Amish Tech Support isn’t pleased with this year’s Bloggies, and neither am I, so let’s Boycott the Bloggies:
So, what do I think? Well, first off, I think I should have just taken my nomination form, greased it with Vaseline, and shoved it up my ass for all the good it did. In a way, this looks like a grassroots groundswell reaction against the big folks: Vodka, InstaPundit, Steven Den Beste, James Lileks. Little Green Footballs managed a political, but if mainstream even brushed against you, kiss accolades goodbye.
Yup. Awards for blogs are silly in concept, but if somebody is going to hold himself out as running an awards competition, he really has to do a better job than the bloggie people do. Their categories are silly (“Best GLBT Blog”), their nominations don’t fit their categories (Fark is a political blog? News to me), and most of the blogs that are recognized leaders, like Lawrence says, are omitted.
I really wish that somebody with the time and energy to make a go of it would run a blog awards competition with a rational nomination process, and that the people who deserve to be considered for a genuine award competition would kindly boycott the Bloggies and go for this new award instead. Call it BlogStars, since the name Bloggie is already taken by these amateurs, and set up some categories that make sense, such as best political content, best news content, best regional blog, graphic design, style (not limited to graphics), humor, insight and analysis of current events, technology, arts and literature, movies, weirdest personal diary, Mondo Bizarro, Knee-Jerk Liberal, Legal content, Academic content, that sort of thing: categories that don’t cubbyhole a writer into one and only one area, and categories that people care about instead of Best Latin American blog.
In the meanwhile, I’m boycotting the Bloggies.
UPDATE: Brian the 646 Guy was one of the randomly-selected 50 nominators who whittled the nominees’ list down to the final 4 in each category, and he’s pissed too. Here’s the list of nominees they were given, and it’s short several blogs I know were nominated.
UPDATE: Anonoblogger Centrs explained how the contest was rigged by block voting, but now doesn’t want to be quoted and has deleted her post, as a good caring person should when they’ve said too much. Here are the salient portions, posted before centrs got the call:
“the main problem? it’s rigged. the numbers are grossly skewed. i like nikolai as a person and i know that his intentions are good, but there is just no objective, scientific way for ballots to be cast. this is not even nikolai’s fault. he’s a nice enough person to trust other people to be nice too. unfortunately, they just aren’t…
…i also know that the email padding and nomination committee conspiracy is absolutely true.
for those of you with great weblogs and awesome designs that thought you might be nominated, you didn’t have a chance. you really didn’t, so don’t take it personally…
…i think we need to clarify that nikolai asked people to help him and only a handful responded. of that handful, 75% are of a group that agreed together in advance on how they would vote, actual ballots be damned. they were proud of it, bragged about it and had a good laugh at the fact that they figured out how to beat the system. a system designed by a teenager who was just trying to have some fun. it is misleading to say you only voted once when that vote carried so much weight.”
Oddly, centrs pulled the post out of concern that it was linked by “homophobic” sites, but one of the chief complainers is a gay community webzine, East West, who noticed that one of the finalists for GLBT blog is, you guessed it, straight:
A special note on this category: One of the nominees is not like the others, Min Jung Kim, put forward by some ignorant and misguided Texans as well as herself is not gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, but that didn’t stop her, according to Nikolai, from pointing out a “loophole”, whatever that means, that allowed for her inclusion. By this very logic East West should be nominated for best Canadian because we eat maple syrup, love Canada, and have friends who live there. Wouldn’t that have been funny? No, not really.
You find your bigotry where you want, because East-West has some unkind things to say about Andrew Sullivan’s sexual orientation (“That Gay Jackass”, to be precise).
Meanwhile, I’ve received, from Mr. Nolan, a list of the e-mail addresses of the 50 who made the final picks, and was not surprised to see that a third were free accounts at Yahoo, Hotmail, and Netscape.
The ultimate issue here is that a group of people, [apparently from Dallas], decided to rig the contest, and the procedures set up by young Nickolai made it real easy for them to pull it off. You have to wonder about people willing to go to that much trouble to win a Wil Wheaton award.
ANOTHER UPDATE: centrs clarifies in the comments that she’s not an anonoblogger, identifies herself, and on her blog posts a detailed run-down on the cheating and the reactions to its disclosure.
