Would I be correct with my understanding this could be done at any time? Since it would not require a hard fork to the underlying blockchain code itself?
I suppose it would need the collecting of metrics from different frontends, which shouldn't be more complicated than changing the HIVE code...
Why it is still in place, after the passage of so much time?
I suppose as it was the easiest to implement... As you have all the data on the chain, just pull out the data and sort by upvotes values...