I have concerns about offering any sort of recognition for comments. It seems to me that it would become too much of a high school popularity contest....and fandom is sometimes too much like that already. I understand wanting to drum up more participation that way, but I don't think it would work out for the best.
As for collaboration: I'm very intrigued by the idea. I don't think people should choose their partners because that isn't really fair, and everyone wants the same 2 or 3 writers and the same 2 or 3 artists for their partner. Plus, what if no one likes me? On the other hand, though, I wouldn't want to be paired with a writer who might let me down fic-wise, and then my art is judged along with their fic. Tag-teaming alleviates that problem by minimizing the effect of pairing author/artist. Plus, I worry about the drop out rate and how that would affect partners. You know it happens in every fest, so you'd need to plan for it.
As for the teams, I'm going to suggest the same thing I did last year: Team Romance, Team Angst, Team Crack or Humor. I also would like to see individual medals as well as team medals. However....see my first paragraph about popularity contests! Yeah, it probably wouldn't work.
I said in the poll that I'd want 8 weeks lead time, but I'd need that time AFTER some collaboration. So the writer would already have had to provide a starting point for my ideas. And I realize the writer doesn't have their whole story mapped out on the day they sign up. So, lots of lead time would be necessary if we are collaborating. But that really shouldn't be too difficult since we'd be only having the Games once per year instead of twice, anyway.