Certainly. That’s why I do post things here. I noted the one thing here that adds value. That one thing is a big deal for me. If I saw no value, I’d vote with my feet and not be here discussing how to make it better.
I’m suggesting that money is a good way to motivate people. If you offer money, you’d best make sure you’re rewarding the behavior you actually want to encourage. If people win contests with derivative works, that’s demotivating for those of us who work hard to produce original work designed for easy printing and (in the case of OpenSCAD models) easy-to-use parameters and reasonable behavior when faced with unreasonable inputs. People have incentive to lie about whether something is a remix because that will disqualify them, but it actually being a remix doesn’t seem to matter.
And as the OP mentioned, if my motivation is the extremely slim chance of winning a contest, why would I post my best stuff right away instead of waiting for an applicable contest?
As for the rewards program, I’m sort of new at this game and still learning how to work with technically complex things such as gears and the like. So I may be flattering myself but I feel like I’ve uploaded some useful things that I’ve spent days developing and refining. I have yet to receive any rewards for those. I’m about 30% of the way to being able to cash in for – let me check – a $40 gift card. Whoo doggie! Why if I upload just half a dozen more excellent scripts, I would be well on my way to earning (pulls out calculator) $0.60/hour.
I understand people enjoy doing this as a hobby, but this isn’t a charitable endeavor for Bambu – they make money from these designs. I don’t think people should be expected to do volunteer work for corporations. If someone is making money, the people doing all the actual work should be in for a fair cut.