This is very poor feed back. Many of the voters are upvoting designs that are sensationalist and flashy, but actually provide little aesthetic or poor architecture and may ultimately not be the right solution for the data that exists.

I would urge you when voting for entries to answer a few questions about the design:

What scenarios is the site designed for?
Is the intended design appropriate for the target audience?
Does the style achieve the desired effect?
What are the pros and cons of each design?
Does the design use extraneous amounts of data in one place (ie, information overload)?
Is it easy to scan?
Is the typography clear?
Can you find a takano’s github in under 4 seconds?

Remember, there is more to design than just fancy graphics. Don’t forget architecture, speed, usability, maintainability, and others.

It’s important that you be respectful in your critique. In any well-done critique, we see two themes that run concurrently: the positive impressions the design leaves on the critic and the concerns the critic has about the design’s direction. This balances hard-to-hear criticism with the good things the design owner did. In both cases, the critic goes beyond a simple statement and provides good justification for their thinking, to bring it more value.

I submit an entry with jrmehle for the contest, and it looks like it was not included.
https://github.com/tenderlove/rubycommitters.org/issues/issue/26

We are both wondering if we didn’t follow some rule or requirement or something.

Thanks for your help!