Unfortunately spam levels being uploaded can't be helped, that happens with every competition in general. It comes down to how the devs handle it, and if the workshop community is strong enough to counter the spam maps. I will dread when Josh picks the winners. I assume he will still be the only judge, and I get a bad feeling he will pick a lower quality map as a winner, just like he did in the 2nd level editor competition.

There's a lot more spam maps than I expected though. As you pointed out, people may want the new emote reward, which is fine. Despite that, I notice people kept uploading maps they made before the competition that were not even updated recently for it. This annoys me because there should only be maps made or updated recently. Sure he mentioned "please" don't upload old maps, but that's not an enforced rule. He should of been more strict, which would mean having a bit of quality control by not accepting old maps not updated recently. That would help reduce the amount of spam maps a bit. In fact, a lot of their rules are not enforced. They ask you to not do certain things, but they are not enforced, people can really break this competition if they wanted to.

I feel another reason for all the spam maps is the "theme" for this competition. "beginners friendly" encourages a lot of new people to join, but also allowed more spam maps to appear. It's also stupid in the sense that it implies the previous competitions were not beginners friendly, even though they were. All of them are beginners friendly, there's no reason to state it in the title as a "theme". It's even a theme anyways, it's more like a statement.

I'm been questioning every level editor competition the devs put out. Something is always off with them, including this one. It's a shame too because I really want these competitions to be good and fun, but I feel the devs are always a few steps behind when planning these out.