That's my plan, I prefer 1 awesome review over 20 meh ones.

and how does this prevent a person from writing a review on the album <|> now and submitting it only after the challenge has started? Or is this aspect unimportant or decided amongst the mods?

(some edits later)

It doesn't, honestly. That was one of the frequent questions before V2 when we did these. It's just an honor system, pretty much. You aren't supposed to, but we can't be sure if you did it or not and it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of the challenge. Starting a few hours before is cool, but stockpiling for a week isn't. But again, we cannot do anything about these "cheaters," and it really is small compared to the point of the challenge. If submitting twenty reviews five minutes after the challenge starts makes you feel awesome, fine. But as Tony said, we nominate and judge the winners (1st, 2nd, 3rd, just for shits and giggles) based on quality, not quantity. As the old dark one once said before his great seclusion: "Better you submit one quality review than twenty mediocre ones."

Oh yeah, third place winners will get a gift from me, a random unopened CD. I need to clean house on my inventory.

Well, HB was willing to give 2 prices and I have some silly stuff to give, I could include them in the 1st and 2nd winners' packages.

Also, Gunther will make a new thread for the challenge soon.

So I know the end game for the website is to have users write as many quality reviews as possible within that time frame, with the aspect of the prizes/places for the sake of doing it the best way possible.

What about for the actual reviewers? Since you guys have been mentioning that it's a matter of quality over quantity does that mean that a user can submit a single review and "win" or that the amount of quality reviews placed also counts for the individual ratio? For instance, a user submits an eight pointer and another one submits, let's say three five pointers. Who wins? The one trick pony or the consistently good but not great one? I know this isn't written in stone but I was curious as to how the "score" would be kept. I've never played this game.

It's also my first challenge, I guess we'll gather all the mods around the old oak table and decide. But yeah, if a winner is chosen because of his sole review, it's gonna be a great one!

Better warm up then and put my thinking hat on. There indeed a few obscure and virgin albums I might review for this.

I'm making a new thread where we can organize and plan, coming soon!

The challenge sounds great and will surely improve the review quality of this site for a while. I'm looking forward to read many detailed reviews about obscure and virgin records in the next weeks or so. If I happen to have a good idea, I'll also try to contribute some stuff.