Hold on, that begs the question -- how do we know who deserves? that is the problem. The whole thing has a circular dependency: if ranking acts as a filter, th

Hold on, that begs the question -- how do we know who deserves? that is the problem. The whole thing has a circular dependency: if ranking acts as a filter, then higher rank means more readers, and that in turn means more upvotes and so a higher ranking. It is probably not so much the top being undeserving, but that deserving stuff gets missed. This seems to be a fundamental weakness in all similar 'ranking' systems, but I am not sure of the full character and implications... (There is certainly a substantial component of being an automated system of 'social-proof'. And the filtering can never be entirely effective: if you show everyone only the good stuff, the filtering would not get done at all.)