This has not happened in a while that I remember, but I may have figured out why new people had been posting in the contest forum.
When starting a new topic on my phone, I noticed something.
The continue button is covered when you use the down arrow.
When choosing General Discussion, it opens the subforum Contest's (which does not need the apostrophe). Unless you collapse the menu, you cannot choose continue for General Discussion. It will auto-collapse if you choose Contests.
This may not be a problem any more. But this could be what was going on when there were several of these in a short time.