Suggestions for Possible 3rd Annual Contest - CONTEST IS NOW OPEN

I know it may seem a little early in the year for this but considering how last year's contest came together I think having time for some real planning as opposed to doing everything on the fly might be a good idea. Plus it gives potential contestants more time to work on stories. Or at least that's my theory.

First, I suppose the question of will there even be a 3rd Annual Story Contest should be answered. I'm assuming the answer is yes. So if the answer is yes I'd like to propose a few changes. And of course anyone who has their own ideas should share them as well.

My first suggestion would be to extend the voting period back to the original one month. Last year the voting time was cut to two weeks and the contest got roughly half the votes. Now it may just be coincidence but there were a number of comments from readers that they didn't have enough time to read all the entries. A fair complaint. Two weeks isn't a lot of time to read over 20 entries. I'd also suggest, as in the 1st contest, from the mid-Dec. to mid-Jan, covering the holiday break when many people have off from work and thus potentially more time to read.

My second suggestion may sound a little weird. Last year CCH made a 'Get Out the Vote' thread about 12 hours before the close of voting. In that period there were 17 votes. The previous two weeks saw a total of 99 votes. Now some of those votes probably would have happened anyhow but I have no doubt that CCH's thread resulted in at least a few more voted than we otherwise would have had. That's a good thing, right? So I would suggest CCH do the same thing for the duration of the contest. Let's face it, for a lot of people stickied threads are practically invisible.

My third suggestion is also informal. Promote the fuck out of the contest. There's a notice on the front page and in the headers. Those are good. But clearly not enough. We can't control who visits the story section but as writers we can promote the contest in our own posts for those do visit. Perhaps a link to the contests threads in our sigs for the duration of the contest. Things of that nature.

I think we can all agree that more votes is good. We went from 216 to 116 which is not a good trend. Over in the comic contest the drop is even more dire, from a high of 472 to this year's 78. They're dying on the vine over there. I don't know about you but I don't want to see that happen to us.

But most importantly: can we get an answer from FP staff as to whether will be an official story contest this year? As a writer the more time I have to prepare and write something, the better.