However, the monkey wrench thrown into the equation is that themes are subjective and what looks great to one person may look like crap to someone else.

New websites going up on the Web were recently running over 20% WordPress.

Unless the Laws of the Universe have changed, statistically virtually of all of those new WP installs are trash. Throw-aways. And the more successful WordPress becomes, the more overwhelmingly it is dominated by the great unwashed ... their view-points, their practices. Them.

It's the profound tragedy of Democracy [sic]. From the perspective of the Responsible, Prepared and Expert Citizen, the voters as a whole have no business exercising the ballot franchise. /sarc

A community of a few hundred or thousand dedicated WordPress experts becomes less influential in determining the nature & policies of the product, as it is increasingly taken for granted by the masses. It becomes more theirs, and less ours.

WordPress is rightfully proud to itemize it's Who's-Who users ... but it is the colossal installed base of casual, inexpert and transient dabblers, who really count.

It's the Great Unwashed who must be catered for, firstly. Big-name websites running WordPress have their own in-house people to take care of things. Large frogs in small ponds can readily use their familiarity with the range of available tools, to adapt off-the-shelf pieces to whatever clientele they have.

It is the millions of web-serfs & peons, though, who make by far-and-away the overwhelming majority of all WordPress deployment and adaptation decisions, and they use their negligible abilities and scant familiarity to do so.

Websites or web-activities for MANY are simply fashion statements that have a lifetime of a season or two.

WordPress theme offerings must include plenty of unseemly stuff. In fact, per the real client-base, it should be mostly ... nothing a self-respecting developer or informed user wants to be associated with.

It's the 'dirt' in the theme-inventory, that will grow WordPress.