Hey, it only stopped because someone seems to have failed to start a new comp. When old competitions were pruned, it was, surprisingly, one of the ones to remain.
Stupot and VintageDemon, you didn't really get the spirit of the competition. Words limits are a BIG NO-NO in these things, so as to spark creativity - and if the comp-starter wanted to, he could always set limits himself. But the fun was, it could be a short poem or the prelude to a novel - anything, really. Also, "including 3 items" and such pre-supposed a story, a narrative. I've seen great writing exercises, extremely creative, that would never have happened with such, pardon me for saying, narrow-minded limits. And VintageDemon, with SO many things to choose from in a good piece of text, why should plot be the one thing that declares the winner? The fun of the whole thing was, since everybody has very different styles, it's the whole that appeals or not to the voters. It wasn't a quantifiable thing, and it certainly wasn't canonical. It was just about people choosing the ones they liked best.
Tuomas, the writing competition, in a way, always did include a poerty competition. If Stupot's example ever happened, it might not be possible, but it's not the case. Also, you've linked to some examples with very few restrictions, and for completeness' sakes I have to say I remember a couple of comps that DID have more restrictions - intelligent restrictions.
As for extending the deadline... well, give it a try, but there's a difference between "writing" and "banging a couple of ideas together". It's like the difference between a OROW and a MAGS. Now, there have been great OROW games, but mostly they could use with a lot more polish, while MAGS games usually have that extra level of detail.
Well, I guess it depends on what you're looking for. When I revived the comp, I wanted people to have the chance to actually develop their writing skills, or creativity, or whatever, so I gave them a whole month to do it. It worked - so much so that, surprisingly, it kept on going when many other competitions in this board were pruned. Right now it's on a bit of a standstill, so if you want to try something with other objectives, go ahead.
BTW, the rules in the previous comps were made by me and with the intent I just explained. If you do want to try another route, you'd better write some other set of rules.
