Fair response, at least it shows you are giving it a proper thought, I know it must be quite complicated navigating all this and keeping everyone happy. I didn't intend to throw shade at your effort, I just felt you might be missing one perspective that could be constructive to hear.
While I value trying to keep the human factor, from my pov the jam is big enough to warrant a not so subjective judgement system, you could easily overload yourselves just by discussing every minor detail and considering all the possibilities on all cases. You said it, only two people for 800+ entries, more so a reason to be clean-cut with the rules.
Obviously there is no right or wrong on how to do this, but definitely as someone who spent almost three weeks working just to get insta-dqed for going against one rule, it did feel a bit unfair that a skating game where there is no other character but the player and was clearly made for another jam with absolute no overlap with the spirit and theme for this one still gets the pass to get ratings. I was honestly saddened just because we weren't able to receive as much feedback from people, forget prizes, we knew we weren't going to hit top 30 anyways.
Don't feel too discouraged from my comments though, I don't mean to attack you nor make you feel bad. I think you were already quite receptive and I believe this discussion served its purpose, hope it sparked some good thought.
Good luck on the next ones