essentially your not doing anything different but using less wick... the channels themselves feed juice to the ends of your short wick just as it does with long wick... it also acts like a Dam to impede flow through the gaps of the ODY ceramic and ceramic housing... I have actually vaped a tank bone dry with my coil method... story goes... vaping away like normal just put in a new battery then vape gets weaker and weaker really fast cant be batteries its fresh right.... so I open it up and its dry as a bone... I'm thinking great my tank must of dumped into my catch tank on the GGTS but a look inside its also bone dry... I just hadn't filled it in a while.... and what little juice I did have left was all in my lil 1/2" piece of wick which was just about dry itself... but from this mistake I did learn that less juice is wasted using a short wick as well and that by the act of vaping itself all juice eventually finds its way to the wick to be vaped....
Now honestly as far as shorts are concerned as long as your center pin wire is securely tucked into its channel there can be no issue... if you use 510 to 510 adapters or the like you have a better chance of shorting out your GG that way than with my coil method... which is essentially the reason I no longer use a 510 connection and only use the GGTS/Ody base...
Just washed out my UFS mode ody (NOT BEING CRITICAL, it just won't work due to nature of bottom feeding ody with the UFS!), and I'll give your method a try with kilned nextel, no wick in the channels, and in short mode. I'll post my thoughts after I run a full tank through it, which I'll do with as little bias as possible.
Word up about the adapters! I only use them on the iAtty+air control tank. Best thing they can be used for is taking em apart to swoop the silicon ring to add an extra layer of protection between the post and the ceramic housing.