SPECIAL NOTE: Saskboy, look away. :)
OK, remember the Canadian Blog Awards? Yes, as Mongoose would say, that waste of time where people get together to give awards to each other? (Zach Wells would probably compare the CBAs to the Governor General's Award for Poetry.)
Well, we northern bloggers are trying to pool our resources to get one of us into the finals. Last time, we sent one vote one way and another vote another way, and Small Dead Animals, Daveberta and Yarn Harlot drove right over us. Clearly, that's not working.
Here's the process:
1) During the nomination stage, anyone can nominate any Canadian blog in one or more categories (New Blog, Best Post, etc.).
2) All nominations are reviewed to make sure they fit into the category. For example, you can't nominate this blog for Best Feminist Blog: although I am a woman, I don't write about feminism. The nominations that make the cut are put into a poll, and everyone has several days to vote.
3) The top five vote-getters are put into a second poll. The winner of that round wins the category.
Last time, we weren't coordinated at all, and we all lost by a mile. While most of us would probably like to be recognised, we cannot waste our votes on a blog that has no chance of moving forward in the category. (Think of Survivor.) That sounds cold, but I include myself in that. Don't vote for me if Townie Bastard has a better chance of winning.
Darcy at Way Way Up is pulling all of the northern nominees together. If we can decide who to support in each category, we have a better chance of getting some recognition for northern blogs.
Now, you absolutely do not have to be part of this, and you don't have to vote in the CBAs at all. If you really want to vote for Small Dead Animals, please do that. But if you want to support a northern blog, please go over to Darcy's first. We will have more influence as a group. There is no rush to vote: voting closes November 29th, so we have a few days to hash this out.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Canadian Blog Awards: The Northern Round
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11 comments:
Thanks for the link Megan. I didn't this post up earlier in the week hence my little aside apologizing for missing any nominees. I didn't know it I would have a chance to re-visit the site and add any new nominees that popped up or not but I'm pretty certain I got them all. (Sorry for the run-on sentence if that was a run-on sentence this is a run-on sentence.) Anyhoo, I wasn't really sure how to run a poll or anything....its a little over my technological abilities. But I think it would nice to get a least one nominee into the second round. I'll see what little I might be able to do to make it happen.
If you put your e-mail address on the post, we can e-mail you with our picks.
I have to admit that I'm not sure who to choose! I will support ANY of these guys, I just want to make sure that I'm not wasting my vote.
Actually, I wouldn't say that, and I also would prefer if you took out the hyperlink. More traffic is the last thing I need.
What I would say about the Canadian Blog Awards is that the way the process is designed will result in finding out the blog that has the most people pre-determined to see it win, since there isn't time for the voters to familiarize themselves with the blogs they didn't nominate to begin with. If they wanted to pick the "best" blogs rather than the "blogs with with the most cronies" they should have at least a month between nominations and voting, and put all the nominees in a Reader page in the mean time.
Also if you really want to get recognition for "northern blogs" you could just suggest to the CBA guys that they add a "best northern blog" category next year. I'm sure there are more "northern blogs" than there are nominees in some of the CBA categories.
That's what I would say about the Canadian Blog Awards.
I managed, inspite of myself, to get a few polls up on my blog. I figure if people check back on the 28th or 29th they will have an idea of who to vote for.
Oh I did like the suggestion about people e-mailing m their picks. The only difficulty would be that I will be away next weekend in Iqaluit. But hopefully the polls I put up will help a bit. If not, at least I learned a new skill with how to set up polls...lol
Mongoose, I've removed the link to your site. And to be honest, I agree with your assessment of these contests.
I should be clear that none of this is being done to tell people how to vote. We are just trying to avoid vote-splitting in situations where we would be happy to see any of several people get in. I will happily support any of the people on Darcy's list, so I want to make sure my support matters.
Bloggie competitions and votes are best kept away from, I think. I never vote for anyone cos, for me, that is not what blogging is about.
Reluctant Blogger - it must be to some though, because some of the northern bloggers made the effort to nominate themselves. :)
Yeah my comment sounded a bit snarky didn't it? I didn't mean to.
The good thing about blogging is that everyone can do it as they wish and yes, I know that some bloggers like competitions and some like awards and some like memes. And that's fine - well, more than fine, it's good that there's something for everyone.
I just had a bad blogging day. I logged on to find an email from someone who has probably read my blog once asking me to vote for them in some competition or other which I thought was well cheeky and then went somewhere else and found someone feeling under pressure cos they had been given an award and that wasn't what they really wanted but they didn't want to feel churlish and not pass it on. So that was why I was a bit crabby when I came here - I'd got to feeling that awards were getting in the way of what blogging should or could be.
I love Meg's blog and these efforts to coordinate the vote so that your region gets a voice, is nominated or whatever - are obviously very sensible.
So I'm sorry I was snarky!
(Reluctant blogger wanders off sheepishly . . .)
No worries, RB!
Having hosted a blogging contest with rampant cheating, I know that winning is very important to some people. In fact, it's so important that they are willing to cheat just to be TOLD their favourite blogger won, even if he or she really didn't win at all.
To me, it's not about winning at all; it's about gaining recognition for northern bloggers. This is just one of many ways to do it. NWT Blogs is another. It's a chance to draw the attention of people who might not ordinarily read our blogs. The final vote is nothing more than a popularity contest, and we all recognise that.
I did get the Stuffed Norbert, thank you. It's very... not what I expected. I was picturing something more fuzzy and huggable with big googly eyes. Still, I will cherish it forever. :)
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