Better items this year, but when is the cull?

[James Risner]

This year seems to be better. There are much less items that can be DQ, that grossly violate the formatting rules, and are otherwise bad.

Oddly there seem to be much less items that are on my "must have" list this year.

[Anthony Adam]

I think it may be too early for a cull yet, the field is much closer, so you dont want to risk culling until a bit more sorting is done...

[James Risner]

I'm not asking for cull as much as I'm asking for when they usually do the cull? This is only my second year voting.

[Anthony Adam]

I would imagine after the holidays, maybe 27th or 28th to give as many as possible some time to vote.

[Treyson]

If I remember correctly, we had a cull roughly halfway through the voting process last year, but it's a bit difficult to guess how the cull will happen this year, given the changes in the open call round. In previous years, contestants have been given 3 weeks to enter a submission, and the voting process lasted for 2 weeks. This time 'round, we only had a week to submit, and just around 4 weeks to vote.

Will the cull happen after the first week, or with just one week remaining? Or 2 weeks in, at the midpoint? We could actually have multiple culls--I feel we have the time.

Sorry I just gave you more questions to ask, but that's were we are: uncharted territory.

[R D Ramsey]

The reason to cull is to get rid of items that no voters will vote for. At a certain point, it's a waste of voting to rank items that will remain stuck on the bottom.

There's a few of those this year. The incomplete entries, mostly, and maybe some blatant joke items. But I'm not feeling the need for a cull as urgently this year. Far fewer "wasted" matchups in my opinion.

Still, maybe a small cull 7-10 days in is a good idea. Cut the real problems and keep the rest.