The Remix Duello

Begging pardon, but the reason I and at least one or two other people I've talked to did this challenge is not because it's so restrictive, but because it's a remix challenge like Remix Redux, but with much less onerous eligibility requirements. I mostly write in tiny fandoms, but have a few fics in large media fandoms. The kamikaze restriction is not to me the essence of what the challenge is about and making it less restrictive does not undermine what's important about the challenge. (Also, equally fundamental to the challenge is the greater control authors have over what stories of theirs are remixed. That can be preserved while giving remixers more flexibility than you're proposing.)

I missed the accessibility concerns. I don't think you made it clear that that was the function of the Melee (and if mitigating deadlines was a reason, I don't understand why you didn't open up the Melee until people had submitted their stories last year, rather than giving everyone more time to write a Melee fic), but I think those accessibility concerns are important.

If part of the point is mitigating deadlines, perhaps a greater commitment to posting notifications of new stories added to the collection would be valuable. I honestly have no idea if stories were added to the collection last year after the challenge deadline- as far as I was concerned the challenge ended when the challenge ended.