Anyone remember Miniclip.com? Something I didn't realize at the time was that their "Top 10 List" was not actually based on usage stats, but based on their editorial decisions and decisions of games to pay to be on the list.
It also wasn't expected, it was clearly from the pre-web2 era, there was no upvoting, I believe there wasn't even a comment section. There was nothing to really suggest that how you use the site would directly affect how it'll look (beyond influencing the operators). Top 10 games would obviously have meant a similar thing as top 10 stories on a news site - clearly an editorial decision, where clicks and expectations thereof ofc play a role, but it's not an automatism.