>>/45792/
>>/45817/
Maybe the reason is that in the beginning there is no real standards to measure the performance to. A passable could look genius in a sea of crappy ones, so it gets rewarded with the top score. With a bit of talent that level can be reached easily, some will surpass it by miles, some will sweat blood to reach it but they do. But what all these can be rewarded with? The same top score what the passable got. And as time goes on the first who got popular gets more and more hits (because it already had the most to begin with, and people looked for the most popular back then too), and turns into an etalon of quality.