It is really an interesting article to read, I saw you have collected all the responses to the "main question". Apart from that, my question is "How it is gonna work on a larger scale (steemit as a whole).

Let's see back then in 2018, participants could win multiple times as long as the entry was really that good to be chosen. At that time the organizer of the contest was not only a community leader but everyone who sought fun on the platform. I feel that the old-time contests were much more creative with very little prize pool, but yes the participants were not as many as in recent times.

Getting attention from whales is far beyond imagination, they focus on making the best they can, and the rest they can buy big fat upvotes from bot service when they like it. At that time whales really looked for good quality and they had their own team to look for it in the whole platform.

Then....how we can change it, do we have time to change it and make a fairer way in the future?