Showcase: Wrapping Week One, Readying Week Two

OK folks, today is the last day to vote for this first week of the Weblog Showcase.
A bit before midnight PDT, the final links will be gathered and counted, and first thing tomorrow morning (probably around 6am PDT) our first winner will be announced.
And then, next week’s contest will begin. I’ve received quite a bit of feedback this week, and so will be slightly changing the approach for next week. Here’s the deal:
– Because folks were still figuring things out this week, I’ve decided to waive the prohibition on blogs entering the Showcase twice for next week only. If you meet the ‘newness’ criteria (which for next week is having started blogging after March 11th), you can submit your blog to the contest even if you entered this week. (Except if you win this week. Don’t be greedy). But you will have to resubmit; I’ll be clearing out this week’s entries tomorrow morning to start with a blank slate. And I’d suggest using a new post for next week, just to keep things fresh, although that’s up to you.
– By popular demand, the list of entries will be presented in random order next week, shuffled each time the page is loaded. I will continue to display the number of links and current rank of each entry, however; I think this is a reasonable compromise.
– There will be a new requirement for anyone who wants to submit their weblog to the Showcase. To be eligible to win the week, you must link on your own weblog to at least three other contestants. (And by the way: like any weblog, you need to make sure you’re registered in the Ecosystem for your votes to count. I haven’t fully integrated the two yet…) I don’t have the validation code in place to enforce this yet, but by next weekend, I will (and I’ll check the leaders manually if I have to). It occurs to me that without making this an across-the-board requirement, some contestants might actually have not linked to others because they knew it would put them at a disadvantage. I think asking the contestants to give a little link-love themselves to help their fellows out is reasonable, and many participants followed this approach anyway, so let’s try it next week and see how it works.