Questions over questions… I find it really sad that the Themeviewer has been closed to Updates for such a long time.
I have fixed my Rainbow Feather Theme in August 2007 already and still people get the old version from the Themeviewer. I manually contact every single Rainbow Feather user and tell them to get the fixed version which takes care of the Internet Explorer 6 png-transparency issue. Also it is now valid xhtml and css, a good feature that many themes lack!

If the people at the official Themeviewer need help, why not address to the always helping community?
There are so many bright heads out there that fix WordPress bugs everyday without any pay – people developing plugins, people posting news and so on. Still, the Themeviewer is closed down. If you were to ask for help, I would volunteer and I am sure some 100 other people would, too! You can discuss this matter in the official WordPress Support forums

Obviously, some changes are being made: for instance was the theme download counter reset – but not for all I believe. This is weird and I hope Matt can shed some light onto this change. Personally, I have had some 50,000+ downloads in the past 6 months for my WordPress Themes (that look different) – these 50,000 downloads is in so far realistic, when looking at my Technorati Authority and Rank (26,000+ reactions, 390th ranked website) – so this leaves me stumbling, why are some counts reset and others not.
Or were all themes reset and my themes are simply not that well demanded nowadays? Another possibility of course… I must admit!

Look at the following figures for clarity:

My Technorati Ranking

Rainbow Feather Theme on Themeviewer

Talian Theme Theme on Themeviewer

Talian figures

Why are those themes the most downloaded themes? Red Secret for instance has some 900 downloads?

The themeviewer announced on December 11th that work is being done at the moment: they are trying to establish a SVN-like system for themes (as they have for plugins within days) right now. I will keep you posted with more wordpress news!

Matt writes: (quote)
“Just wanted to do a quick update for those wondering when you’ll be able to add new themes or update existing ones here in the directory. We’ve been working very hard on a new Subversion-backed database for themes that will allow you to upload themes as you did before, as a plain ZIP file, and we’re transparently check it into SVN so changes can be tracked just like we do for WordPress development.

There will also be moderation and review so that we can scan themes for XSS problems, malicious code, spam links, and other ways that people have been distributing malware themes. I’m sorry this has taken longer than I thought it would, but the problems involved with doing things “right” are non-trivial. Most importantly we want to ensure that once the re-launch is done you’ll have easy, fast, and stable access to the best and brightest in the theme world, and you’ll never have to think twice about the code you’re downloading.”

Source: http://themes.wordpress.net/blog/4426/upcoming-changes/