She answers the question of why people would be willing to expend so much energy on this particularly lame award competition: they’re Texans. Living out there under that ferocious sun, cut off from civilization, and surrounded by ignorance, Texans are known to go loco from time to time. I know, I used to be one.
My advice to Texans who can read: get out while you still have a chance.
Didn’t occur to me that anyone would think the Bloggies were important enough to boycott. They were so poorly publicized only a tiny fraction of the world’s webloggers know they exist.
I imagine such awards will proliferate: People’s Blogs, Goldedn Weblogs, and the like.
I’m looking forward to the first “American Idol” style weblogging competition.
So Richard, are you gonna put your money where your mouth is and help me organize a professional style blog award?
So Richard, are you gonna put your money where your mouth is and help me organize a professional style blog award?
See – I meant it so much I had to say it twice.
Well, ya gotta admit, he’s got some damn valid points.
I still don’t understand why anyone took it seriously this year after the Wil Wheaton fiasco last year. And I would not only love to see but would donate money to a cause that rewarded real talent.
I don’t think the bloggies were badly publicised – I think that it’s more a case than more and more bloggers really don’t care. I think the ridiculous categories have something to do with it. I don’t particularly care about the ‘best weblog about computers and technology’, but I’d really like to see a ‘best UK weblog’, for example. Anyway, see my thoughts on the whole affair. Not quite as entertainingly written as yours, though.
It’s lame. Yes, there are overlooking “big names” but what about small names? There are so many bloggers that I read that deserve a reach around. This shouldn’t be some cliquey life altering event. You don’t get a plaque or even a cheesy smoking guns signal. Feh, none of that made sense.
When the categories first came out I opined how ridiculous the whole thing was, especially the awards for lifetime achievement, Talk about pretentious. The idea of a lifetime is very short in the internet in general but this is a new low.
“The Wil Wheaton fiasco?” This is why I make fun of blogging. On my blog. (No offense to anyone, but have you noticed how he looks like he could be Phranc’s brother?)
I’m planning on organizing the “Golden Sour Grapes Awards” for people that whine about not winning a Webby, Bloggie, or Anti Bloggie.
A lot of my friends are in, and I’m happy for them. If the Bloggies were rigged *I’D* be sweeping it this year with all the people I’ve Threatened Intimidated asked to nominate those people on that page.
How do you plan on boycotting this, anyway?
Heh…funny I should land here after lauding my wife’s achievement in receiving a nomination. God knows I didn’t do it…I complain about her blog all the time (privately, until now, so don’t go bust me, m’kay?). What would be fun to know is who did do it.
It all just reminds of those stickers you used to see circa 1997 — Best of the Web, Daily Pick!, Top 10!!!
And yes, I’m bitter as hell there’s no Tractor Blog of the Year award. Wimpy web elfs…
Awards are always bullshit. Oscars. Pulitzers. Nobels. Golden Globes. Grammies. Emmys. Bloggies.
Well, maybe not the Pulitzers…let’s not get carried away. Or am I missing something?
“You find your bigotry where you want, because East-West has some unkind things to say about Andrew Sullivan’s sexual orientation (“That Gay Jackass”, to be precise).”
Where’s the part that’s unkind about his orientation? Are gay jackasses differently jackassed from straight jackasses?
How about a knee-jerk conservative category for the sour grapies?
It would have been sufficient simply to call Mr. Sullivan an asshole, if that’s what they feel he is, without any reference to his sexual orientation. But maybe this is like black people calling each other “nigger”, some sort of privilege of the oppressed.
i’m not anonymous, richard. my site is just undergoing a restructuring and redesign. my name is denise czaja. the content from my about page is here: http://www.centrs.com/about.html.
i live in dallas. i pulled the post because “some” people were blaming nikolai and insinuating he allowed it or knew about it. they were referring to my friend ernie as “little yellow faggot”. there was a lot of vitriol and then people were linking to the post to support their rants when they didn’t have all the information.
plus, there was just pure unadulterated venom over at thinkdink.com. she didn’t deserve that. it *is* just a stupid contest. she didn’t kill anybody or anything. i didn’t want to be a part of that anymore. that’s my choice.