Everyone knows that anyone can go and fight any player on the top 10 kill list on the leader board but those players can be farmed by entire legions or by one vindictive higher ranked player that constantly harasses one of them.

I know a couple guys that this happens to but one of them has been harassed for months by one guy that hit's him with artifacts every hour , disables , hacks and raids as well.
Yeah I know what you're all going to say. They put themselves there so that's what they get. The problem is that these guys can't just fall off an alert like the rest of us. They're open season for everyone 24/7 seven days a week and can be farmed at will by any rank.

I don't see the fairness in that. These guys lose a lot of production unless they're higher ranked guys that can afford to buy time manipulators to get all of the players back that robbed them of their productions.
Higher ranked guys go in and raid them and zero them out but the lower ranked guys on the leader board don't have enough crew to raid them back.
Sure they can alert one of the guys to their legion but there are many people that attack these guys and they can't alert them all.

I think it's a good idea to make the top ten kill list on the leader board a spar area like an arena in the Gladiator days.
Anyone can go in and see if they can fight and win against them but no productions can be lost on either side.
In other words there would be no raids and hacks involved.

The challenger and the title defender could or could not lose or gain kills and deaths on their ship but there could be a score in the Galaxy Arena like the best out of 3 etc ..
The winners and losers wouldn't be able to alert either player since it's for fun anyways and there isn't anything lost but maybe a little pride that minute.

If this idea doesn't work , I'd like to see if there could be "x" amount of players be able to attack the top 10 guys on the leader board and each player could only attack one in one day without the ability to farm them.
This could be difficult to do because the defending player on the list could alert the attacking player and that guy could get farmed by his legion.

There could also be a rule that each player could only disable , hack and raid each other. Again the only problem being that a lower ranked guy on the leader board kill list may not be able to raid a much higher ranked player. Assuming that this did happen I would suggest that no alerts could be made to their legions since they are just badging each other anyways.
No harm , no foul.

I'm just trying to find a fair way to go about this ... anymore ideas ?

Im not sure about this whole Arena thing but I do think you have a good point about the raiding and hacking.

Maybe on the kills board your only able to disable them, on the hacking board your only allowed to hack them and on the raiding board obviously you would have to disable them to raid them but you would not be able to hack them.

I know something like this could be done because if you have someone as a friend you cant attack them unless they are alerted or on your BT.

+1, I completely agree with it...I know a few people that are waiting for players to get into the top 10 so they can smash them...
I think that the only way that you should be able to gain RP/AP/MP off a top 10 player is by traditional methods, Battle Tab or Legion Alert.

+1 to this specific idea. Why do the Top 10 players get penalized for being top ten players? Why is there an option to attack them at all from the leader board? Given that anyone can raid you with a few quantum flares, and anyone can disable you with a few disarming bombs and some persistence, it seems unreasonable that the top ten players have an EXTRA target painted on their backs.

I'm way into PvP. 100%. 836 kills so far and the leaderboard keeps moving just out of reach. Seriously. When I started the leaderboard was set at 839. Now it's like 1,000... anyway. I really DO NOT want to get into the top 10 players. At all. I'd much rather be 30th or 40th than 10th.

Not to threadjack, but I'm very curious

Quantum flares aid in raiding success?

I think he meant hack.

I don't think there should be a separate mechanic for the "Top 10" because as was stated in the OP, they put themselves there. BUT I do think that you should only be able to target players there that are within you're own BT range.

Sense you can target the top 10 killers you should be only able to kill them threw that link I agree completely.