BOARD STATUSCOMPARISONS OPEN
PUBLIC METHOD + LIVE DIAGNOSTICSNO SECRET BOOSTS.
NO SECRET BOOSTS.
NO PAID #1.
LaunchThrone publishes the rules, the live aggregate health of the board and the limits of what the system can prove.
These aggregate diagnostics describe the operational Board, not a selected date range. Earlier archived records retain their original rules. Current ratings are shared with matchmaking and the workspace. Open Boards to inspect a particular stage and period.
MATCHMAKING
Projects with fewer valid decisions plus active reservations are prioritized. When a niche has at least 6 eligible projects in a Board, its comparisons stay within that niche. Smaller niches use mixed comparisons within the same Board. Pair caps, referral exclusions and orientation balance apply server-side.
PROVISIONAL
Qualification reflects valid comparison evidence accumulated in that stage. Versions share the project rating; Idea, Building and Live stay separate. Provisional projects remain below qualified projects. A project qualifies after at least 10 valid comparisons from 5 different judges in its Board.
RANKING
All time uses persistent weighted Glicko-2 rating minus twice its uncertainty. Other periods rank the net rating points gained and lost within the chosen dates. Overall combines 50% Presentation and 50% Solution. Presentation and Solution can also be viewed separately. Stronger opponents matter more. Equal ranking scores use a stable project identifier.
UNCERTAINTY
New projects start at rating 1500 with high uncertainty. Moving from Idea to Building or Building to Live carries over the previous rating with uncertainty reset to 350 and fresh provisional qualification. Uncertainty decreases with comparisons. Each choice starts at 1.0×. Tags add 0.3 to their own rating; a substantive comment adds 0.2 to both. Confirming the chosen solution solves your problem adds 0.5 to Solution, or 0.3 when only the other project solves it. Opening a project website adds 0.2 to both. Both choices within 3 seconds without a website visit use 0.8× instead. More tags or longer text add no further bonus.
REFERRALS
Founder-shared visits create a temporary exclusion for that project. Community Support remains a separate public count.
SPOTLIGHT
Spotlight rotates evenly and does not depend on rank, purchases, win rate, founder status or Community Support.
QUARANTINE
Suspicious decisions can be withheld while staff review the evidence. Skips, referral votes, quarantined votes and invalidated votes are excluded from the public ranking.
DECISIVE CHOICES
Choose one project for Presentation and one for Solution. You can choose the same project for both, or split your choices. Skips do not count toward rankings or qualification.
DATES AND HISTORY
Date filters are free and inclusive in UTC. Weekly, monthly and custom windows sum stored rating changes without resetting the persistent rating. After 30 idle days, ratings above 1500 decline by 1 point a day (2 in Building), capped at 200 per idle stretch.
LIMITS
No system can perfectly detect every offline relationship. LaunchThrone reports what the method measures and does not call #1 objectively best.