Rankings are a corpus, not a leaderboard: treating S–F bands as a data model

A numbered list forces a total order. A tier list does not. That is the whole design, and it is why I treat a public ranking page as a corpus I can fork, not as a leaderboard I have to accept.

Wikipedia's overview of a tier list describes a ranking system where items are subjectively arranged in tiers from best to worst, originally to talk about tournament viability in games, later applied to films, sports, and other catalogs. The useful property is the band: two items in the same row are roughly comparable, so I do not have to invent a reason why one sits at 17 and the other at 18.

Competitive communities formalized this earlier than meme templates did. The Ringer's feature on the science behind Smash character rankings recounts that SmashBoards published the franchise's first quasi-official Melee tier list on October 8, 2002. It also describes two later methods the community uses to reduce (or at least share) the subjectivity: an algorithmic conversion of tournament results, and an average of lists from notable players. Neither is treated as automatically superior. That is a good default when I read anyone else's board.

When I want a reference roster instead of an empty pool, I start from tier list rankings and open a list whose item set already exists — a Smash Ultimate fighter roster, a League of Legends champion pool, a current gacha roster — then I rearrange the rows to match the question I am actually asking (patch fit, casual fun, what I unlock first).

If I am not forking a public list, I go to create a tier list and choose the contract up front. Single Use Template is a one-off: my images, my rows, a downloadable picture, not a reusable template. Public Template is the opposite contract: a board other people can start from, reviewed before it is listed. I try not to publish a one-off argument as if it were a maintained template.

I keep the workspace bookmark at Tierlist, because the home page is the index of those two jobs — pick a ready-made template, or start a blank board — and I would rather choose the job first than dress up a PNG after the fact.