First, admins have pointed out that dozens of accounts (now banned) were being used to artificially boost certain kinds of feedback and bury others, so if we're not allowed to point to votes as a source of valid information, then sorting by "top" is equally invalid. Those could simply have been the comments those alts decided they wanted to push to the top, to make their point.
Second, we're volunteers who have a few hours set aside each day to open a discussion into things that need to be updated or changed, and the vitriol that's been hurled at us is disproportionate compared to the ostensible "damage" being done by a single automated script. One moderator threatened to resign over the hate that's been blasted into their face. It took us less than two weeks to post a request for feedback, and then to act on that feedback. You (the disapprovers) all got exactly what you wanted. Pardon me for being blunt, but what the hell else are you expecting from us?
We have been discussing the content of that feedback for about a week now, both with the broader moderator/admin community and within this team, and since most of us aren't online at the same time (we have jobs) it takes a few days for the whole team to see and respond to opinions. Given that many of us disagreed on the best path forward, we had to come to a workable consensus. We have now acted on that feedback in accordance with the wishes of the community, so your claim that we had no intention to do so is significantly off the mark.