@_taurean You right, the highest score I have seen was about 16 for an account doing very niche work. Newer accounts tend to do better too since a lot of accounts still have work from 3+ years ago which still get viewed but hardly get new likes.
An example of this if you search for a generic term like 'ipad' there are a couple shots appearing top of the results from as far back as 2010. I'm not saying they not good designs but if posted today would not do nearly as well. This is just because the styles / trends have changed. Dribbble should have a more advanced search allowing you to search based on a date range to get around the issue of top players always getting top spot for 3 years.
Perhaps Dribbble could even make use of a PACE like rating to try bring a little more attention to accounts who are on the verge of getting noticed. I do know this would have its own issues too but at least it would give you more options than seeing the same old results.
PACE uses a likes to views ratio to figure out a PACE rating for any dribbble user. Dribbble's stats and what becomes popular is something that has always been in back of my mind. I would definitely like to push the idea further and see what more data can be collected in a new interesting way.
This was started as a side project to learn more about working with an API. Open to questions and ideas.
PPPACE
PPPACE