Head-to-head picks
A player sees two contenders from the same ranking, say Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, and taps the one they prefer. There is no "skip" and no scale from one to ten: a single forced choice is the clearest signal of preference.
Pairs are chosen so that every contender meets many different rivals, starting with the best-known ones.
The score
A contender's score is the share of its duels it wins. To keep a few early votes from putting anyone at 100%, we add one imaginary win and one imaginary loss: score = (wins + 1) / (duels + 2). With many votes this makes no visible difference.
The ranking orders contenders by that score. A duel page shows the plain split for one pair: how many of the people who saw exactly that pair picked each side.
Sample size
Each ranking shows how many votes it rests on. Rankings with fewer than 50 votes are marked early, and a duel shows its split from 20 votes. Numbers update every few minutes.
Who votes
Anyone who plays Dilemma, with no sign-up. One browser counts as one player, and each player can answer a given pair once. That makes Dilemma a large, fast opinion poll, not a representative survey: the results describe the people who play, who skew toward English speakers and toward fans of each topic.
What we don't do
We don't edit results, sell placements or weight votes by who cast them. Contenders in a ranking are chosen for being widely debated, from search trends and public popularity data. Rankings are about people's work and products, never about how anyone looks.
Citing Dilemma
You're welcome to quote our numbers with a link to the ranking, for example: "According to Dilemma's live fan ranking (dilemma.one), as of October 2026…". Questions: ciao@dilemma.one.