I probably should have reworded that ... I missed an important part, chewey.
Being up in the addons is only because of the amount of downloads ABP does ...
..... rated over the last 7 days!
The reason that Wladimir was told that there would be a restructuring was NOT because they were hand-picking extensions to put on the top of the list ... it was because extensions previously were ranked for their "lifelong" downloads. Adblock Plus would have NEVER been able to catch the original Adblock because of that system even though it was being downloaded at a rate of over 10 to 1 over the old Adblock every week. The top extensions on AMO are all NOW listed in order with how many downloads they did
in the last 7 days. That is why you will see new releases jump a couple of spots at times and then settle back.
ps: I know this because I always followed the "past 7 day" download numbers on AMO when ABP was making its march to the top. It would get closer in downloads to the one before it (when Mozillla used to actually show those numbers) ... and I would just wait for ABP to take that spot away.