Hello @hobo.media
You could think about to change your model to the following:

• To propose a post (once a month) the author needs to delegate some SP to hobo.media (e.g. 100 SP). I think once a month is enough, because you also can propose posts older than 7 days since earnings by blockchain upvotes and earnings by HOBOs are two different things. In addition, if an author is posting every week there will be a preselection by the author already.
• In addition, to avoid spam, there should be a fee of about 10 HOBO - guess for this intent it will be already enough.

So instead of getting 2500 HOBO directly it will be the benefit of SP delegation and n times 10 HOBO.
Maybe even somebody else can sponsor that SP delegation for a specific author.

Just came to the concept mentioned above because if I were an author I wouldn't take part in the HOBO-competition because in the long run with every competition I will loose 50% of my HOBOs.