I received this suggestion from a member:

I've been wondering who has entered a couple of sigs in past SOTW contests, and I thought it might be cool if the admins put the name of the person who entered the sig under each entry in the voting topic after the contest is over.. I know they usually post entries in their individual galleries but it's a pain to go through all of them to find one sig and there's still the chance that they're too lazy to put them in their galleries in the first place.. once again this is just a suggestion

What do you think?

Should names of the participants be disclosed after the voting is done?
Or should they be kept anonymous?

I think AFTER the voting is done is a good idea. It would be nice to know who did what. Sometimes you can tell who it is by style, but not often.

Why is it a "good" idea though? Aside from knowing who made who...
Would it benefit the winner to know who he has beaten?
Would it benefit the second placer to let others know he almost won?
Would it give the voters a piece of mind to know who they've voted for?
Would it make the people who got no votes feel the desire to make better sigs next time?
Would it increase the quality of sigs submitted perhaps that names will be attached to them?
OR Would it allow people to put less value to the criticisms from people they've bested many times?

(i.e. "I am better than ________ because I have beaten him in SOTW 5 times..." )

o.o

Not so much that, but out of curiosity, to know what this person can do. I think it's not a bad idea.

My main concern is that it might decrease the amount of people who wants to participate.

I don't see why somebody wouldn't participate just because their name was posted after voting. They must be extremely sensitive to their placement, in that case.

I added a poll.
I'll be closing it in 5 days.
This week's SOTW might be the first to impliment such a thing if it's approved.
Approval is entirely up to this poll.

I offer a different solution from the member's suggestion.

How about he/she tells you which signature interest them. And acting as the staff member who runs these contest you could PM the said signature's creator if he/she minds you revealing their identity to this one individual.

If they do not. Then you can just tell the curious member who did it, and they can do the whole PMing and talking themself.

If they do mind the revealing of their indentity. Well then, tough luck to curiosity I suppose.

That would take time though, but it's an alternative.
How about we keep a list of people who don't mind their names being revealed after the competition. Those will be the people whose names will be placed on their sigs after the voting.

That sounds good, I've often wondered who has entered. I've thought about it, seeing as you guys used to put the names on the entries before.

when they submit the entry you could have them also submit if they want their name revealed after the contest.
if they don't specify then take it as a "I don't care" and reveal it. or you could PM them and ask.

Again, that would take time, if it has to be done every week.
I think the best option here is have a permanent list.
Some people forget about the rules almost every week, like filesize, or dimensions of sig. There is no doubt they might forget something like that again.

I think I'll end the poll now and just start the list.