So, the big thing I realized I need to do a better job of is communication and explanation of the process. Or, find someone else to "MC" next years blog awards helping to communicate begin times, cut off times, etc.
Things for next year include more lead up time and discussion of categories.
Should there be a review of nominations? We had some nominations in "group blog" that I don't think really count as group blogs. Should the voting be restricted in the number of nominations that are voted on?
Did anyone miss the blog format from the first annual? Should vote tallies have been kept secret until the end?
What else? What did you like, what didn't you like? What can be done better next year for the third annual blog awards?
9 comments:
I basically agree with Sean's take here. And he designed his own award, which is far hipper looking than mine. Ah well...
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Actually, I'm not sure I agree with his suggestion to keep the vote totals secret. The horse race aspect was pretty fun...
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I like the idea of keeping the totals secret - then there's no beating of the bushes in the last minute to edge people out. And, people are more likely to vote their actual opinion rather than picking from the top couple of vote getters in order not to "waste" a vote. (Having gotten 1 vote for "Best Writing," I'd rather not have to see myself at the bottom of the list! ;-))
And since the competition was so close - it would be nice to have recognition for 2nd and 3rd places.
But all in all, thanks for all your work this year and I think it was a great success!!
I am cool with pretty much whatever. I saw that Peacebang awarded herself a second place ribbon on her blog, referencing the vote total page. If there is a group opinion that 2nd and third should get a mention on the "winners page" I can certainly add that. Again, I was trying to replicate last year which only mentioned winners.
One possible downside I could see for not showing the votes would be that I think there is a greater chance of people having a run in multiple categories. I could certainly see people thinking "hey so-and-so is leading in 6 of 8 categories I won't vote for that person in all categories". But I am no voting expert.
Oh, and as far as thanks I should also throw out there that I was certainly "standing on the shoulders of giants". Thanks to all those who ran this last year and did the hard work of creating categories, etc.
Speaking of which, I wonder if there will be enough growth in podcasting bloggers to have a new category for that next year.
Since I kind of pulled the first year's process out of my hat and never did figure out exactly how all the other "bloggies" are run exactly, I'd love to know if other blog awards programs follow some kind of more reliable process.
I'm not much help in this regard this year because I've paid very little attention to the other networks of blogs that have set up ways to pat themselves on the back. But perhaps someone somewhere is comparing the processes and outlining best practices?
I also like "Best New Blog."
ALso a humor prize might be in order. We can be a pretty dour bunch at times.
Maybe if people were nominated in fewer categories, that would make the split ticket issue less annoying. I liked that some people were pulling for other blogs they liked. THere were a couple of cases where I thought somebody else should win a category that I was running in, but I didn't feel I could endorse them since I didn't want to insult the people who had voted for me there. (Last year, I just posted the way I voted. I'm not doing it this year for exactly that reason.)
I'll slap a "second place" thingy together and shoot it over to UUpdater. This morning, I made a few more awards as I noticed the ones I'd made before didn't look too great with Happy Feminist or Philocrites' blogs.
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I like the idea of keeping the tallies secret until the end, but also posting the running number of votes received in each category.
Some explanation of some of the categories would have been helpful for me. Unless I missed it, I wasn't really clear on what "best in class" meant. Maybe I just need to use the dictionary. =)
Best New Blog and Best Foreign Language Blog would be welcome additions that others have suggested.
I would also say that it would be nice to encourage (somehow, this is perhaps not your area) more of a youth blog presence online.
The closest I came to explaining the categories was to set up a link to Philocrites who pointed to the Coffee hour posts for last year. I couldn't find a good concise explanation for the categories to pull from, but it is certainly something worth having.
i was also wondering if it would be of interest to collect demographic (optional of course) data. So the numbers could be broken down to see if there was a difference in votes amon the demographic categories. Not even sure if people would answer or if it would be off putting.
As to youth blogs, I think I saw somewhere that there was around 500 UU livejournal accounts, and who knows how many other myspace, etc. Personally as an old fogy and parent I would prefer to see the youth primarily particpipating in insular communities like CYF. but, tht really is a totally different topic.
Make it optional, but ask about demographics. I would be fascinated.
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