When I first joined TBT and looked through Houndoom's and now Alexi's, I also used to think it was based off of people's favorites.
But there's so much more to it.
Think of the Tier List as a stock market. While the stock market alters daily, the tiers change weekly. The list works in the way that it changes based on what has been selling throughout the week; Think of a restaurant, some villagers were selling like hot cakes the past week, while some were left in the warmers far longer (or maybe even gone to waste/void). It deals with the demand and fluctuations of each and every villager available in ACNL and it reflects at the end of the week on Sunday's updates.
Lately, there's been people challenging Alexi's list, but how about y'all try parsing through several pages of cycling/selling/trading threads and try to truncate it into a singular list?
So, instead of casually waltzing into the VTP and thrashing Alexi's work because you disagree with it and don't have anything helpful or constructive, just don't say anything. Of course, your entitled to your opinion, it is our 1st Amendment (at least here in the US, but it is a basic human right), but whatever happened to "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything"?
C'mon man.