Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I favor the democratic ranked ballot method, using the Maximize Affirmed
Majorities method to tally the votes. I have already written and installed
software for this on this site, and I have used it for previous polls. To
avoid bias from someone having his friends come to the site to vote for
his game, voters should be required to rank some minimum number of games
on the ballot. To encourage informed voting, we could even require voters
to play a number of the entries on Game Courier before voting.

Okay, Fergus, thank you. Have other contests been judged like this?

Also, I'd like to solicit opinions from any interested parties. How do
we, or how should we judge the prospective upcoming 47 square contest? 

Could we hear from some likely contestants? Once things are agreed-upon,
the contest will be open. [I already have a board idea... ]

What I think would be a good rating system would be to have every user
that wants to judge, including those that are competing, view every
contest entry, and rate the entry on a scale of 1 to 10, in multiple
categories, e.g. Creativity, Playability, Analytical Interest, and Overall
Enjoyability. Those that score the highest amount of points in one category
compared to others will be first, second highest second, etc. within that
category. If prizes cannot be equal or someone thinks they should not be
equal, I think the Overall category winner should receive the main prize.
If a limited judge system is chosen, however, I would be happy to be one
of the judges, as long as I don't come up with a ridiculous amount of
entries first, as I did with the upcoming contest! ;)