain what it is and how the ranking works, nothing here asks you to sign up.

The idea

Every list of this kind asks you to take its word for it.

Toplists have run the same way for twenty years. A number goes up, an order comes out, and nobody outside the operator can tell whether it reflects players or a script. topsites.dev is a modern successor to Aardvark Topsites, built on the opposite assumption: a ranking nobody can check is a ranking nobody should trust.

One engine, many niches

Every network below runs the same code. Categories, listing fields, ranking weights, half-lives and vote cooldowns live in a config file, so adding a niche never forks the codebase.

Rank is earned, not bought

Score comes from visitors clicking through to a server and from votes that survive dedupe. There is no paid placement, and no monthly reset to time a burst against.

The arithmetic is public

Each listing page derives its own score line by line, and publishes the events that were rejected alongside the ones that counted. Nothing on the page is an estimate.

The receipt

What a listing publishes about itself

This block appears on the listing page, for anyone, without an account. The second half is the part no other list shows you.

Visits received 134.15 after decay x weight 0.2 26.83 Players sent on 69.59 after decay x weight 1.0 69.59 Votes 22.52 after decay x weight 3.0 67.55 AFTER GRAVITY half-life 7 days 163.98 x Cadence active 14 of the last 14 days x 1.000 x Ballast 414 distinct visitors, prior 10 x 0.976 FINAL SCORE rank #1 160.11 Turned away at the door, 201 events Inside the vote cooldown vote 185 Automated client visit received 16

Two hundred and one events arrived and were turned away, and the listing says so in public. An operator can see the cooldown rejecting repeat votes from the same person. A rival can see that the number at the top was not simply asserted.

Plumbline

Six stages, two at the door and four on the tick

Provenance and Saturation judge every event as it arrives and are written permanently onto the event row. The other four run every few minutes over the accumulated totals.

Stage	When	What it does
1. Provenance	at the door	Establishes who the visitor is before anything is counted.
2. Saturation	at the door	The tenth visitor from one network is worth less than the first.
3. Gravity	on the tick	Everything falls unless it is renewed. No monthly reset to game.
4. Cadence	on the tick	Steady activity beats one bought weekend of the same size.
5. Ballast	on the tick	A small sample is pulled toward the middle until it is not small.
6. Plumb check	on the tick	Traffic whose shape makes no sense is referred to a moderator.

The method in full, with the formulas and what it does not stop

Running on the engine

6 networks, none of them a fork

Each of these is one config file. The categories and the ranking settings shown on the networks page are read straight out of those files, not retyped.

MU Online Topsites

Every MU Online server and fan project worth your time, ranked by the players

Ragnarok Topsites

Every Ragnarok Online server and fan project worth your time, ranked by the players

Lineage II Server Index

Every Lineage II private server worth playing, ranked by the people playing them

RuneScape Server Index

Every RuneScape private server and community site worth knowing, ranked by the players

GMod Server List

Every Garry's Mod server worth joining, ranked by the players

OpenTTD Server Index

Public and co-op OpenTTD servers, ranked by the people playing them

What differs between them

Scope

What is built

Ranked list, categories, search, listing pages with receipts
Member accounts, submissions, per-listing stats
Admin review queue, bans, reports, IP blocks, audit log
Vote rewards by polling or signed webhook

No paid placement, and none planned
No third-party data API in this version
No themes, skinning or translations yet
No public signups: access is private

How the engine is put together