Unlike the case with the Library (which suffers from its own occasional bouts of apathy), aside from a fancy way to post stories and scores and the like, there's really no need to involve the Mods. Any sufficiently inspired regular user could in principle take the contests and run them: Organizer opens a thread announcing the contest parameters and solicits possible judges. Writers submit stories to the organizer by PM. Organizer forwards by PM stories to judges. Judges PM the rankings back to the organizer. Organizer compiles and posts rankings and stories in a WBA thread. It'd be pretty straightforward, really.

Perhaps it's premature to assume the next contest will play out like July, but if Mods can't spare the time to run them, there's no sense dicking around. I agree with SPO; I'd rather an interested regular user take over and see what they can make of the contests versus watch one of the few recent improvements to the site die from apathy.

 

Not sure. I think rotating organisers, or someone who wants to make a challenge and run it for the month getting it democratically, would work over a single user-organiser. One individual risks a) that same apathy developing in them, or b) pulling a Blaise and getting themselves killed :3

Running it a bit more informally (for example, Ii agree that once judged, there's no reason they can't just be posted in WbA) would be nice. PM'ing the stories to be judged initially was, I thought, the original idea - a degree of author anonymity contributing to impartiality in judges. Who those judges are should absolutely be public - anonymity and indifferent mods means that they essentially have no-one making sure they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

 

Wait, what? :|

 

Alright, it's time to quit yer yapping and check out the results