How voting works: your guide to the arena

New to the arena? Here's exactly how your votes turn into rankings.

**Casting votes.** Open any profile and hit upvote or downvote. You get one vote per person, per candidate, per category, per cycle. Changed your mind? Change your vote any time while the cycle is open — only your latest vote counts.

**The rating.** Every candidate carries a rating from 0 to 100. It's built from two ingredients: the support ratio (the share of upvotes among all votes) and a confidence factor (how many votes have been cast). A candidate with 3 upvotes and 0 downvotes won't outrank one with 3,000 upvotes and 500 downvotes — the math trusts the crowd more as the crowd grows.

**The cycles.** Votes accumulate during an open cycle. When it ends, the final ratings become ranks, movement is calculated against the previous cycle, and a brand-new cycle starts with a clean slate. Nothing is permanent: last cycle's champion starts this cycle at zero like everyone else.

**Categories are independent.** Overall Ranking, Rising Star, and Community Favorite each run their own cycles on their own clocks. Your vote in one never affects another.

The short version: vote honestly, vote often, and the board will reflect what the community actually thinks.