I was thinking on what was said in the 4E5 thread, and I had an idea as to how we can record the progress of the contestants: why not create a separate newsroom? Something like the front page, but for contests only. Here's my idea: Basically, you register your entry beforehand, and once it's registered, you can post another news item that you can put anything into. It would be a lot easier for everyone to see what was happening, because everyone would post updates to that page. Of course, only people who were actually registered competitors or admins would be able to post an update item, otherwise you could have people abusing the system. You could also have an Image of the Day setup, where whenever a competitor posts a news item, they have the option to post a screenshot as well. The screenshot could go beside the post in a thumbnail, but if it's the latest it would go into a separate thumbnail and archive, just like on the front page. We had a screenshot thread during 4E4 last year, and that's sort of what this functions for. It's more "official" than just a thread on a forum. If this system works, you could use it for all future long contests (like the 4 Elements, or anything longer than a couple of weeks). My apologies if that's a little vague, I only got the idea about 5 minutes ago, so obviously it needs some refinement.

I've had plans for a while to adapt the Showcase software to be used for contest entries and WIP stuff. Sadly, I've not had time to do that for 4E5, but I think I've improved upon the usual format at least.

Sounds like something people should just buy GDNET+ for - the development journals :P

EDIT: Or, as was mentioned in the other thread: if you have a thread for each entry, just hack together some code so the posts are displayed in a nested format, rather than a linear one. I'm under the impression that said setting is currently a forum-specific option, so it would probably be messy, but probably easier than coding a whole new system to handle it.