Well, it pains me to say this, but I have some serious thoughts about shutting down or retiring the fanon battles. Maybe temporarily. Maybe forever.
The reason being is that our fanon battles just aren't garnering enough attention or even popularity for it to be worth trying to run any more. Hardly anybody participates in these battles and even fewer are nominating new candidates to partake in the battles, with many of the recent candidates being selected at the last minute just for something to appear, only to receive at most four votes.
Battle 39 (current battle at the time of this writing) is a misery, just looking at the page. I couldn't find a decent image for both of them so I had to use plumbobs as placeholders. I can't imagine more than 5 people voting in this battle, and that number will probably go down as time progresses.
This doesn't appear to have anything to do with the idea for battles themselves. Our canon battles are doing well. It may have something to do with fewer and fewer people being interested in fanons, let alone contests between fanons. It may also be that we just aren't seeing the quality that is needed to run these fanons. Even with the Fanon Peer Review Team, it's up to the fanon authors themselves to improve their fanon or ask someone to help with it, and I see little of that. Featured fanons and fan fictions were discontinued for this reason, because there just isn't the quality that makes it worth running such systems.
Closing fanon battles does not mean "being closed for eternity." If there is the demand for it, then I'm sure another discussion thread can be opened for consensus for that to happen. But that's the thing: demand. There just isn't any for the fanon battles.
Thoughts? --I am k6ka Talk to me! See what I have done 21:03, July 11, 2015 (UTC)