Fifth Annual UU Blog Awards

Howdy folks, a bit of a late start on the blog awards this year...

Last year I remember thinking when I saw Aaron Sawyer blog post about presenting at an award show how uninteresting an awards show would be if the accounting firm of "so and so" simply walked on stage, thanked everyone, then tacked up the winners on a poster board. This seems to me to be what I have been doing with the blog awards. Dull, uninspired. But if I got some of you good people involved….How much more exciting and interesting!

In sum, I need volunteers this year to host each award category. This is what I am thinking:

• Volunteers will respond to this blog post to claim a category (see below) It may be best not to claim a category for which you suspect you may be nominated!
• Contact me with your e-mail address
  
• Put up a post on your blog to collect nominations
• Collect, vet, and make sure we have a link for all nominations, preferably title as well. Oh, you will probably also get people saying "thanks but no thanks" that will need to be removed before being finalized.
• When nominations close send the data to me. I will handle the ballot and voting per usual. I will allow the votes to show for a while, but then towards the end voting will go into mystery mode where the results will not be revealed until the end. Unless folks think I should keep it in mystery mode the whole time.
• Once the voting is done, I will e-mail you the results to be revealed/presented on your blog.
  

Award Categories:

• Best Religious Writing or Theological Commentary (Single entry and Best of Class)
• Best Anecdote or Narrative (Single entry and Best of Class)
• Best Political Commentary (Single entry and Best of Class)
• Best Review or Cultural Commentary
• Best Design or Use of Visuals
• Best New Blog
• Best Non-UU-Themed Blog
• Best UU-Themed Blog
• Best Minister Blog
• Best Seminarian Blog
• Best Lay Blog
• Best Writing

Once we have the volunteers we can set a time line for when nominations, voting, etc. will run.

And of course, questions and comments are welcome.

Update: Life needs my attention devoted elsewhere. If anyone else wants to "host" awards this year, please do. Otherwise Philocrites started a top ten meme.

UU Blog Awards - Nominations Closed

Thanks to everyone who took the time to show their appreciation for our UU bloggers by nominating their work for consideration in the awards. A special thanks from me for those who helped pre-sort posting by identifying posts you thought were good candidates for specific topics, and to all those who used the select features instead of writing in blog names.

Please take some time to review the nominations for the 2008 UU Blog Awards and let me know if anything looks strange, out of place etc. What sort of feedback am I looking for? Well, lets start with a great comment that came in.

Noticed that two cross-posted posts are listed separately. (CC's and Ministrare's.) Could they be listed together, since the content is the same? I think they have a good chance of winning, and it'd be a shame to split the votes between them.

Makes sense to me considering it looks like it was co-authored. I'll plan on combining those.

It would have helped me to read a reminder to click on the "nominate" button at the bottom of the page-----before I got there!

The page has been updated, thanks for the suggestion. I also noticed PeaceBang commenting that process seemed complicated. Any comments on making things easier would be appreciated.

I find it depressing that you have to check for irregular voting patterns. I know that's the way it works, but it's too bad.

Well, if it's any consolation I have never found anything noteworthy in those reviews. The comment is their primarily to discourage any activity along the lines of ballot stuffing.

Sad to see the Best Commenter go, but I understand why you took it down.

Well, there wasn't much feedback in support of the category. If others felt it was a good category I would certainly bring it back next year. I am sure if there are any particular commenter that you wanted to nominate they may appreciate you giving them a nod on your blog. One of the big benefits of the process is highlighting all the great contributions throughout the year - win or lose.

Thanks for doing this every year!

I think it's a worthwhile effort, glad it's appreciated.

So, are any blogs nominated in the wrong category? (Seminarian, minister, etc.) Any New blogs that are really old blogs?

Also, anyone nominated that would prefer to withdraw various nominations so that votes are not split please post here.

Fourth Annual UU Blog Award Categories

Primarily based on discussion from last years process I am planning on dropping two of the categories. The Group blog category and the best commenter. I would love to hear other opinions on this and am certainly willing to be swayed. I am not sure the potential pool for the group blog has grown, and perhaps it has even shrunk with Coffee Hour remaining defunct. Fuuse deserves much credit for their online community, but it seems like more of a community site than a blog. Of all the categories it seems the hardest for people to nominate in. So I think the category is simply confusing. As to the commenter, I do understand the original intent, but it extremely difficult to get nominations in that category. Good commenting seems to be an ongoing thing, and very difficult to pull shining examples. This is not set in stone, please comment with opinions. I am easily swayed.

