This is not the eleventh writing contest, but a poll that will effect all future writing contests.
When I wrote my Remembrance of Zed story, I had to cut off close to half of it in order to fit it into the 2000 word limit of the writing contest. And just now, I read TheBlackCatCrossing's Second Chance story, which was also compressed to fit within the contest. Both of these stories, at least in my opinion (but I am sure all of you agree) are much better in their extended forms and not the way they ended up in the contest. So the poll is this:
Do you want to keep the 2000 word limit?
Here are some arguments for and against this decision I can come up with (feel free to add your own when voting on this):
For Removing: When an author 'gets in the zone' they can write quite a lot in a short matter of time. Before they know it, they have a wonderful work of writing done, and it's long. They check the word length and discover that they are way over the 2000 word limit for the contest. Unlike basic editing, which might change the wording here and there to remove some unneeded words, they will have to remove whole sections, and in my Zed case, sometimes even completely change the mood of the story. They might have to compress the writing so that instead of being the story they wanted, they at least have a story for the contest.
Removing the 2000 word limit will allow authors to go all out and submit the story they really want, instead of a compressed version that, while providing most of their thoughts, might lack that icing on the cake that they really wanted.
Against Removing: This is a writing contest. There will be several stories, and in order for a fair voting round, everyone who vote will need to read each entry carefully. If some stories will get too long, this might present some problems for voters, who might not have the time or energy required to really sit down and read all the entries in the one week voting time slot. If they are forced to skim some stories, it provides an unfair advantage to those who they read carefully.
Also, even if the readers were able to vote well no matter the story length, this might also present a problem for the authors: Those authors who are able to write a good long story tend to be better writers than those who cannot. The word limit will force them to slow down and really think about what they want to tell, and it will prevent runaway stories from taking up a lot of room. Along with this, with the word limit, all the stories will tend to be roughly of equal length, removing at least one variable apart from story quality that might lose or win votes. With the writing contest, anything that is not the quality of the story that effects voter outcome, intentional or not, conscious or not, should be eliminated unless there is a good reason for keeping it.
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So what do you guys think? Do we want to remove the 2000 word limit, or do you think that it's better to keep it? I myself will keep my thoughts for myself for now, and will not vote unless I feel like everyone else who wanted to did.