Vote integrity

A ranking is only worth reading if the numbers behind it mean something. This page says how votes are counted, what is checked, what happens when somebody tries it on - and which listings that has happened to. It describes the system rather than any server's numbers: the only listings named here are the ones staff have taken a decision about.

Updated Oct 21, 2026 at 23:11. Attempts turned away covers the period the vote log is kept for, which is shorter than forever.

• One vote per member, per server, per calendar month. Voting again for the same server in the same month does nothing.
• Votes reset on the 1st, at midnight UTC - next on Nov 1, 2026. A server that is busy now outranks one that was busy in 2019; nothing carries over except the all-time total.
• Votes decide the order and nothing else does. TopSites VIP changes how a listing looks and links. It has never moved a listing up a single place.
• Star ratings are separate from votes and do not affect the ranking.

• Repeat votes from the same person are refused rather than counted.
• Voting is rate limited, so a script gains nothing a person could not do by hand.
• Groups of accounts that look like one person voting several times are detected and put in front of staff.
• Nothing is ever removed automatically. Every signal has an innocent explanation - a household, a shared computer, a phone behind a carrier - so a person looks at the evidence and decides.
• Where it is confirmed, the extra votes are withdrawn and the listing loses its place in the ranking for the rest of the month - and is named on this page for as long as it does.

We do not publish which signals are used or where the lines are drawn, and we do not publish these figures per server. Both would tell whoever is gaming the list exactly what to change, and a new server - whose players are all new accounts because the server is new - would look identical to one that is cheating.

Seen something that looks wrong? Report the listing from its own page and it reaches the same people.