I understand that ROM's are a personal preference. That is why tracking downloads by rom is a completly impartial way of ranking ROM's popularity.
I also understand that this may be complicated as I stated in the 1st post. I would think that most of the major cooks are already tracking this, and would love to see where their rom stacks up against the others.
As for looking at the number of posts, this is also a flawed ranking. If a rom has a lot of problems, it has a lot of posts. If the same thread is used for multiple releases the post count is again not a true representation.
There are a lot of users still running stock (check the # of views and posts on the thread in my signature for proof). I think that many of these users would be excited to make the move to a custom rom if they had a better way of choosing.
Just a thought to try and help out the noobies, that's why I created the thread
Thanks for the input!