Hi everyone!
There's been some ideas floating around since Jacopo publicised his writing competition he's judging that we might hold something similar for TCS. I decided this sounds like a good idea, and so here's a poll to judge if that enthusiasm would be replicated across the site broadly.
I've included two options to express interest, because people being interested in reading said work is very desirable over and above having participants. If you don't feel confident enough or have enough time to say you might participate, please consider reading the submissions as an option too. The system I have in mind would rely on people being prepared to read the stuff people would send in, so spectators are valuable measures of how successful the works are.
The system I have in mind is: a short story competition for stories of fixed length (say 2000-4000 words depending on feedback) and potentially of a set genre (horror, sci fi, fantasy, crime etc). Submission would need to be sent to me, via PM by a specific date, and all qualifying submissions (nothing against the rules or over the word limit) would then be posted in a specific thread in The Fridge for people to read. The winner would be the piece that gained the most thumbs (which is why spectators are to be encouraged). We could potentially post the winning submission to the front page, and/or add the winner to the champion group for a while.
I can see this being either infrequent, or common, depending on interest. If you are interested please vote, and if you have any suggestions please feel free to note them in a reply to this thread. Nothing is yet set in stone, so we can work things out as we go.
Disclaimer, in order to see the results of the poll without faffing around with the poll every time, I have voted that I would read and participate.