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18/02/07 Irish Blog Awards is a No Go.
UPDATE: Overnight I’ve received a number of positive emails from people not wanting to comment publicly. Thanks to all of you.
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Well so much for my 6 nominations in the Irish Blog Awards. Not one made it to the finals like last year.
I don’t like being either A) a moan, or B) a bad-loser but maybe my impression of what a good ‘blog’ is, may be very different from the rest of the world. That, or there is a fundamental issue with the finalist decided by a ‘public voting’ system when there are very very few voters in the pool - between a very tight community. I didn’t make a large attempt to swing the vote by campaigning my readers to vote for me - nor ’send it round the office’ to collect votes. Only today someone approached me and said “I’ve voted for you on 10 different email addresses on all your sites” (mind you they did it on the same IP!)… I thought god, if this is going on everywhere the votes are going to be simply a popularity contest.
So - let’s do some comparisons of the finalists, and this is with no disrespect to the blogs or people I’m talking about here -it’s purely in relation to the category they’ve been voted for under (by other people): ‘Best Designed Blog’ - how are standard blog templates A B & C finalists? How is a D a best ‘newcomer’ if started in September 2005? How are E and F, while very funny, ‘Most Humerous Post’ if just linking to someone else’s joke - not their own content? The possible “Best Irish Sports Blog” could be G with approximately 3 posts a months actually about a sport, the other 95% is Arts & Culture - and justified for that award.
This post comes across quite bitter - I promise I don’t mean it that way, just a few observations. I wonder do we need to look this public voting system with such a small community of voters? Damien did say to expect some shocks. My gripes aside, congratulations to all who got to the finals, seriously - good on ya Damien for organising this.
UPDATE (1 minute later!):
I’d like to hear about what the actual bloggers thought about being nominated for these categories by other people, or do they feel they’d be stronger (and better represented) under ones picked only by themselves.
Tags: General, Observations
10 Comments
Some fair points, but I don’t think the system can be improved upon in any way as it stands - these are the realities of a public vote and it’s all about getting enough people to vote fairly to cut out the crap (and I’m not talking about spam, just the votes that people make for friends despite them being far from the best).
if it were decided completely in private I think you’d get a quarter of the interest from everyone because it would just be one (or some people) saying what they like, and then it quickly becomes an issue of an “elite” deciding who is good and who is not… even if Damien or someone else made cuts to the public longlist based on what they thought was applicable or not you’d have the same problem.
While not voting system is perfect, I think the public vote as it stands is best. You’ll always get some people who get votes from friends and family despite not deserving it, but a good blog will get a good audience and will get good votes.
As for the design award, I think some of that boils down to people voting for the most visually appealing blog (or even the blog they like the most) - I’m sure many of the voters didn’t think “how much work did they personally put into this?”, and my own blog is proof that putting your own work into a wordpress template is not always a good thing :D
It was always going to come down to being a popularity contest. And just like Pop Idol, the highest number of respondents select the winner.
I’m a daily reader of BS newsfeeds and hope you’ve gained readers through the IBA publicity.
BifSniff too had six nominations, and while I was momentarily somewhat disappointed that none came to fruition, I’m certainly not bitter either.
How the process could be improved is a tricky question, I think from keeping an eye on various blog awards all over the gaff there is no easy way to keep everybody happy.
I’m happy that even up to this point it was all good fun and everybody got a bit of publicity out of it, and as it happens some free consulting!
However if the Blog Awards wish to continue improving I think it would be worth considering the points made above, they are certainly valid.
I think, right now there is huge value in the IBA in the networking and publicity, both on and offline, but with tweaks and improvements made, the actual awards won could be very prestigious - I’m not convinced they are right now.
Now, I must go off and have another go at Twenty Major.
Total agreement Frank. The publicity (and huge sense of community) are great for everyone within the blogging community.
I am of course looking at the above with a very narrow view but I believe we need to put our very best forward if we want to get accepted mainstream.
Someone else can run the awards next time. I’m sick of dealing with the blogging community. After all the nastiness, bitterness and accusations in the past 24hours, I have sfa love left for most bloggers. I certainly feel like a fool for putting so much effort into this.
nastiness, bitterness and accusations? I hope I haven’t contributed - My remarks were an attempt to improve it year on year. Sorry if offence was caused Damien - you’ve done a stellar job as a volunteer too.
I’m a bit taken aback by your comment too Damien - I think valid observations were made, and I didn’t pick up on, or intend, any nastiness, bitterness or accusations.
Voting system needs to be improved by the sounds of it. Perhaps if blogs were banned from soliciting votes - yet permitted to say they were being nominated…
Isn’t there guidelines drawn up to help voters understand ‘how’ they should vote? I haven’t looked into this but voting criterion is standard stuff for any kind of awards.
I’m recommending the addition of an award for blogs to my BIMA executive. The first thing you need to do is set some ground rules.
here’s how the ‘Bloggies’ did it. Clever.
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From January 1, 2007 until 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5) on Thursday, January 11, anyone was able to nominate their favorite weblogs.
That Monday, January 15, 200 randomly selected voters received an e-mail. It listed the weblogs that received the most nominations in ten random categories. They had until 10:00 PM EST on Sunday, January 21 to privately submit their five favorites (six for Weblog of the Year) for each category. The five (or six for Weblog of the Year) receiving the most votes became finalists. I (Nikolai Nolan) only voted for the panel in the case of a tie for fifth place. This panel was on an opt-in policy.
On Thursday, January 25, the finalists were announced and voting opened again to choose the winners.
Voting closed at 10:00 PM EST on Friday, February 2. The winners will be posted on Monday, March 12.
Hi Robin
Just wanted to justify my nomination as Best Newcomer, despite starting my blog in September 2005. My blog only seems to have been discovered by other Irish bloggers in the last few months - up until then my audience was made up of other infertile bloggers and readers from around the world (who still represent the vast majority of commenters). So I feel as if I’m a newcomer to the Irish blogosphere, if not necessarily to blogging.
F
