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December 04, 2004

Letters to the Editor

I am not sure how many people actually read the comments below the polls but as a minor assistant in the process I do read them and what worries me is that some of these people vote in real elections...

Let me take one heavily edited example to show you what I mean:

What moron picked these blogs. None of them are worth anything. You ignored BlogX and BlogY (not to mention my personal blog which is the best in the world). In fact this is the lamest representation of CategoryX blogs I've ever seen. Not a single one is worth reading and there are so many great blogs in this category that are not listed.

This was not an individual complaint, it was made by collecting a few complaints together but you can understand the general thrust of the argument.

Well I helped with four categories. In each case the starting point was the nomination list. Some of the nominations were obvious (they included links), some were not (Google search required). Some blogs got nominated lots of times but didn't actually fit the category. Some websites got listed that didn't (on inspection) apepar to even be blogs. OK, you work through it and you end up with maybe 40 sites (after elimination). Now you need to try and add a little balance - say you get all right wing sites or maybe all from one country. To leaven the mixture you check out one of the blog aggregators that does regional lists (like Globe of Blogs. If it was relevant, check who was in this category last year. Finally use a webring or local site listing. If you can't find one, use the blogs highest on the ecosystem in the list youy have and check their blogrolls. Now you should have about 60 sites (or thereabouts). Check them all. Eliminate ones that appear to be dead (e.g. they have a farewell message, you can't resolve the site name, 404 error). Maybe 45 in the list. Try to achieve some balance - if the majority of the blogs are say left-handed, overweight, white males who can't spell - eliminate some (at random if necessary). I tried here to be very careful about my own bias. The fact that I don't like author T or disagree with the political opinions of S or the moral stance of R should not be a reason for rejecting them. In most cases this cuts the list to about 30. Now go through them again, if two are very similar in look/feel/approach - drop one (at random if there is no other reason) to provide variety. If some are mainly copies or links while others have more original content - drop them. Keep pruning until you reach twenty. Now try to sort them in a way that makes sense (I tended to use visitors per day) because blogs with more visitors are more likely to get votes. Now you send the list of to Wizbang with those most likely to win at the top.

Wizbang now culls further based on matters like duplicate blogs (although in the end a number of people were checking for that). This final cull is why the submitted lists have 20 names on them - some can be culled and still have 15 for the vote. In some cases Wizbang may add or change things if he feels the balance is not quite there (I know he added a couple of good ones I missed to one list and he rearranged a blog from last spot so that it didn't drop off the list). The lists are circulated around the assistants (see this post for a list of helpers) to check for doubles - we found a lot but we still missed a few - possibly because we are only human :-)

Now let me deal with the specifics of the complaint:

- What moron picked these blogs? - Well actually I am one of the people who picked these blogs (at least in four categories). The other people can be found in the post linked above.

- None of them are worth anything. - That is a pretty brave opinion. Many of the blogs (including my own) are at Mammal level or above - are you really so confident that they are worthless. Maybe not your favourites but somebody must like them.

- You ignored BlogX and BlogY - Did you bother to nominate them? Did you include a link in the nomination or did you expect me to use ESP to discover it. Is the blog registered with a blogring or an blog aggregator. Is it widely linked among it's peers. Is it obvious from reading the front page that it fits into the category.*

- Not a single one is worth reading - fine. Don't read them. With any luck they won't read you either. No worries. Oh, and don't vote for them while you are at it because that would be accepting that you might be wrong.

- there are so many great blogs in this category that are not listed - Absolutely. This is the first true and honest comment in the complaint. There are two options open to you - whinge and complain about it OR do something next year - nominate the great blogs, help to organise things (and give up 10 - 20 hours of your life to do a category), even better - start your own blog contest where you make the rules.

The idea of the Blog Awards is that they are supposed to be fun. I got nominated out of the blue last year and came second so this year I volunteered to help out. I happen to be in the listing again this year but I am up against some seriously heavy characters - so what - it doesn't mean the difference between life and death. It is a chance to get out and read some blogs you haven't read before. You might like them, you might hate them but at least you know more blogs than you did before. Could come in handy next year because here is the deal - you do the work, you can complain. You don't do the work then, in the immortal words of Joe Dolce: Ah, shaddap you face!.

