I know it feels like Round Six just ended (and to me, it just did - as this post was created right after I put up the R6 master list), but we need to do some serious thinking about the next round.

For the sixth round, the mods made some changes to the rules, hoping that they would encourage greater participation by requiring less oversight, specifically, not requiring interim drafts that meet the 75% word count requirements, no mandatory check-ins. In two cases, this change resulted in stories that might not otherwise have been written, but that was balanced out by the high number of dropouts in the last weeks leading up to the posting period - well after artists had made their selections and started working. I think, for Round Seven, we're going to go back to the traditional requirements with mandatory check-ins and rough draft turn-ins at the mid-point. Yes, it's more work for us mods, but having so many authors drop out when theoretically, their stories should be complete is disheartening.

To accommodate the second round of the Reverse Big Bang, we pushed up the start of Round Six to June, but I think that it was also one of the reasons why we had so many late dropouts. For a lot of people, summer is an easier time to get the words out. Having a posting date in November means running up against NaNoWriMo and the start of the holiday season. So, we're seriously thinking about moving the start of Round Seven back to April 1. But we want your input on this. If writers and artist really preferred the later start date, we need to know.

Also, is there anything we, as mods, can do to help? In R5, we toyed with the idea of having a regular chat session to help people get over their humps, but for various reasons, it didn't get off the ground. Should we do a prompting post like other fandoms do? Some Big Bangs don't allow authors to pick their posting date - the mods assign them. Would this help writers stay on schedule?

So, therefore, a poll:

[Poll #2035394]