Because there are so many thousands of scores in our stats database, the rankings are not (and cannot be) strictly numerical rankings for all categories. The rankings are calculated a little differently for each stat, and many of them are based on ranges and even recency of the data. There is also the issue of how to handle "ties" in various stats. For example, with the Number of Magic Plants found, there are only 7 possible values: 0 through 6. All players who have discovered 6 Magic Plants are ranked #1, even though there are 5449 players (as of 1 minute ago) who have achieved that goal and submitted their scores to LDW. On top of that, the lowest ranking (for technical reasons) that is possible for any category is 999.
I guess the best way to look at it is that the rankings are intended to give you a general idea of how you "stack up" to other players on a scale of 1-999.
