I wonder if it might be worth incorporating the delay into some element of the contest or "lore" itself. Just a thought.

That links in with some of the points brought up in discussions on the Discord Server—there is a real need for growth. While this, let's say, "consultation" would have probably been more productive earlier and in anticipation to the Wing 3, that is a bit irrelevant now that the run-up period passed. Thus, best option now.

Delaying the Wing 3 contest will allow both staff and userbase to get some footing. And, as you mentioned, they can recover from 9K for those participating in both.

Regarding the need for growth brought up earlier—new staff and new people will be essential. But. Having to think of that on a time crunch will not be effective, which is why I think that delay for the con is beneficial in this aspect too. Unfortunately I am not caught up in recent staff changes, so can't add more than that.

I know this will be managed well, as always. Fingers crossed for all of you o7

And given that some people will be excited for the idea of having the position of .00, why not expand it so that lower places get .01, .02, etc etc, making the "missing" section of articles a more noticeable thing as articles fill wing three while we wait, give a greater impact to every placing entry, not just first. Might help with the potential loss of excitement? Wing two already did this, but better (giving 1.00, 2.00, etc). I vote we do that again.

Current thinking by staff is that, given the opportunity cost of losing attention/readership we might be able to gain from promoting our contest to SCP users as a major event, it may be desirable to delay the contest itself while opening up a "bare-bones" wing three. This would have blank .00 slots and lack the full "theming" that wings one and two have, though we would likely post some in-universe flavor to point to its current status. Posting would continue as normal, filling up the .1, .2, .3 slots for the next two months while the 9k contest plays out, and then, possibly after a bit of time to let writers recover/re-energize, we would announce our wing three contest.

This, to me, seems more desirable than the friction of 2 simultaneous "definitive" contests happening on the site, and though I think it will be a bit awkard in the short term, there are ways to alleviate that, and that this would be much better for the growth and health of the site in the long run, allowing us to try to better take advantage of an opportunity to increase our readership and bring new blood to the site, especially after a time where we've, in some ways, taken steps back in the past month or two.

However, this is a significant enough decision that staff would not want to do it unilaterally. We would like to hear user feedback on this, especially concerns and questions, and if there are other ideas or proposals people have about how this situation might be dealt with.