my personal frustrations with the process come because i promote to extras tesing to get broader feedback since most people are told not to go near devel.
but that doesn't mean i'm proposing that version to promote up.
i found that the first couple of times I promoted to extras-testing people gave thums up others gave feedback. i worked on andifxed issues, made more improvements, promote the next version...lose all vote history, each time i go round the cycle the program gets better but it recieves fewer votes/interest. there is no distinction between 'try and give feedback' versus 'i think it's ready for extras please vote'