I had put several shots up there 3 or 4 years ago, cuz wouldn't that be great if they just happened to select one to publish? But there are a tremendous numbers of incredibly good photos up there.
It looks to me like they are trying to build their own sort of social network out of it, giving people the option to "like" (or something similar) certain photos, as well as to make comments. So if you are the newcomer with a really nice shot, you might get 20 or 30 likes (or whatever) while one of the old hands with a lesser photo of a similar subject might have three or four HUNDRED likes and pages of comments.
With respect to your image being "selected" my personal view is that, it least several years ago, the person overseeing the "assignment" is perhaps not really well qualified. They do have a brief bio, as I recall, and it struck me that they were mostly junior people. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've seen times where they have selected photos that, to me, shouldn't have been in the running. Then they have a brief blurb, like "this photo really caught my attention because...". Whereas I would see otherwise photos that I think were much more deserving. It strikes me as being similar to something at the chain photo outfit where I spent a lot of years - they would publish a monthly photo tips sort of article in a newsletter. Each month the editor had to badger people, "can you do such-and-such article?" The writers varied from fairly green to well-qualified, but the articles had to be sort of dumbed down, so it didn't really matter that much. But the big thing is that the editor really didn't know, or care about the qualifications - they just needed someone, anyone, to handle the article. And to the reader, they just presume that the author must be something of an expert to have been published. Anyway, the Nat Geo assignment system seemed to me to be a similar situation - they just need some staffer to handle the next month's assigned, and to judge the entries. Again, I could be wrong - these were just my impressions of several years ago.
Whatever one does, though, its tremendous fun to look through the monthly entries, etc. If certain photos strike you, you can click on the photog's name to see other photos they have taken, etc.
