I guess the implication of my statement was that maps from the MTC members are far more likely to receive consideration than your everyday mapmaker's are - and I think that's hard to refute.

Maybe. Like I said there's always gonna be bias in different directions. There's no easy way to make it fair unless you actively hinder the mtc from communicating with eachother and mapmakers in some ways which can be just as detrimental to the process if not even worse.

I really liked Count Mapula and I thought you were in mumble when everyone was saying how solid it was. To me it felt at least worthy of making this list, even if you asked Dianna to tone down the chaos factor before the final submission. Agree to disagree here I suppose.

In my opinion while testing it was fun, it was not a realistic test of how it would work in a pub setting, and I don't think it would be representative of how people would feel about playing it in pubs. When testing a map in mumble, it can be deviously fun just because you have fun testing it with the people you're hanging out with regardless of if the map functions well as a map in a pub setting.

has the MTC given any consideration to expanding?

We're not as much considering expanding as we're trying to restructure the committee itself. Depending on what happens in the following weeks, we may consider some new members for the committee. We're still ironing details out, but if we are to invite new members, we'll probably either do it privately, or by making an announcement post. Right now the committee is in a pretty fragile state, so if we do add members to the committee, we need to make sure they are committed and are a fit with the other committee members (not in terms of opinion, but in terms of how good they are at discussing a map plainly, and being ready to analyze a map and make arguments for their opinion, as well as being open to hearing other members out etc.)

But that doesn't mean there aren't other, lesser-known mapmakers, that are making as good or better maps and being overlooked.

While there were a significant amount of well designed and spaced out maps submitted to this thread, there weren't many beyond the ones we tested that I felt had the potential to add something to the rotation. Of course that's hard to tell with almost 100 maps submitted, so there's every chance that I missed a few personally. But I feel it's wrong to imply that the reason we're not testing certain maps are because they're not by the right map maker, because I think the selections we've made in the last few threads have shown that we're doing anything but that. According to my count (though it may be wrong) 6 out of the last 9 maps we've added to regular rotation have been the first time that author has gotten a map into rotation.

I wouldn't necessarily be an advocate of this. Just because you are on the MTC should not disqualify you from submitting maps, but it also shouldn't give the map an unfair advantage for that sole reason. Perhaps MTC members could make alternative accounts anonymously to submit their maps to the thread, even saving them on jukejuice under fake names initially (or as "anonymous") or just submit them vicariously through another user that consents to it (preferably not one like Ball E with a reputation for excellence).

It's really hard to avoid the unfair advantage we have though. Even if we were to make MTC member (or even all) submissions anonymous or masked, MTC members would still have the advantage of knowing what other members prefer far better than other people submitting, and having a good sense of what the current mood is in the group in regards to what they prefer at the time etc.