Hi Daveido,
I'm glad that you had a positive experience and that this pushed you to do something new. I saw the self-illuminated buzz in your thread it was great.
I also think it's a good idea to have a short critique by the judges on every piece, its especially nice when so many people worked so hard to feel like someone at least took the time to have a proper look at your work and its rewarding to get feedback for it. This challenge just brought such an incredible amount of good work and to be honest it was surprising how many people joined in. I think the previous challenges since we brought them back just a few months ago have been pretty clear cut in terms of the winner nothing like this. We'll have to have a chat about it here, hopefully I can drag words out of their mouths and scribble them down 
Finally I feel a bit sad that so many of you got upset by this challenge and that it ended on a note like this. As the same thing happened last time but maybe not to such a large extent as the challenge was smaller I've tried really hard to post up clear guidelines for what gets taken into consideration and what's allowed and what is not. So please have a read through this challenge and if it is unclear in any way I would like to know now please. I can see how this is more of a misunderstanding of the criteria which we obviously did not make clear enough, than sharp critiques of winning images and I would hate to see this turn into a flame war over something that was supposed to be a fun learning experience. The best thing to do though is to try and make the best out of it and hopefully we can improve the challenges through this rather than destroying them. Let's focus on solutions.
Also we would have liked to send this to a poll but with a cash prize it simply is not possible to do so. only yesterday did I see some crazy mum posting on lots of expat forums about how everyone had to go vote in her 9-year old daughters photo challenge because she just had to WIN and not saying that it would happen here but it would definitely be a potential source of conflict.
Nilla
First thing, Are my posts invisible, hello, can anyone see this? I posted the same thing as Daveido, and no-one seamed to notice. Makes me wounder if anyone even saw my entry.
Second,I think there was a lot of stress built up over the long delay in the judging. I know that was the case for me. But there is no ill will from me.
I, unfortunately will not be able to take part in the next challenge, I've got too much work and deadlines looming, I'll be back when things calm down for me.
Life is a funny thing,
Beauty is a blossom,
If you want to get your finger bit...
Poke it at a Possum.