Aside from that I will just be planning on having the same categories as last year.


Current schedule:

• Nominations Jan 21st through 27th.
• Nominations finalized, and time for people to read the nominations
• Voting February 11th through the 15th
• Winners finalized and posted

Blog Awards

Well, it's getting to be about that time, perhaps a little past even, for the UU Blog Awards. I am working through things and setting up the pages for this years process. So, might be a good time to start thinking about those favorite posts you've read and perhaps for bloggers to remind others of their favorites with some year in review round ups.

I am hoping to finish things up shortly, but this year I just won't have the same time and energy to put into it so updates and such will be a little slower. The voting is all automated, so that will simply display as it did last year.

Speaking of being short on time... the Blog Awards prize image has been used for at least 2 years running. No one seemed to notice. So I have been wondering if it would make sense to either simply remove the year in the image, but that's really something else I don;t have time for. If some kind soul would like to take on the task of either designing a new image, updating the date, or removing the date from the current prize (I have no preference) I would much appreciate if someone could do that and shoot me copies of the files.

Oh, and feel free to comment with any other suggestions/comments for this year.

Third Annual UU Blog Awards Feedback

Just a basic post to get feedback on the blog award process. What can be done better next year? It's an evolving process.

Should we have nominations, and then a run off to determine the five (at most) for voting? Or do folks like the long lists of potential vote getters?

Would it be easier for people to submit specific posts to an e-mail address? It might help by giving me a way to respond to any questions, and having a reply address.

More time to nominate, more time to vote, too long?

Would a time line announced further ahead of time help, or does that not really matter?

Third Annual UU Blog Award Winners

There is a reason that t-shirts declaring "World's Best Mom/Dad" can be mass produced. There is no absolute criteria by which something like that can be judged. We all have our own opinions of what is important in determining what is best. What makes an anecdote great? That it touches your heart? Gives a new perspective? Moves your soul?

However the lack of an absolute criteria does not make the gift of declaring someone "the best" insignificant. It is still a sincere gesture of appreciation. To those who have won, congratulations. Your efforts are appreciated.

To our runner ups please bear in mind that of the 200+ blogs tracked by UUpdates and others eligible for nomination only a dozen or so nominations per award came in. Each nomination, each vote was someone's sincere thanks for the thoughts and energy you spend on blogging. Thanks.

And to all those who helped spread the word, read the nominations, and in general participated thanks to you as well.

The Third Annual UU Blog Award winners have been posted and all vote totals are now viewable again.

Third Annual Blog Award Vote Totals

As others have noted, the blog award voting has opened and the votes are rolling in. The threshold has been broken and the vote totals are now being revealed.

Good luck to all our nominees!

Third Annual Blog Award Countdown

The countdown to the opening of the voting for the Third Annual UU Blog Awards has begun. Last year opening and closing the voting period was a manual process making it hard to communicate a time (had an issue with nominations for this year as well). I wasn't sure when I would be sitting there ready to go. So this year the timing is all automated. Oh, and some folks liked watching the vote totals rise, others wanted mystery. This year we will have a little of both. Votes will remain hidden until at least 5 people have submitted their votes, then they will be displayed until a few hours before voting closes. They will remain hidden until the winners are revealed.

I will probably still put an announcement out on Monday, but the voting will open automatically.

So, one weekend and then a week left to read the nominations. Good luck to all our nominees!

Third Annual Blog Award Nominations Closed

Nominations are closed so we have the final list of nominees for the Third Annual UU Blog Awards. Congratulations to all who have been nominated, and thanks to those who participated. In particular a personal thanks for those who had the time and inclination to make things easier for me to compile the results. It helped. If you don't see a nomination you submitted let me know.

First I would like to run through some of the comments I received:

I'm confused, but I hope you understand what I am nominating. It was an important sermon.

I got confused on some of these as well. I hope people take a look at the above list and help me to figure out what some of these nominations reference. Hopefully with some more eyes looking it over we will figure it out.

It would be nice to have the option to choose more than one in the drop down menus - nominations need to be a broader net than voting for one site in each category, and it's a pain to submit this form more than once.

I feel your pain. I actually set it up that way last year, but people seemed confused (maybe this years didn't help) and wrote in nominations more often than not. The process is evolving, it's my second shot at it, and next year I think I will switch back to the multi selects. Thanks for the constructive criticism and dealing with the pain!

Maybe next year there could be a social justice category of some sort? Meanwhile, I nominate you (uupdates.net) for the best aggregator or blog network award.

