There is unfortunately just no way to reliably check if a user prepared posts in advance. Sure, you could probably check how quickly they went from clicking reply to clicking submit post in the admin logs, but I doubt it's realistic to do that for every post of every competitor. Posts are also reactionary. If a certain topic is being discussed in September, and someone saved their posts until January, the discussion will be long over. We should instead work to promote broader activity during TdV so there are more posters and more threads, and thereby eliminating any need to stock up on posts.

Bigger projects like reviews are a little easier to keep track of. It wouldn't be the first time someone pre-wrote a bunch of them to then drop them only during TdV months. The rewards for doing so are also much greater than some posts.

Yeah, it's not possible to know if someone saved posts for later or not. Even reviews are hard to catch, because they can be made in a couple hours and somebody with enough free time can produce one a day for weeks. So basically, unless it's very blatant they've been saving up for the chance it will forever be our nemesis.

I'm in for promoting a broader activity, though it's not easy to come up with new topics and there's no guarantee they'll catch on. I do have a few ideas here and there, even for a possible rented forum that has potential, but I lack the time to put them live right now. Maybe this weekend I'll be more available and I can start on tackling this more seriously now that work will slow down heavily.

tgags123 : There's the chance they might not fall in the 50% rule, for example a user in first place in the last hour makes a last push to get the seven pointer in Yellow and/or Blue and since they're first already they won't rush the posting and so they'll meet the quality criteria and be careful with the words. I know it's very specific, but these rare occurences can sometimes be a big exploit and for that reason we should be prepared for the worst.