How to Contribute to an Ultimate List By Ranker  [13 more lists]

You can find some of our recent favorite Ultimate lists right on the front page of Ranker. As well, clicking the blue Vote Lists button in the site's navigation will take you to the main Voteable Lists page.

Clicking on the title to any list featured (or the button marked ""see full list"") will take you to the Master List. The Master list is the aggregation of the votes and lists of every Ranker user who has participated on this list. You can also click the ""add yours"" button next to any list to go right to building a list of your own on that topic.

The Master List page itself looks like any other list on Ranker. You'll see the topic and a brief explanation at the topc of the page, and then the listed items in their current order. Next to each item are two icons:

- A heart: Clicking the heart icon indicates that you approve of including this item on the list, and you'd like to see it remain where it is or move up in the rankings.

- A frown: Clicking the frowny face means, naturally, that you disapprove of keeping this item in its current position, and would like to see it move down the list or disappear completely.

You can vote once on each individual item on the page. So if you think Julius Erving, Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird all belong on the Top NBA Players of All Time list, you can click the heart button next to each of them. But no matter how many times you click the button, it will only register 1 vote per athlete.

Under each button, you'll see the number of other users who have voted for and against that item.

Votes count towards the overall positioning of items in the Ultimate list. However, a better way to have MORE influence over a CrowdRanked list is to add a list of your own on that same topic. Selections made on your own personal list carry up to 20 times more weight than just voting alone.

On the upper right of any Ultimate list, you'll see a button marked "Add Your Own List." (In the same box, you'll also see the names and avatars of everyone who has built a list influencing that Master List.)

Clicking the "Add Your Own List" button will open up a new list-building page with two columns. It's very similar to the interface you'd use when building an original list of your own.

In the left column, you'll see all the items that currently appear on the Ultimate Master List. Clicking the add button on individual items will move them into your list. Be sure to ONLY move over items you want to include on your own list. Choosing them will cause these items to move up in the overall rankings.

You can also add items that weren't featured at all on the Master List by searching for them at the top of the left column. This works exactly like adding an item to any other Ranker list. For more info on the basics of building lists on Ranker, see our page on How to Build a Ranker List.

After you're done adding your own picks to an Ultimate list, you will see all the users and their lists that have contributed to the Master List. All of their pretty faces will be lined up right under the list title and introduction, like so:



Clicking on any of these avatars will bring you to that person's re-rank of the Ultimate List. (We call these "Re-Ranks.") Here's an example:



That's Clark's list, contributing to our "Best Albums of 2011" Ultimate List. You'll notice that blue #4 under his top pick. That's showing me where his top pick fit in on my version of the same list. Pretty neat, huh? A great way to keep an eye on how your choices stack up against your friends'!