HotCRP supports ranking through the tags system. The chair can define a tag to be used for ranking. PC members vote by assigning the corresponding twiddle tags. For instance, a paper tagged “~rank#1” is the user's first preference, a paper tagged “~rank#2” is the second preference, and so forth. To combine PC rankings into a global preference order, the PC chair goes to the search page, selects all papers, and chooses Tags > Calculate rank, entering “rank” for the tag. At that point, the global rank can be viewed by a search for “order:rank”.

PC members may enter rankings by manipulating tags directly, but it will generally be easier to use the offline ranking form. Download a ranking file, rearrange the lines to create a rank, and upload the form again. For example, here is an initial ranking file:

# Edit the rank order by rearranging this file's lines.
# The first line has the highest rank.

# Lines that start with "#" are ignored.  Unranked papers appear at the end
# in lines starting with "X", sorted by overall merit.  Create a rank by
# removing the "X"s and rearranging the lines.  A line that starts with "="
# marks a paper with the same rank as the preceding paper.  A line that starts
# with ">>", ">>>", and so forth indicates a rank gap between the preceding
# paper and the current paper.  When you are done, upload the file at
#   http://your.site.here.com/offline

Tag: ~rank


X	1	Write-Back Caches Considered Harmful
X	2	Deconstructing Suffix Trees
X	4	Deploying Congestion Control Using Homogeneous Modalities
X	5	The Effect of Collaborative Epistemologies on Theory
X	6	The Influence of Probabilistic Methodologies on Networking
X	8	Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy
X	10	Decoupling Lambda Calculus from 802.11 Mesh Networks in Moore's Law
X	11	Analyzing Scatter/Gather I/O Using Encrypted Epistemologies

The user might edit the file as follows:

	8	Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy
	5	The Effect of Collaborative Epistemologies on Theory
=	1	Write-Back Caches Considered Harmful
	2	Deconstructing Suffix Trees
>>	4	Deploying Congestion Control Using Homogeneous Modalities

X	6	The Influence of Probabilistic Methodologies on Networking
X	10	Decoupling Lambda Calculus from 802.11 Mesh Networks in Moore's Law
X	11	Analyzing Scatter/Gather I/O Using Encrypted Epistemologies

Uploading this file produces the following ranking:

Since #6, #10, and #11 still had X prefixes, they were not assigned a rank. The user can search for “order:~rank” to see their ranking, and inside the system; an administrator can search for “order:pcname~rank” to see a particular user's ranking. Once a global ranking is assigned, “order:rank” will show it.