That does sound like a good category. I will note it for next year. I appreciate the comment on UUpdates, and constructive criticism for that is welcome as well. Also, many thanks to those who have helped keep UUpdates up to date by letting me know about new blogs or sites of interest. Without the people letting me know about all the great new resources they may not have been added. And of course thanks for the great content. It's aggregation, it would be nothing without the content it's aggregating.

Gosh, this seems like a lot of work! Thank you for doing this!

Your welcome, I learn a lot from doing this and I think it means a lot to some folks. So that makes it worthwhile to me. Also, there is some manual process involved and it is entirely possible something got missed between the raw data and the formatted results I posted. If something is missing let me know.

Do the blogs with the most number of nominations (like the top five) make it to the voting round, or do all blogs with nominations move on? It seems like that could get crowded if all blogs that are nominated move on.... Just a thought.

It's a great thought! I agree that voting might be difficult with to many nominees on the ballot. For some categories it might be pretty easy to trim down to five, for others the question would be what to do when we didn't get multiple nominations, but rather a bunch of single nominations. So, please leave your thoughts and comments! What do we do here folks? Keep only the top five, more for ties? Not many single posts got multiple nominations.

I may not respond right away, I have a little trip this weekend. Please keep the conversation rolling. What to do with the nominees? Can you figure out the posts? Perhaps a link to the comments?

Third Annual Blog Award Nominations

I received the following comment through the blog award comment box:

Do the blogs with the most number of nominations (like the top five) make it to the voting round, or do all blogs with nominations move on? It seems like that could get crowded if all blogs that are nominated move on.... Just a thought.

In brief, my plan is to post the list of nominations then ask for feedback regarding which nominations should actually get carried into the voting. I expect we will have some blogs nominated in the inappropriate category, etc. A lot under some categories, etc. Based on previous years input a run-off to get the nominations down to the top 5 does make sense. I will be keeping track of the number of times a blog is nominated, and I can report that.

So, hopefully I will be capturing enough information, if not maybe we can do some sort of run off. And, as far as the process to be followed, I will not be deciding myself. i will be posing the questions here and looking for feedback.

Nominations Open for Third Annual blog Awards

Nominations are open for the Third Annual blog Awards. If you have any questions about thepage, process, etc. feel free to comment here or send an e-mail.

Third Annual Blog Award Categories

The more categories the more chances for people to feel appreciated, and the more to promote. So, I am planning on opening nominations for the following categories next Monday based on comments and recommendations. Hopefully the list did not get to overwhelmingly large. And if we don't get any nominations in a category, well I suppose we can drop it. Oh, I also tried to group the categories. So here they are.

Nominations for single entries (posts) or series of posts:

• Best Religious Writing or Theological Commentary - Single entry
• Best Review or Cultural Commentary - Single entry
• Best Anecdote or Narrative - Single entry
• Best Political Commentary - Single entry

Nominations for a blog's elements aside from posts:

• Best Design or Use of Visuals - Blog
• Best Links - Blog

Nominations for a blog's collective writings for the year:

• Best Religious Writing or Theological Commentary - Best of class
• Best Anecdote or Narrative - Best of class
• Best Political Commentary - Best of class
• Best New blog - Blog
• Best Online Community or Group Blog - Blog
• Best Non-UU-Themed Blog - Blog
• Best UU-Themed Blog - Blog
• Best Minister blog - Blog
• Best Seminarian blog - Blog
• Best Lay blog - Blog
• Best Writing - Blog

The Second Annual included 11 Awards, so we are up to 17 this year. Please comment or suggest, these need to be final by the time nominations begin.

Third Annual Blog Award Schedule

The Schedule for the Third Annual UU Blog Awards will be as follows:

• January 10th Announce Categories
• Nominations from January 15th through the 19th
• Post Nominations and finalize nominees
  
• Voting from January 29th through February 2nd
• Winners finalized and posted
  

So, today (in a little while) I will post the categories based on prior suggestions. These will be the final categories heading into nominations on the 15th.

Nominations - last year I was thinking the 5 most nominated would be good for the vote off, but then we had only a few with multiple nominations and a lot with one so it didn't seem a good way to try and determine the final nominations. So my plan for this year is to post the nominations and ask for input on finalizing the nominees. So, for example if a particular blogger gets a bunch of nominations in a single category it can be reduced to one entry (no splitting your own votes), or ones can be removed, since they are not actually appropriate to the category they were nominated in.

Voting - once the nominees have been finalized everyone following the process should have also had a full week to read up on entries they missed. The vote tallies roll in and soon we have our winners.

