A few pointers Tom:

1. Insulting your contestants is generally not good form.
   
2. This sort of posturing is generally frowned upon.
   
3. When trying to present yourself as an official, a certain amount of decorum is expected. Hey, I'm no message-board saint either, but when making announcements and the such I keep the crass humor and the vulgar language out of it. I'm very anti-censorship, but I'm also very pro-couth (...in it's proper time and place, that is).
   
4. If you desire more competitors in the future, perhaps you should not only pay attention to the civil guidelines laid out above, but also try not to have conflicting schedules with the VERGE community. It does not take a genius (nor a simpering idiot-child for that matter) to figure out that we will be running a winter break competition. Now, I don't have anything against vergers competing over there, but so far I'd say you'd be unlikely to get many people interested in both.
   

I'm not saying any of these are cardinal rules to contest holding or anything, but so far I've not only been impressed with the results in the contests I've held, but also in the number of contestants. Treat them with some respect, son, and maybe you'll get some in return. That is all.

Thank you Omni.

Anyway I think I was well within my rights to be pissed at the complaintive fake entrant who messed with my site for the sole reason that I held the contest end to be 3 AM eastern, and 12 AM Pacific. I guess it wasn't clear that the person complaining did not actually participate, but simply insulted me. I said what I said at the end because frankly we could all benefit from having an actual competition between engines, not single engine.

However, I do apologize for saying the compo results were crap. I didn't read that very carefully before submitting it to realize that seems very insulting to those who did submit. I mean no disrespect towards any participants. What I meant to get across is that I was disappointed that only two teams submitted, and I think two major factors contributed:

1) It was simply a bad time to have one, obviously, as most people seemed to get busy or be busy (and I would have seen this if I knew, truly, when most schools started nowadays).
2) Verge internal compoing screwed up the chances to have verge as an engine used by anyone in the compo.

I say NOW that I am running a compo during Christmas break so that there will be less confusion later. No one can say I didn't warn them, and no one can say "Well we're running one, and it's only verge, so you'd better not run one."

Well, you can say it, but I'll run mine anyway since it's much more of a diverse compo, and I think that makes it a fair test of engines as well as a fair test of skill at making the games. Perhaps in a year or so the zealots will settle down and admit that multi-engine compos are a good idea, just like they have been for years until verge 3 was released. If you want to use verge 3, I welcome it. I equally welcome any other engine that can be gotten for free. Traditionally, this has been verge, ika, and sphere.

So running a compo at the same time is not an insult to the verge community. I do it because I value all the communities of verge, ika, and sphere alike, and invite the use of whichever you feel appropriate. I simply don't like being insulted for trying to run a compo that includes all engines after two verge-only compos in a row. The others deserve a chance too, and it is insulting to say that it shouldn't be done because everyone who used verge in the verge compos is tired of compos. I wanted to run one when the first one was being run and I think it would have been a huge success then, but I held back in favor of the verge-only compo. However, if it was to be done again, I would definitely run mine anyway. That's all I'm saying, and no disrespect to anyone. I am only suggesting we all play at one time.