From the discussion, it seemed there was a fairly clear consensus about a desire to move away from themed maps.  I think a compromise that will make most people mostly happy is to have a schedule each year with two 6-month long unthemed competitions and one year long themed competition.

I figure the simplest thing is to have the 6 month contests start on Jan 1st and July 1st, and have the themed contest start on Jan 1st.  Any objections?

Tom agreed to pick the themes, so we never have to vote on that again.  He'll need to pick by the end of the year, so sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving I'll make a post where we can make suggestions to try to influence his opinion.

For the current contests, we allow players 6 months to play/vote.  I suggest we keep that, so that players have plenty of time to try out the maps and can get a couple games in.

Prize money is up to Tom & I will PM him to see how he wants to structure the prizes between the 3 contests once all the other details are worked out.

Maps in the themed contest are not eligible for the open contest.  Theme adherence is in the eye of mapmaker and judges, so mapmakers are required to tell me which contest they want their map to be in.   If someone creates a map and passes review, but does not ask to put it in the contest, it's not eligible to win.  I'll make a post a month before each contest asking players to post if they want to compete in the contest.

Since their didn't seem to be any strong consensus on voting, I suggest we just leave the voting the way it has been, since that was working well enough.