Quote Originally Posted by tdb View Post
On the other hand the rewards are not tradeable, so there probably isn't a whole lot of incentive for botters to obtain them. Or are you suggesting they'd enact some sort of ransom scheme where the bots will dominate the leaderboard unless you pay their owners to make them go away?
Not everyone who bots is a RMT trader. There are plenty of "real" players out there using some form of 3rd party automation to crank out crafted items while they're afk.

Do you honestly think those players are going to hesitate using that automation to get their leaderboard bragging rights when rankings are based on number of items contributed?

SE made a mistake basing rankings on "greatest contribution" instead of greatest quality. If the rankings were based on the greatest quality from a limited number of turn-ins, players manually crafting have a decent chance to end up at the top of the rankings over players who automate. When the rankings are based on how much you turn in, only those who automate have a chance to win. It's a futile effort to try to compete against those breaking ToS.