A ranking tells you the order after someone else has chosen the contest.

Every ranking rests on a decision made before the counting starts: what was measured, what was ignored, and who did the counting. That choice does more work than the positions do, and it is rarely shown beside them. A list can be perfectly accurate about the wrong question. Order feels objective because arithmetic appears somewhere near the end.

When a ranking lands in front of you, go looking for the criteria before you look for your place in it. Ask whether it measures anything you actually want, and if not, treat it as information about someone else’s priorities.