If the stats counter at the bottom of the "Board Index" page hadn't gotten reset at some point, it would show strong evidence that these "birthday parties" have, in past years, been times when members thronged the forum and pounded the server with replies and new threads. But as I recall (not having been here the first few years), most of the posts made during the parties were in the parties.

What's worse, the last few years the forum as a whole has fallen somewhat quiet and almost flat; at one point I got several email notifications from the threads and rooms I'm subscribed to every day (and I'm not subscribed to General Discussion either!), while nowadays sometimes it's no more than one a week.

So let's change that! Fellow Holy Worlders, I challenge you---us all---to go out from the Party Room into the Citadel, the Courtyard, the Scholars' Hall, the Genre forums, and even the Realms Beyond and either find some thread to which you can make a contribution, or create a new thread that will give us much to think about or prompt vigorous discussion.

I and any other judges will sift through all posts made outside the Party Room from the posting of this thread until midnight Sunday night, to count up all the posts that we see as more than minimally substantive, weighty, or contributive; whoever has made the most such posts will be deemed the winner, and we will make an announcement to that effect by Tuesday.

While improvement of the forum is its own reward, the forum leadership will also send the winner a "mystery" work of speculative fiction (in hard copy).

Sounds like a fun idea!

Excellent plan! It's a good way to get things going again.

I think it might have been Mark Twain who once defined a ‘classic’ as “a book that everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read.”

By Mark’s definition, this idea may qualify s a ‘Classic’. I see lots of lauds for the idea, but no one actually placing words into action.

Senior year of undergrad homework writing a short story every week.

Duh, so post one!

With a goodly handful of weighty posts on Sunday afternoon, after a resounding silence throughout the forum in the preceding days, atpollard wins this contest. Thank you for helping to keep Holy Worlds alive !

They're a little iffy when it comes to HW content rules.