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This reminded me of adaptive comparative judgement. I'd be interested in your algorithm on how you decide how to pair up items.

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Thank you for that! Adaptive comparative judgment gives a name to something I've always believed, but never really quite put my finger on; that comparing things one to another is more reliable than random 1-10 ratings.

As for the algorithm, it's a basic Quicksort, building on the work of Leonid Shevtsov[0].

[0]: https://leonid.shevtsov.me/post/a-human-driven-sort-algorith...

I think merge sort would provide a better experience.

Quicksort can be great for human-comparison sorting if you let the user pick the pivot, and if you have a direct-manipulation interface for dividing a big pile into two smaller ones. Humans are great a scanning large numbers of objects, and can split piles much faster than operating one by one.

You are quite right. I had already been thinking about merge sort because it’s guaranteed to lead to fewer comparisons, but what you said about piles would work great when combined with showing more episodes at once, asking the user “which of these 5 episodes is better” and getting those comparisons out of the way all at once.

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