Popular skinners tend to make good quality skins that deserve to be finalists. Less popular skinners also make good skins, but might not have put as much time into building a following. Instead of basically affirmative action, maybe those people that don't make it in need to advertise their content and be more active in the community? Or maybe they're not actually as good as they think and they should spend some time looking for ways to improve so they can make it to the finalists instead of cheapening what is is to actually make it by merit of more than one person thinking they're good at making skins.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for encouraging content creators who are just getting started, but handing someone a trophy when they didn't actually get it for doing well enough to earn it helps no one.