Since Eljay instructed people to move over here for contest discussion, I’ll give my two cents here.
Honestly, I don’t know why people expect to have more polls over continuing the contests. While I do get that a few people have changed their minds, that’s nowhere near enough to change what was always a borderline irreversible decision. All sales are final, you know?
As someone who was initially against the contests and voted accordingly, I’m pretty satisfied with what’s won so far but that’ll probably change sooner or later. Are these contests something we need? Not really. Is not explicitly needing something a good enough reason to avoid doing it? Not really either. I could do without Bionicle in my life due to it not being a need but that doesn’t invalidate it.
Can’t say I disagree here. It sucks that the losing entries are kinda meaningless now. I’m not sure how else to put it, preferably less blunt. At least the winning designs are better than over 90% of the entries, so them being featured on what are basically fan wikis isn’t something I have strong feelings about. Same applies to the contests from about a decade ago.