This and cousin_it’s suggested novelty effect both make sense, but to me it just means that the prize givers got more than they bargained for in the first rounds and maybe it set people’s expectations too high for what such a prize can accomplish. I failed to pay much attention to the first two rounds (should probably go back and look at them again) and to me the latter two rounds seem like a reasonable steady state result of the prize given the amount of money/prestige involved.
I wonder if another thing that discouraged people was a feeling that they had to compete with experienced professional researchers who already have funding from other sources. I think if I were to design a new prize with the experience of this one in mind, I’d split it into two prizes, one optimized for increasing prestige of the field, and one for funding people who otherwise couldn’t get funding or to provide an alternative source of funding with better incentives. The former would look like conventional prestigious prizes in other fields, and the latter would run continuously and pay out as soon as some entry/nomination meets a certain subjective threshold of quality (which can be adjusted over time depending on the prize budget and quality of submissions), and the prize money would subtract out the amount of formal funding the recipient already received for the work (such as salaries, grants, or other prizes).
This and cousin_it’s suggested novelty effect both make sense, but to me it just means that the prize givers got more than they bargained for in the first rounds and maybe it set people’s expectations too high for what such a prize can accomplish. I failed to pay much attention to the first two rounds (should probably go back and look at them again) and to me the latter two rounds seem like a reasonable steady state result of the prize given the amount of money/prestige involved.
I wonder if another thing that discouraged people was a feeling that they had to compete with experienced professional researchers who already have funding from other sources. I think if I were to design a new prize with the experience of this one in mind, I’d split it into two prizes, one optimized for increasing prestige of the field, and one for funding people who otherwise couldn’t get funding or to provide an alternative source of funding with better incentives. The former would look like conventional prestigious prizes in other fields, and the latter would run continuously and pay out as soon as some entry/nomination meets a certain subjective threshold of quality (which can be adjusted over time depending on the prize budget and quality of submissions), and the prize money would subtract out the amount of formal funding the recipient already received for the work (such as salaries, grants, or other prizes).