Caption.me has paid out £5,475 in cash prizes over the years, and I enjoy picking the winner each month.
The winner isn’t decided purely by votes because there’s a danger of people gaming the system (and they’ve certainly tried). So we have to have some human oversight of cash prizes.
When it’s very close between two or more captions, I privately enlist the help of some trusted long-standing members of the site (the admins, who also help me spot any suspicious voting activity).
Now, in addition to the admins, I also privately* lean on the 2022 Contributors (those captioneers who generously donated money to help fund this year’s prize pool).
*via a restricted area of the forum
This way, the decision making is more democratic, and it’s also a mark of respect to those who are helping to fund the prizes. Thanks again for your support.