Main problem is the overall syndrome of ignorance in the people of the world, and let me explain why players have different skill level understandings.
By saying overall ignorance I am directly referring to the very well known event in life called popularity.Most of the people listen to Nicki Minaj and other shits just because it's mainstream and everyone knows it and it's easily listenable.Imagine now the person is listening to Nicki Minaj, ALTHOUGH he has a potential of being a Metallica fan if he actually knew the existence of the group (thats a stupid example but I guess you get my point).In osu! THE MASS players have a skill level of comprehension of Hard difficulty maps in the best case, now they don't really even download approved maps, and don't search for general hard type maps like maps from BMS.Their map folder is consisted of most likely 70 % Nightcore and 30 % Vocaloid/Touhou.Now they don't enter the performance ranking section, or even if they do they don't remember anything from it, they aren't serious about osu! at all, BUT what they remember is how when they play their HARD difficulty nightcore map, some names just repeated in their head like ShadowSoul being always #1, so basically that's the only player they think it's the best since it's always #1 on the maps THEY play, and immediately make an assumption ''ohmahgod, shadowsoul so pro he SS my sexy hard nightcore I cant even A rank'' and they don't care the someone named Cookiezi did an SS on a map they don't even have in their folders(airman).
that was the main problem
Now there are those type of people, I am sure you've met them before in real life too, they are a little more serious about osu!, most likely because of their gaming nature, and they probably even watched the previous top2011 video and actually keep track of what's going on but they are self-delusional and use every piece of information they have in the wrong way(usually using outdated or not confirmed information).And the example is voting for Remillia-Scarlet or SiLViA, they are doing that because they are aware R-S is the BESTEST STREAMERZ and Silvia is a inhuman mouse players, but those aren't even active players anymore and can't be included in the top2012 at all.
those two groups were the bad groups, from now here - only opinions...
Basically it's known that Cookiezi is the best, I fucking hate mainstream shits and exaggerated claims, but this is the goddamn true, and I don't see anyone's REMOTE LOGIC when saying WW or anyone else is better.I personally have an idol in the name of rrtyui at this point of my osu! progress, but I just bow to Cookiezi for being the best( he is just too god to even dream I can be like him ;DDD).
I would say that the obligatory top3 is Cookiezi,Niko,rrtyui.
No hate on SS or WW, I think they are great players which deserve respect for the massive skill and the great effort put in that game, I also think the same for Sette and many other players who are known to get overrated by the system but underrated by the community.
