Personally, I would be cautious in proclaiming that posts submitted in connection with this contest or any other forum contest are necessarily receiving smerits based on their being "quality" posts, and so in some sense there continues to be controversy in regards to the extent to which participation posts deserve any smerits at all, even if some of us may engage in some smerit sending practices that are relatively loose when it comes to the participation in some contests, and even though I have tended to be relatively loose in my own smerit sending practices, I go through some of my own personal dilemmas in regards to whether I might want to consider changing some of my criteria for sending smerits...

....including even in this seeming Nigeria-based contest.. and if we consider comparing this particular contest to the annual pizza contest or the pumpkin carving contest, those contests seems to be more open to global participation - even though they might have some local sentiment or rooted in some local traditions, so I am not suggesting that this particular contest needs to change for the mere sake of globalism.. which may or may not work very well when it comes to some of Nigerian culture, tradition or even any of the food-related matters that might be related to Nigeria.. which I can understand some of the desires to promote some local traditions and/or practices, but there can be some additional reluctance for forum members to want to participate in the sending of smerits when there might be some questions in regards to how open the contest is outside of the local.. and even questions of concerns about local versus global.. and surely I am not even proclaiming that there is a need for global to triumph over local, even though there can be some dilemmas that are created in regards to how much forum members might want to spend their smerits in the promotion of various local projects, whether the submissions are "quality" or not. .or even sometimes, forum members might want to specifically ONLY involve themselves in some subject matters if there might be some kind of a bitcoin angle to it...

yet with smerits, the forum does allow a decent amount of discretion for forum members to spend their smerits however they like, even though sometimes there could be concerns and even accusations in regards to how some forum members are spending their smerits - even more concerns when merit source members are involved...  .which may also relate to Mia Chloe's earlier stated concern that disproportionate sending of smerits might end up creating impressions of impropriety, even if some forum members might not have had improper intentions when they chose which posts to sent smerits and what quantity of smerits to send to one post versus another post .. ..   I am not claiming to know the answers ... even though my own personal practice has largely been attempting to send relatively low quantity of smerits, and surely sometimes, I sent smerits to posts that may well not deserve any smerits, even though in these various contests we can see that some members went through decent efforts to make food and to show that they made the food, and surely I feel even better to send smerits when it appears more likely that they actually are not faking the photos.. so that is part of my own ongoing assertion that I think that it is important that pieces of paper with names and dates are included with all of the submitted photos, even though surely a lot of forum members have  been lacksidaisical in that regard..so I do become a bit more uncomfortable if I end up sending smerits and then later find out that the photos were not even real.. so that does not feel good for someone like me, and I might not want to be spending a lot of time trying to figure out whether the photos happen to be real or not, so for me, those pieces of paper seem to help to have some additional confidence about forum members not faking the pictures or even taking pictures from an earlier contest or from another forum member.