One of my pet peeves, as someone who fairly frequently enters composition contests, is the professionalism and respect that some of these competition organizers seem to lack.
I recently was made aware of the results of two competitions I had entered over the last few months, and the stark contrast between the two made me mad. I even sent an email praising the application process to the organizers of the first competition after I entered because they tried so hard to have each applicant remain anonymous (they even wanted the bios to be anonymous, which is somewhat impossible but a valiant effort nonetheless, as it makes it more likely that compositions will be selected based on merit alone). Some other great competitions email you to inform you that they have received your application and sometimes even include the date of when they will make decisions (and these are usually the same ones that send timely notifications of the results). The best competitions send semi-personalized rejection (or acceptance) emails in addition to the larger announcement, as opposed to the ones that merely send a mass email with the winners to inform you that you haven’t won, although that is far better than no notification whatsoever.
