Except they actually haven't. In 05/06, standards were pretty low. Look at how Mystic gave Egg Palace a 10, for example. Then, rating standards decreased, which meant an abrupt decline in the contest averages in 2008. That was also a year with very few (mostly sub-par) Multiplayer stages (probably everybody noticed that the system wasn't all that balanced, but that's me guessing). Shortly before 2.0 was released, there was an outburst in creativity in SP maps (hi Kuja, SonicMaster and Ezer.Arch, for example), pushing the average higher. Now, we have a balanced multiplayer system, which ensures better maps in general (even though there are still some maps that haven't quite grabbed it), and the standards for SP maps have rapidly increased, meaning a drop in the ratings there. After all, averages are better than in 08, and are mostly around 5, which I consider pretty standard, obviously.