It's sad when a few bad apples spoil the whole barrel, as is the case over at the 5k contest. Apparently some folks have created a bunch of bogus accounts to vote up their own entries, and vote down entries that had been in the lead.
Last year there were so many entries in the contest, it took a lot of time for the judges to go through the finalists. The approach this year was to let the visitors rate the entries and then pass the cream of the crop on to the judges. Next year? I imagine it will have to work some other way, since people can't be trusted with this method.
What I don't get is, well, two things: 1. There's no cash involved here, why are people cheating to win? and 2. Do the cheaters think the judges are so stupid that if their lame entries are voted the best, they'll automatically win?
I like to have faith in humanity, but sometimes it's so hard.