I believe in the K.I.S.S. method. The more comprehensive and complicated your set up, the easier it is for things to fail.
I'm using the simplest toplist you can have (if you want to know where your clicks are going). If you don't care what the visitors are clicking on then remove the link="toplist" and you'll have the most basic linking structure possible.
In regards to this
However, even your example is not a full example of the structure of the toplist. Just the beginning of the out.php anchor.
Read reply #4 to this thread and you'll have your "full example of the structure of the toplist"...note the poster's name.