We were also curious about how users feel about implementing a rule which would give chances to more people to win. What we were thinking about is the following: to arrange things thus the winner of a category cannot be the same person from previous contests. Or he can be, as this does not mean a ban -- but he can be with more efforts. To be more precise, all previous winners could start with a coefficient of 0.8. Attention! -- this happens only regarding the previously won category!
I do not like this rule because competitions are supposed to be won based on merit (not
smerit but... you get the idea). Disqualifying someone who would've won because they were the previous winner would put the competition in a bad light and make some people think it's stealing the award from them,
especially since financial prizes are now on the table.
The thing is the financial rewards should only be considered bonuses, and shouldn't really effect the running of the community event all that much. Obviously, give some consideration to it, especially when it came to users meriting users for voting for them, however that made sense without the financial aspect anyhow. However, at the end of the day it's a bonus, and not a guarantee that you benefit financially for winning.
However, the coefficient just seems wrong to me. Either you prevent previous winners from winning or you don't. While, I do like the idea of seeing new faces of the winners list, I think that's rather down to the community rather than anyone else. If users want to see new winners, then vote for new users, and not the popular choices. A rule change probably isn't necessary in this case, at least for me.