Spent a few minutes filling it out carefully, and then it told me that my session had expired or something similar when I tried to submit it.  :\

IMO, the biggest reason there is little participation in the OGA weekly challenge is that there is no real motivation to enter. If people have some sort of prize or reward to compete for, not only will we get more entries, but people will be more likely to submit higher-quality entries in order to have a better shot at winning. Note that I'm not in any way suggesting a cash prize should be offered, I personally would be against cash prizes (if we even had the funds to do that anyway).

Now I've been hanging out at Pixel Joint for the past couple months, and the way they set up their weekly challenges is quite interesting. What they do is they have a point/rank system, where you get a certain amount of points each time you submit art, post a comment, rate a piece, submit news, etc. When you get to a certain amount of points, you advance to a new PJ 'rank'. For entering the weekly challenge, you automatically get 20 points just for participating. For the first week after the newest weekly challenge is announced, participants have that entire week to create and submit their art. The following week no more entries are accepted, but that entire second week is used to allow the community to vote for their favorite entries. At the end of that second week the winners (1st, 2nd, and 3rd places) are announced, and the top three finishers get trophies to add to their Pixel Joint trophy galleries "for all to see and envy", and the top three get an additional point bonus on top of the 20 they get just for participating. All those participants who didn't place in the top three get an "honorable mention" ribbon to place in their Pixel Joint galleries.

The thing about the Pixel Joint system is that by giving away rewards (PJ points and digital trophies) they encourage far greater participation in the weekly challenge than they would probably receive otherwise. I'm not sure whether or not it would be feasible to do this (or some form of this) on OGA (I know there is already some sort of point system in place, but it's rather ambiguous -at least I've always found it so), but basically, as I see it, the issue with the OGA weekly challenge boils down to lack of motivation. Provide a tangible benefit for members who submit high-quality art (or just submit art) to the challenge, and there's a lot more motivation going around.

I also got kicked off the survey. :(

I agree with artisticdude in that rewards would be nice, especially if we could pick. I'd be proud to drink my bourbon from an OGA rocks glass. Others might like t-shirts, mugs, buttons/pins, etc. While the point system is cool, winning isn't as awesome. Maybe there could be points + a special small prize for winning.

In addition to the lack of prize, here are a couple of factors also worth considering:

1. Who knew about it the competition? Perhaps there are many people who would've participated had they known.
2. I'd bet many of the potential participants are students. Many students are too busy this time of year. Such circumstances aren't the best to get a competition rolling. Some people might not even have the time to learn about the competition in the first place.
3. Maybe weekly challenges are too frequent, at least for now. Who has time to make a whole spriteset in a week? And if you're buying prizes, that could get pricey. A compromise would be to split monthly challenges into categories.

Aside from introducing a point system & co., I suggest an experiment. Create a challenge due on the new year. It gives people time to hear about it; most students will have the time off and many working people will be using up leftover vacation days. A whole month gives artists the time to make something good. If the resources are available, split the competition based on art style and have a small prize for each category.

Advertizing? I'm against spam, but it would help if more people knew about the competitions. Perhaps some of us would be willing to post flyers at nearby art schools or something.

We could also contact instructors/departments who would let their students know. After all, it's a not-for-profit cause and doing well would look good on a resume. BTW, I suspect this that it would be most effective to get students on board at the beginning of their semesters. So maybe just post flyers for now.

Even a copy of a humble bundle may work as a really good prize.

The thing is that this kind of events should have prizes and honour mentions.

The people who doesn't win, shouldn't be losers, they deserve some credit for participate on the contest.

You should post it in the news thing where this is posted, to make it easier to see.

I haven't been hanging out here for very long, but I can tell you why I haven't entered any challenges yet.  The goal hasn't been clear cut enough, and there's been no advertisement of who won.  For example, the smart phone game challenge was just too broad a category, and there wasn't any information on what the restrictions really were.  Did low poly count mean 500 or 100 poly characters?  What was the screen resolution for us pixel artists?  Why not do a challenge like "Make something for a new Indiana Jones game", where the goal is a restricted, but interesting?  Also, advertising who won should be on the front page with the art challenge, something like "Congratulations to Newcomer with their entry: the ghost of christmas past!"