I like the idea of a type and nice search/filtering.
I have an idea I'm working on based on collecting data from what's actually used on sites. I've got a ttw way to collect that info but who knows if thats going to be easy enough for admins, such that enough data can be collected to make it useful.
The upside of this approach though is that not only would it give a list of plugins ranked by how much they actually used in unique sites (which might get around the subjective aspect of two thumbs), but it could also show which are used in production with which version of plone (and even minor versions). This might help get around the pypi classifiers being inaccurate.
I'll aim to put it in the collective as soon as I can if others are interested in helping.
An update... at the Munich sprint @loechel and others developed a plan to improve the add-on listings. Alexander has a preliminary version of this coded.