It's the total amount of points earned by all players within a clan, Your Position within your clan is from the highest level at the top to the lowest at the bottom
I wish there were an official ranking system (with ladder performance, clan league performance, etc), but it would take Fizzer a good amount of work to figure that out. In the mean time I would love to see the clan LIST changed to a better formula than just total points.
i know, i know, im in one of the "troll" clans at the top of the list, but i'm a rebel rocker, and i think the clan list is meaningless as it is currently ranked. a better system does need to be figured out. i'm sure those that are more involved in competitive play and community stuff have really good ideas on how to rank clans.
until it is fixed i have to hopelessly try to get some of my clanmates to understand that it is meaningless and the sky is not gonna fall if we slip down to 3rd place...
One interesting idea would be to make each clan choose their area of interest (diplo, strategic, team play,specialty) and then separate them into different categories. One really annoying thing for me about being at the top of the list is I get a lot of people who want to join without knowing anything about who we are or what we do merely because we are at the top of the list. I would certainly be in favor of a reformed clan ranking system.
I agree and support the idea proposed by Dr.Stupid, many clans have different category's they can fit into, just banding them together as 'clans' doesn't do the variations of them justice, especially as its difficult to tell what type of clan is just by their clan page or name.