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I've since had more thoughts on how time limits could be handled.
Generally, the idea behind the method used in the last tournament was a
good one, but that particular method was designed for manual enforcement
in games that were played strictly by email. At that time, the games in
the tournament were played mainly through the old PBM system or by mailing
ZSG files back and forth. Because of this, it made sense to use gross
measurements of excess time. Since all games in this tournament will be
played with Game Courier, which logs all games and doesn't depend upon
email, it is possible to use precise measurements of time.

Taking into consideration matters of fairness raised in previous comments,
here is what I now propose. Each player will begin with a buffer of extra
time equal to 24 days but measured in seconds, a total of 2073600 seconds.
After your opponent moves, you will have a grace period of 24 hours,
precisely 86400 seconds, to make your next move without any time penalty.
If you take more than 24 hours to make your next move, each second you
take beyond the free 24 hours will be subtracted from your buffer of extra
time. If you use up your buffer of extra time, then you will automatically
lose the game.

Here is my rationale for this method. First, it encourages, without
strictly enforcing, a pace of at least one move per day. As long as you
check your games at the same time each day, making moves in any for which
it is your turn, you should be able to play indefinately without incurring
any time penalities. Second, it accomodates people who can't play on
weekends by giving you enough extra time to play only on week days for a
period of at least 12 weeks. If you make your moves at the same time
Monday through Friday, there would be 72 hours between your Friday move
and your Monday move. Your cost for skipping the weekend would be 72 hours
minus the free 24 hours and whatever interval there was between your
Friday move and your opponent's next move. So skipping the weekend would
normally cost something close to but under 48 hours of time. A buffer of
24 days should also be ample for people who normally move regularly but
have situtations that take them away from the web for a while, such as
vacations, lots of homework for students, lots of grading for teachers,
hospital stays, or whatever. It's important to allow for such things, but
it's also important to set limits on how long anyone can hold up the
tournament.

An alternative way of doing this would be to initially offer a smaller
buffer of extra time, then to reward players with extra hours of time each
time they made a move within the grace period. For the sake of fairness,
this reward would have to be the same amount no matter how late into the
grace period a player moved. This may encourage players to quicken the
pace when they are able.