Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this @agmoore. And I fully agree with your assessment. The immense increase in participation has certainly a lot to do with omitting the shortlist since this kept every participant in the contest until the very end of each round.
However, as you say, compiling the post for the poll became increasingly unwieldy and even more importantly, the poll itself with 30-40 entries to choose from too confusing, I believe. I therefore thought to reintroduce the shortlist, but a much larger one, in order not to neutralize all the positive effects achieved by its omission. We have to find out what the right size will be to achieve a good balance. Maybe it's quarter, maybe a third of the total number of entries, we'll see. The feedback from the community will be very important find this out!
Hi @shaka,
I'm really happy that you want to include as many people as possible--not just for the sake of the contest, but also because it's a great experience for them.
BTW, I'm plugging away at my collage. Who knows what will come of it, but I'm having so much fun I should give you a prize :))