My take on it is testing basic numbers changes (for the most part) that players thought of that devs may not have. Feedback is then taken and distilled for possible changes.
I think the current Mobula stats are the result of sort of an infant Wild Week, before the 'official' ones started. Player suggestions were applied to the Mob, it was tested, then adjusted.
Burst Flare was the next up (I don't count the JackSquid, as I don't think it was on the player list), but something failed in the code so it didn't work. Otherwise, that was a likely candidate for making its way to the game.
Spire Tank (Spank) was supposed to be a fun thing tested this week as a way out there "What if...?" with little possible chance of getting ingame, though who knows what would happen if the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. We got Spunker instead, so will never know. Since the stats were changed in a bizarre way to make some sort of odd 'balance', I assume it was possibly made for ingame candidacy?
I don't really know. Maybe no one really knows. What I do know is that there was a sudden interest in devapp that I have not seen in months because something big was changing in Skirmish there.