[Blarg]

I like that idea. The only thing is, it would make productive back and forth discussions about the stories, by ruling out author participation, impossible until after the contest was over, by which point a lot of people would have lost interest even in their own submissions, probably.

Then again, a great back and forth between posters about the flaws of a story could overwhelm the value of any story itself, and even encourage one to vote for a mediocre story just because a kind of shared experience developed around it. So while commentary is very valuable and entertaining, choosing to make commentary easy has its problems and could seriously undermine a fair selection process.

I guess it depends on what it is that people really want out of the contest -- something more fair but probably much less entertaining and with lower participation, or something entertaining all the way through that may make an unprejudiced selection extremely difficult.