@practicalthought, I must say that I feel the same way. I think that the "constraint" would make it less productive as it takes time to even find persons that are of interest to us. I think the focus should really be placed on encouraging the nominees to participate in the contest. With this, the contest would gain some amount of exposure. I really liked that idea that @freedomshift came up with that offered nominees who participate in the contest for the first time, a bonus. While this is a one time bonus, I still believe it played a vital role in attracting persons.

My voting power is still very low but I would love to be able to use this as I wish rather than feel the need to vote on something that I may not necessarily like, just for eligibility. To this end, what we can do is ask participants who visit and comment on these nominees' posts to state how they found this person's post (as is done by the judges of the contest) and encourage the person to participate.

The theme idea is good but I think it would put a limit on the entries. In times gone by, I have searched high and low and most of what I found were posts that covered a wide-range of topics. If a theme is used, I kinda doubt the options would vary as is the case now. I imagine then that persons would just go searching the specific tags and may end up with maybe a few of the same nominees.

The added constraint I think too would put a bit of pressure on those who are behind the scenes as I can only imagine how time-consuming it must be to visit all the entries, plus visit all the nominees of each entry. I think it best to just give the contest the needed time to grow. It is already a great light at the end of the tunnel for some of us so let's not try to fix what isnt broken. With time new insights and contributions will come but I think it is best to let the contest grow "organically", as we would say.

In agreement with @thedarkhorse though, some of us just post a link and that is it. From some of the entries that I have seen, I didnt feel like the participant was very moved by the nominees that they chose. Or maybe it is just a "can't be bothered attitude." As participants, we should try not to make our entries too long as then we would rob persons of the time that they would use to visit the nominees. But in the same breath, it isn't very encouraging when you just give vague statements about the nominees.

Maybe this is me being too harsh or something but I have seen where participants just drop two sentences about the nominees and that is it. The original thought of the contest (please correct me if I am wrong) is for the participants to convince us as to why we should follow this person or why we should check this person's post; not just to tell us that the person is an artist or a singer. But like I said, this is just what I think.

Yeah, I know. My two cents are more like a dollar, lol. Here is to growing the contest.