"At the end of the history, I think the conclusion would be that the criteria used in rankings and the rankings themselves are purely derivative of ideas that were "in" at the time. That is, what rankings show best are the preconceptions of the raters at any given point in time."
Bob:
I don't think there's any question of it. And I think an accurate analysis of this subject and question (what was "in" at any particular time in a ranking sense) would show that in one way or another the concept of "difficutly" (whether it relates to pure length or the idea of "penalty") will be pretty near the foundation of it all.
I also think most of us on here would be very surprised, perhaps even shocked, to learn just how far back into the 20th century this architectural and golf idea of difficulty=quality goes.
I think we can see that around the turn of the century and for the next 25-30 years, architecture and golfers, particularly in America, were struggling to define and debating just what golf should be. We should also note that a lot of them back then used words like "modern" and "scientific" to describe what they were trying to accomplish in golf architecture.
The idea of the degree of difficulty appears to have been right there near the foundation of it all every step of the way---difficulty translated into shots and difficulty that translated into fairly defined and perhaps even semi one-dimensional physical "shot testing" execution that became known as "skill".
In that entire 20th century process and evolution things such as thought, highly individual strategies, width, luck, randomness fought to maintain the degree of their existence every step of the way.
On the other hand, we should also note that the concepts of thought, highly individual strategies, width, luck, randomness were never killed, not completely, and they are all back now in discussion and debate, and, in far more cases than only a decade or so ago, they are getting back on the ground and back into play.
Since one could probably make a pretty good case that golf course architecture is really only about a century and a half old, at least as an art form/science/competition subject of discussion and application it looks like we may be seeing the first attempt at a real renaissance with those things listed above---eg what goes around comes back around at some point.
But there probably opposing them in some fundamental way will always be the idea of "difficutly" and what it really means, combined with the ultimate allure of golf with most all golfers---eg how far they can hit a ball with any golf club, and to some lesser degree, how accurately.