When they talked about the commendation system before, they talked about it like it would be a vote system, but I'm pretty sure every person you commend, gets one point regardless of whoever other people commend. I say this because after I did Copperbell HM a few hours after the servers were up, I got 3 commendations at the end, and I would rather think that I just did a good job than the system glitched. Which, I think is better than a vote system because that way there's no way for there to be a tie or other complications.

I also agree that after a while people will remember that the system exists and think to commend people after the boss if they think someone did well or was just interesting.