So the blog awards. I know I promised myself I wouldn’t go here again but…
In true Muppet Comms style the awards site doesn’t yet (at the time of writing) have a post announcing that the nominations are open at all but it was twittered that the magic button had appeared. Still the right people who both use twitter, are linked to the right people and blog have been informed and will have got their nominations in early so that’s what matters right? But if you had the site on RSS waiting for a post to announce it, you’d be none the wiser that the nominations had opened. Course that it’s an improvement on last year when the registration opened and closed before nominations even opened. Still and all it is curious that it would appear folks still won’t get any automatic return receipt confirming their nominations back to them so they know what was received. That’s a dangerous/handy black hole for stuff to fall into. Good way to avoid people coming up saying “What happened to my nomination for Inky’s Blog on Butter?” when it comes to the long list.
The rules have apparently changed this year but working out dates for what are meant to be annual awards still appears to be proving a problem. Apparently, if you started a blog in say Feb of last year you aren’t eligible to be a newcomer but there again you couldn’t have been a newcomer for the awards last year either. Or I guess next year. What people have against the poor innocents that start blogs in Jan, Feb or early March in Ireland I just don’t know. Perhaps, New Year bloggers are of a type and they’re not welcome around here. And I’m not even going to think about rehashing that whole “actively” discussion but it has allowed me to claim I’ve actively been to the gym even if it was just that one time.
A somewhat bigger problem may be lurking in rule 2 quoted below.
“2. You should include contact details for each blog you nominate. Please provide a contact name and a means of contact such as an email address or the URL of a “contact” page. Failure to provide contact details for a blog may result in your nomination not being accepted so it is very important that you provide these details. If you cannot find contact details for a blog, state this in the “Contact Details” section of your nomination for that blog.”
I’m not sure what problem this is meant to be addressing. Maybe there were some fierce problems last year with not being able to contact folks whose blog it was but it was never much mentioned. But I’m not sure if this has been fully thought through (quelle surprise) but it sounds like if a person wants to be completely anonymous (avoiding email contact and such like) that their blog might not be eligible for nomination? A bit mad and also somewhat ironic given that so prominent a portion of the original bloggers hereabout were anonymous. It might not be the intention but it sounds like this could end up discouraging people from nominating anonymous bloggers, especially newer ones. And that wouldn’t be a good thing at all. Or would it?
I could I suppose make something of the fact that “Nominations will be opening on the first week of January for 2 weeks” when they in truth opened in the 2nd week but with the snow, rain, wind and its effects on the internet and really at this stage I’m just playing “kick the beggar”. Anyway I know folks aren’t allowed to offer any advice unless they’re involved in the project so let them away with it. I just hope the judges have some opportunity, at some stage, to get more of a shared, consistent understanding of what they’re supposed to be judging this time out. Or that you end up getting the judges that suit you.