Not to say anything against the good Captain.... but on a message board where we dabble in a lot of different things, I don't believe that artistic ability is the only characteristic we can or should use in attempting to quantify and measure how much a person has contributed to our community.
For example... Melbee happened to have arranged and helped with many of the very early real life meetups over in the Europe and became good friends with peoples in that region. The Cap'n has done similar, so I'm not saying Melbee should outright win with that knowledge, just that there are different ways of viewing this particular contest.
On top of that... since this is a contest that spans information over about 6 years, it seems unfair to outright decree that someone who is here right now should be victor over someone who is not.... there's nothing to say that the person who is here now will last longer than the person who is not here right now, for example. Because of this, there is certainly a bias towards individuals here in the present, and I don't believe I totally agree with that. You can all disagree with me completely though... it's not like I own your votes or have the ability to topple this contest in whichever outcome I see fit.
But yeah... just something to think about.... personally I'm having an immense amount of trouble determining who is better than who.... I like almost everybody on that list for different reasons, and I have a different position from most, since I can look back and clearly define what it is that made each of these individuals special to our community over the years.