All you guys opinions are great. I like smoke ninja's idea to find a long standing member that would want to tackle taking on some of the TD load, so the challenges could be more regulated.
I get a lot of you like it the way it is, and to you its just for fun. And honestly, if i was planning on doing a similar cook around the time of said challenge, it wouldn't bother me if i crapped the bed, or won. But some challenges are expensive as hell. Especially Brisket that is not cheap in basicly any state not TX. So its hard to justify taking on that sort of challenge.
Please don't use payed members as a reason to discredit my opinions. It shouldn't matter why a member should have a voice, and for new members, its not very productive to have new members get more serious with the forum.
More regulated? I'm not even sure how to take that. Was there something that wasn't regulated properly that you're referring to? An example would be helpful please. We have a set of rules we go by. Entries not following the rules are DQed, and deadlines are hard and fast. Other than that, we just want everyone to have fun.
Look, first of all, this is for fun. Its not a competition. Sometimes we have prizes, sometimes we don't. Most of the guys who participate regularly will tell you, they don't care whether they get a prize or not. If you don't enter because you think someone else's entry is better, that's more of your own problem than a problem with the current format.
As to cost - Most the time we try to select things that people in a BBQ FORUM would be making anyway. Brisket is top of that list. We do prime rib at the holidays (and turkey) for a reason. Soups in winter, etc etc. We also have never had a lack of entries in a brisket throwdown, or had anyone complain about cost, mainly because if they didn't want to buy a brisket, they just didn't. There are usually multiple throwdowns running at once so people can pick and choose, and probably will be cooking some of what we have up anyway. We often have the categories basically open, maybe some theme like "a happy meal" which is just any meal that makes you happy. Pretty sure everyone can afford that one.
Just putting up a poll complete with links takes me over an hour. That's my lunch hour every Monday. My entire lunch hour. Expecting us to keep track of who entered what for multiple TDs at once over two week stretches just so we might get a couple more entries is kind of insane. I am not paid for this position, and I pay my own membership which comes with 100 PMs. There's no way I would ever agree to that. I doubt you would find anyone else who would be willing to do that either for more than a week or 2. And besides, if you know that your entry kind of sucks, or that you've seen better, wouldn't you know that people are still going to enter that caliber of work every week anyway and not enter because of the expectation? I mean, every week the entries are pretty much the same level of work, I do not understand how just not seeing them makes it better? Also, if there is a week with few or weak entries, it also motivates more people to enter, the exact opposite of what you're proposing. Not seeing entries could lead to far less and not as good entries if there is not visibility of what each other is doing. When I started I was entering Iphone snaps. Seeing what others entered motivated me to up my game, not to quit. I guess its up to you as to which path you choose.
I don't understand the last comment about payed members either. We give all members equal voice here. Many free members have won throwdowns. We also listen to and take all suggestions seriously. We typically take more of an overall consensus of all the regularly participating users and try to go with the way that the majority agree on. The TDs have evolved a lot over the years to better suit everyone involved and keep an even, and more importantly, fun, playing field.
(I will never vote for myself, just my personal rule) 
