challenges

I too miss the challenges. Scoring the stories is rather awkward as anyone who submits a score should reasonably be expected to read every story so as to be able to judge properly. But, my reading of the winners of past challenges is that the adjudicated 'winners' were fully justified so the organisers set the rules pretty well.

Has there been any consideration of restarting challenges?

I had not realized this thread was around 2 years old when I saw Clarity's response, but I've been quite interested in challenges, myself.

Perhaps, if the main gripe about challenges was the scoring system, and their usefulness came from their inspiration and the constructive feedback they generated, there could be a dedicated section to user-generated writing prompts? Without the messiness of judging a competition, writers could gain new insights into their stories, or be exposed to creative possibilities they may not have.

If we all promise to act like adults, could we have a contest?
It would be a nice way to end this very crappy year, especially for all us Americans.

They could have a panel of judges to rate the stories. The judges would only see the stories and not know the author. That way there would be no preferential votes and no voting for your own stories.

I used to enjoy the challenges at first, when they were a bit of fun, but then a section of the membership seemed to start taking them very seriously. One of the main problems as I see it is that we have different tastes, so a proportion will always vote for that type of story.However I would welcome a return to a competition as long as it had a lower age limit of spankees of say 16 or 18, as I dislike the CP of minors.
A trial of a new competition would brighten up our Covid affected lives though.

If what is wanted is to ask authors to write on a particular theme (without the voting part, and winners), then members here can take the initiative without burdening the site administrators in any way. How, you may ask? It's simple. ANY member here could post a theme here on the forum (perhaps on the Storyboard?), asking for authors to submit "entries." Once their entries have been loaded, then their individual authors can make posts back on the the forum (in the same thread) giving their author name and story title so that other people can go read them. Is it a little more cumbersome? Sure - but if you want something, people, then exhibit some self-reliance! People NEVER behaved in the aftermath of the staff-run challenges, so don't expect them to return.

Rick (resident curmudgeon on the Forum)

I think that could work quite well. As I understand it you are suggesting that the stories should be loaded on each writer's Author's Page (by submitting in the normal way) where other members would be invited to comment. No voting, no arguing. Is that correct?
If the administrators go along with the idea, they could then apply whatever conditions that feel are necessary (number of words etc.) and maybe choose the theme. What about it Flopsy/Feb's?

@Hotspur
You missed the point. There's no reason to involve floppy or Februs. My suggestion was that ANY member can promise a challenge here on the forum, setting whatever theme and rules, and then any author who submits an entry reports it on the same thread once it has been loaded.