[* This is my favourite peeve - take BlogW for example. Someone has complained that it should have been included in RegionX. When I look at BlogW there is absolutely nothing to tell me that the author lives in RegionX or was born in RegionX or writes about RegionX. In fact the blog seems to consist of regurgitated newspaper and blog articles and stuff about the US election. The URL is .com, the email address is a gmail.com one - just how in the h*ll am I supposed to know this belongs in RegionX?]

Posted by Ozguru at December 4, 2004 12:30 AM

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» Weblog Awards FAQ from 2004 Weblog Awards
We're still recovering from the work of sifting the categories and building the polls. As soon as all the polls are ready voting will start. That could be this evening, or tomorrow morning. There have been somewhere on the order... [Read More]

Tracked on December 4, 2004 03:03 PM

Comments

Not to "jump the gun" but I would like to nominate Neil Boortz for next year's nominations. THANKS. And, this is "neat stuff." THANKS, again, for providing additional information on the other bloggers out there that toil in relative isolation or obscurity.

Posted by: Harald at December 5, 2004 02:35 AM

I can totally understand where this response is coming from and why you might be feeling a bit defensive after doing all this hard work, but it doesn't address my main concern about the nominations. (I'm talking about Australian Blogs, ONLY because they are the ones I'm most familiar with, not for any other reason) My concern when I mentioned that there were so many good Australian blogs not nominated is "How representative will these awards be"?. I, nor anyone else, can't nominate blogs if we're not aware that nominations are open. If the nomination process is not well advertised then the blogs listed will not be a good representation of blogs in the category. Thats all. I think it is great to see some blogs that I've never seen before, but a bit worrying when there are none of the most popular blogs in that category. (Popular in terms of visitors and commentors) Will the Blog who wins the award really be the best Australian Blog? And this then makes me wonder about the nominations for the other categories. This is not a 'whinge' just an observation with an implicit question. Does the process of calling for nominations need to be re-examined?

Posted by: faith at December 6, 2004 07:37 PM

You have hit the nail of the head - the only reason I knew about the nominations/awards was because last year someone nominated me (I came second in the Flappy Bird class) and so this year I knew to watch out for the awards around November/December. Kevin (the organiser) tried to cater for the un-nominated blogs by encouraging the individuals to use web-rings, local knowledge or blog aggregators that report blogs that could fit that category. To some degree this appears to have helped in that non-conservative blogs (WizBang is conservative and most of those involved are as well) are much better represented than last year. The biggest problem is defining the region of a blog - even my blog (which is definitely Oz - written by an Aussie, living in Sydney, writing about Australia) has non-local material in it (e.g. commentary on the US elections). How could some stranger looking at an arbitrary slice of the blog be sure that it was an Aussie blog? The domain name is not .au! Ideally, we would want to have something like the Asian setup. There are a number of central blogs (mainly in Hong Kong) who maintain blog rolls for Asian blogs. They collectively run the Asian Blog Awards. When the WizBang awards come along, most of the candidates for the Best Asian Blog are taken directly from the Asian Blog Awards (plus nominations). We could set something like that up in Australia but you would need a fairly influential blogger to get the ball rolling - someone like Tim Blair (who is, AFAIK, the #1 Aussie blog in terms of hits and traffic). As a preliminary starting point, it would be a good idea to gather a definitive list of Aussie (and or New Zealand) blogs. What web-rings or aggregate lists does your blog belong to? If we can find the most popular, we can encourage others to join it. Alternately, maybe we can start one - perhaps with some aggregator code.... hmmm... I have some bloxsom code that could do something like that...

Posted by: Ozguru at December 6, 2004 08:46 PM

Whatever the outcome, kudos to all who have put this together. I assume none of you receive a paycheck at the end of the week, health benefits or anything else that goes along with spending hours and hours of your personal time doing something for someone else. I am very new to the blog world (early Oct) to be exact. Can you tell me what ecosystem is and also, pardon me I don't recall the exact title, but categories for blogs 200-500 and 550-750 or whatever it is. I tried to find a patten, but not familiar with most of the blogs have no idea. Thanks for your hard work IT IS appreciated by many. Happy Holidays, Cheryl

Posted by: Cheryl at December 7, 2004 07:42 AM