I’m one of the people who submitted a post right before the deadline of the criticism contest. FWIW I think number 6 is off base. In my case, the deadline felt like a Schelling point. My post was long and kind of technical, and I didn’t have any expectation of getting money—though having a fake deadline was very helpful and I would probably not have written it without the contest. I don’t think that any of the posts that got prizes were written with an expectation of making a profit. They all looked like an investment of multiple hours by talented people who could have made much more money (at least in expectation) by doing something else. In order for someone profit-motivated to take advantage of this they would have to be involved and knowledgeable enough to write a competitive post, and unable to make money in essentially any other way. This seems like an unlikely combination, but if it does exist then I’d assume that supporting such people financially is an additional benefit rather than a problem.
I’m one of the people who submitted a post right before the deadline of the criticism contest. FWIW I think number 6 is off base. In my case, the deadline felt like a Schelling point. My post was long and kind of technical, and I didn’t have any expectation of getting money—though having a fake deadline was very helpful and I would probably not have written it without the contest. I don’t think that any of the posts that got prizes were written with an expectation of making a profit. They all looked like an investment of multiple hours by talented people who could have made much more money (at least in expectation) by doing something else. In order for someone profit-motivated to take advantage of this they would have to be involved and knowledgeable enough to write a competitive post, and unable to make money in essentially any other way. This seems like an unlikely combination, but if it does exist then I’d assume that supporting such people financially is an additional benefit rather than a problem.