Today, we’ve upgraded the way we calculate the “best” movies on Flickchart as decided by all of our users (a.k.a. the “global” rankings) to be more accurate than they have been in the past. Previously, a movie had to have an excessively high number of users that had ranked it before it could ascend the global charts – meaning that blockbusters had an unjust monopoly on the Top 100, and as a result, many highly-ranked independent and foreign movies were shut out.

The new algorithm uses a Bayesian formula to take into account those movies that have been ranked by fewer total users, but whose average rankings are very high: several examples currently in the new top 100 are Let the Right One In, The Seven Samurai, Oldboy, and Amélie. Note that this does not use a movie’s winning percentage (how often a movie wins a matchup) but rather the average position where each movie exists on everyone’s individual Flickchart.

In addition, you’ll notice that newly added movies, such as those recently in theaters, will climb the charts much more quickly if they’re ranked highly by our users (e.g. The Social Network, Inception, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One, etc.).

While we think the new overall algorithm is much improved over our previous version, we’ll continue to make minor tweaks as we go along, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted as we do.