[Ash] gave me some ideas for making this town more exciting.

... I have this little idea that I think might add a bit more fun to Writersco. I believe if we add a monthly theme to the entire site, it would spice it up a bit. Then we could have a Writersco competition, not like the private ones, but where the winners get front page at the end of the month, and it can be voted on by the public so it involves more people....

What does everybody think? Should the monthly theme be visual, or should it also involve things to write about? Maybe it doesn't need to be visual at all, since coming up with a brand new visual theme every month would be a lot of work. As for getting a writing idea out of it, maybe the monthly public contest could be a free-for-all contest relating to the monthly theme? There could be a maximum line or word count, and different categories for poetry, prose and nonfiction. This sounds like fun, but interest is key.

It sounds good, but my only worry is lack of participation after a month or two. That's a problem with the other contests now. Hell! It's a problem in Elftown and they've got a whole lot more members than we do.

It's possible that we have so many things to do, that our population is spread thinly over all of it. Maybe instead of coming up with a brand new theme every time, we can rotate between already existing contests.
  Instead of making brand new Official Contests which could "steal" peoples' time from other contests, we could Officially Feature existing contests for a short period of time. It would be a bigger deal to win the Concerti contest on months when it is Officially Featured, than on other months. Maybe winning an Officially Featured contest will get you a credit in your Awards box.

I think that is a great idea. That way we are not adding yet another contest but just giving gentle reminders each month of the one's that need more participants anyway.

There might still be room for original official contests every once in a while...

I like that idea of award points for winning contests featured for a month.

I had thought about introducing 4 official contest times a year. Halloween, Xmas/winter Holiday, Easter/Spring and possibly one in the summer.

I think this is a good idea because the frontpage changes so little and it makes all of WC feel inactive. I also love the idea of putting the award in the winner's award box.
However, contests have been featured on the front page before haven't they? In fact, I think one of my contests was up on the frton page for a little while, and it still doesn't get much action. I think it might have been Five Words, which certainly gets the most activity of all my 3 contests, but sometimes it still barely scrapes by for the month. I don't know, I would just say we should really try to make sure that it is something special and not just faux special. I think it will require a collaboration between the contest host and the theme creator/mod. I usually make a theme each month for my contests, and if one of them got up on the front page then I would need to know what to do for theme/time limit/etc.

If we are still using points... But while we're waiting on that, at least we can put "I've won ### officially sponsored contests..." in the Awards box.

I personally would prefer season contests. Besides, it's a little more culturally open, that way.

yea that would be a good idea. Unless people could force us to just use the bage reward system like ET?