Thank you for a cogent and level headed analysis of this. I've won 2 challenges on Vocal since joining in February (one 1st and one 2nd), so I really have very little to complain about. That being said, I am a stickler for rules and in the SFS, I spent hours cutting my stories down, sometimes abandoning them outright and starting fresh, to follow the word limit. So the Barn Challenge and the extra 850 words rubs me the wrong way, and I still have to ask, not being mean, but if the entry was so good that it prompted the judges to overlook the rules, why, pray tell, did that story not take the top prize? I'm hanging in for now though, Vocal has been good to me.