>>The MVP award is based on what the person has done over the last year - theoretically, one can receive the award for work done in (for instance) 2014, and not lift a finger in 2015, and still claim the award for the entire year. (Hopefully that wouldn't happen, but that's generally how it works, and hopefully the program benefits wind up serving as an incentive to continue). It is not supposed to be based on what will happen over the next year.
Serious question: how would you feel if this sort of aware were a true community award where those who can be bothered voting, get to do so? If it's not the vendor goodies driving interest, seems to me that you'd get the same effect without any of the moral hazards.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
