More honesty/transparency about the process is needed here. Of course Natalie Portman et al won't be personally reading tens of thousands of entries in such a short time. Not one word of 99% of entries will even be glimpsed by the celebrity judges. As with book awards, the judges will no doubt only be forwarded a thoroughly pre-screened and pared-down sampling of the tagged entries. And unfortunately, factors wholly unrelated to the merit of the pieces will come strongly into play during this pre-screening by Medium staff (politics, membership status, past criticism of Medium, etc). I'd like to know definitively what those factors are. Please reply.