Do you mean "rated" 10 out of 10 which you see by viewing the comments section to see the ratings? Or do you mean the top 10 downloads or the top 10 authors shown on the web page (which is determined by daily downloads, if I recall correctly)? Is there a listing of the top rated skins?

WOM, yo buddy, learn something new every day, that's what I always say....

I seriously cannot believe that I never noticed those links before......duh!
It never even occurred to me...

Jam, a lot of people don't realize that you can do that. I didn't know for a while till I clicked on it, so then I went around and clicked on everything to see what would happen.

Delicious...I have been known to even rate treetog 'low' [much to his chagrin]....I doubt there is any 'real' blind-adulation. If someone gives a '10' it is quite conceivable that they just really think that the skin works/looks really good for THEM.
It is not always a determination of whether all button states being different is the 'deciding criteria'....quite often it can be the author's intent that they are specifically NOT different as that suits their particular style and purpose...

I asked this question once before and got no answer but a run around. It doesn't matter to me about ratings but appreciation is what matters.

Downloads don't seem to be accurate rate of appreciation because like someone said, they could be downloaded and deleted. The rating is a more reliable form of show of appreciation.

All my skins dropped 2 to 3 points the last few days and that upset me some. An example, my bottoms up cursors IMO are just as good as any and now just mediayoker.

I was looking at a top rated skin the other day and noticed that the vertical taskbars were all messed up. How can this be on a top rated skin.

I won't mention the skin name but it was featured at one time.

Tell me that is not favoritism.

True to the point, static

A past poll was done and simple skins were most popular.

My PC is 3 yrs old, 433 mhz celeron processor, with 191mg of ram. When windows and everything loads I have about 30mg of memory left. If a skin loads without a warning that I am out of memory then it will load on anyone's machine ok.

My tried and true method of testing!

I think that often the artist is not being lazy but frugal. In my case, I've created skins that have every, or very nearly every, bitmap made fresh. I've also created skins that have many repeated bitmaps. If the skin design really calls for it I design all new bitmaps for it. Sometimes, though, I will use the exact same bitmap for one thing. For example, my skin Spander uses one bitmap for all the titlebar buttons. My original upload to WC of this skin had one bitmap for each button, but I realized that it was a waste of Kb's. Remember, not all people have DSL connections. Most still have 56K dial-up. By changing my Spander skin the way I did, I was able to shave 60 Kb's off the size. To someone with dial-up, this is a plus.

Point is, I only create new bitmaps if they are essential to the design. Buttons, titlebars and borders with bitmaps showing their dormant/inactive states are superfluous in my opinion. Who cares what they look like when they're not being used? I don't!

If there are ways to make the skins file size smaller then why not?

Listen, I think that's human nature. People have generally a favorable prejudice towards people who they know have done good stuff in the past.
I've heard crappy songs from popular singers that went #1.
Fans of artists are bound to like almost anything from that artist.

No, it's just that if you really hate the song then it just seems like it gets to much air play, since even once is too much.

Yep delicious, that's what happens when you have made good stuff. If you think the skin rating is too high, downgrade it...I also believe there is a biased look towards what is uploaded. I might start doing that too, so far I have given some constructive criticism and just left the ratings intact. What I also noticed, if you have some criticism your own work gets downgraded LMAO. I'd say don't worry about ratings (although I don't like the idea of visitors only seeing works rated 7 or higher), be pleased with what you have achieved. The top authors are the people that jave submitted the most works, the more you upload the sooner you will be in top authors section. It doen't say much though.