The list of weblogs ranked by poularity is not a hierarchy in that sense, however. It is instead a ranking by status. The difference is critical, since what’s being measured when we measure links or traffic is not structure but judgment. When I’m not the CEO, I’m not the CEO because there’s an org chart, and I’m not at the top of it. There is an actual structure holding the hierarchy in place; if you want to change the hierarchy, you change the structure.

When I’m not the #1 blogger, however, there are no such structural forces making that so. Ranking systems don’t work that way; they are just lists ordered by some measured characteristic. To say you want to subvert that sort of hierarchy makes little sense, because there are only two sorts of attack: you can say that what’s being measured isn’t important (and if it isn’t, why try to subvert it in the first place?), or you can claim that lists are irrelevant (which is tough if the list is measuring something real and valuable.)

Clay Shirky on Many2many (in the context of the recent gatekeepers discussion)