Super involved community member Andrew Halpern and I have been exchanging emails in order to try to come up with succinct statement that summarizes how images get ranked on Pixoto (Thanks Andy!).  Here is what we came up with:

• A photo is uploaded.
• You pay 10 credits (earned through voting ImageDuel) to submit photo to ImageDuel
• The photo is then dueled against other photos (mostly other new photos at first)
  • In the beginning ImageScore will rise whether you win or lose (but will rise faster if you win) – later on it will rise or fall with each duel
  • If your image wins many duels early on it will be matched against better and better images, and ImageScore will continue to rise, until it begins to lose at which point it’s ImageScore will begin to level out.
• If your image loses many of its original duels it will begin to play lesser quality images, and ImageScore will rise slowly and eventually decline, until it begins to win
• The number of duels your image will get naturally (i.e. without boosts) is dependent upon:
  • Whether your image gets paused (this happens when your image has not achieved the required ImageScore at any given number of duels)
  • Images with a low duel number are much more likely to get dueled than images with high duel counts
  • Images with high ImageScores are more likely to get dueled than images with low ImageScores (duel counts being equal)
• ImageScore changes a lot for each duel during the first 50 duels, until an approximate place on the leaderboard is established) and then changes at a slower past (refining the position) thereafter.
• After 150 duels your ImageScore will change very slowly and duels at this point mostly effect the score of the other image (i.e. we use your image as a benchmark to try to place the other image).
• Pixoto uses a variety of fraud prevention techniques to make sure that it is impossible to artificially inflate (or deflate) an image’s ImageScore.

Does this help?  Anything else that you think should be covered in this or is unclear?