User blog comment:Mister.. E./Themes on Featured Character/@comment-1441098-20130211002509/@comment-1874924-20130211021114

Toad, if you want to change it, then you don't need anyone's approval. The reason I asked you to be in charge of FC was because we needed to give someone the final authority to select themes (and, I'll be blunt, because I didn't want to end up having to maintain all five Feature ballots--especially because I don't really follow FC in the first place), but "no theme" has always been a viable option.

The themes are simply something that we inherited from the days when Sprink was running the FC ballot. I haven't noticed whether we've had an "open" month lately, but Sprink had a no-theme ballot every three months.

Frankly, though, the notion that having no theme will increase nominations and voter turnout strikes me as wishful thinking. I tried that with Featured Quote, and it didn't work. I'm afraid that people are simply losing interest in the Features. In terms of voter turnout and number of nominations, only Featured User is really healthy right now--and there's now a proposal to restrict that, for what reasons I can only guess.