And we can't afford to offer prize money - It might be worth it just for some exposure for new mappers and we could create a map pack of the best ones :)
I'd like to do something like that, but it's really down to Chris_D as he's in charge of competitions.
Just because something is off topic doesn't mean you can discuss things which are against the forum rules. Where would the line be?
We have a topic where you can discuss things other than hl2, but that doesnt mean you can discuss things which go against the forum rules. If that were the case...
Basically it's not going to happen.
Forums are for reading information, not looking at someones huge image sig every other post. It breaks up the flow of the forum, makes people have to scroll further to see posts, and makes pages take longer to load for people on slower connections.
So...