Winners - last year I think I took down the voting tally display right at the end. i took some time at the last minute to validate that no "fishy" activity occurred then posted the final results.

So folks, that the plan. Shout outs from folks interested/excited that this is happening would be appreciated (in other words comment with a "Woot!").

Blog Awards

So, I am assuming, and hoping there is interest in running the UU blog awards this year? I took a quick look at some other blog awards and found that different groups had very different ways of running their awards. So, I couldn't really figure out a "best of practice" for running the awards.

One thing I did like is the idea of having a panel of judges. Last year I made some decisions and basically said things like "So... since an individual blog was nominated for best 'Group Blog' anyone mind if I simply throw out the nomination?". Having gotten no objections I proceeded with my best guess. A group of people deciding seems more appropriate.

One thing I would like to get some feedback on prior to any nominations is what people think of various categories.

Last years Awards:

• Best Religious Writing or Theological Commentary - Single entry
• Best Religious Writing or Theological Commentary - Best of class
• Best Review or Cultural Commentary
• Best Anecdote or Narrative - Single entry
• Best Anecdote or Narrative - Best of class
• Best Design or Use of Visuals
• Best Links
• Best Writing
• Best Online Community or Group Blog
• Best Non-UU-Themed Blog
• Best UU-Themed Blog

Other suggested categories include:

• Foreign language (though it would be hard to judge).
• Best new blog?
• Best political commentary?
• Best minister blog?
• Best lay blog?
  

One of the reasons I was thinking a panel of judges might be useful is to help with some suggested changes. For example CC suggested that it might be nice for a blogger to not have 5 different choices in a category for best post. So perhaps the blogger, or the panel, etc. could pick one nomination. Someone also suggested the number of nominations per category to limit the amount of material to read. We could do this based on number of nominations, but that would almost seem to be a "pre vote" making the final votes a run off. But maybe that's the idea.

Suggestions? Volunteers? Comments? Opinions?

Anyone care to right up a description of the Blog Categories?

More Award Planning - Demographics

I like the idea of asking optional demographic questions on the blog award voting. So far CC has also indicated she would be interested in seeing demographic breakdown of votes. Not many other have expressed an opinion.

I like the idea, but I hate the idea of trying to define demographic questions myself. If we ask about Theological Orientation should we ask in a "Select all that apply" format, or "choose the one you most identify with" or what? What is the best way to ask about gender? What age categories would work best?

Probably the best way to determine this would be to borrow someone else's hard work. Has anyone else taken a survey recently where they asked about demographics and liked the way they asked the questions? Anyone have any good suggestions for the best practice methods of collecting demographics? Other demographic categories to add? Geographic location?

I am planning on pulling out particular items for discussion from my previous post asking for feedback, anyone who wants to add stuff in that previous post please feel free.

Third Annual Blog Award Planning

Last year after the second annual UU Blog Awards I posted a request for feedback. I also mentioned that I would like to have a bit of discussion well before the next awards to make sure ideas had time to be implemented.

Anyway some initial things that I would like to work out:

• What's a good timeline to shoot for. Should there be a break between nominations and voting to give people time to read all the stuff that's nominated, if yes how much time?
• Should there be any new categories?
• Should nominations for a category be limited to only a handful of entries? If yes how do we decide which of all the nominations should be the final ones?
  
• Could someone please help come up with a better description to stick in the about page?
• Should current vote totals be displayed during the voting period?
• Should the website display some sort of countdown to voting closing?
• Is it appropriate to ask optional demographic questions? If yes, what type of demographics? Specifically I would want someone to define the categories for me, I would not want to come up with them on my own.

Oh heck, that should be enough to get the ball rolling. What worked well? What could use improving upon? What should be added? What should be dropped? in short what would you change?

Blog Award Description

A while back someone commented that the description I put together for the UU Blog Awards was, to put it politely, lacking. I wholeheartedly agree. I believe my response to that was along the lines of "good observation, I'll fix it by the next time the blog awards role around". But now it occurs to me that others are still linking to it, and it is still getting traffic, and the description is still lacking.

Would someone be willing to write up a description? Why do we do the awards? Whatever seems appropriate to include. What should be included in the explanation? I'm not even sure. I can easily write code for collecting information and displaying the results, but I know that others out there could write a much better description.

If anyone is willing either comment here or drop me a line here.

UU Blog Awards - Process Feedback

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?

UU Blog Awards - Winners

We have winners for the 2006 UU Blog Awards. If you are one of our winners, then please be sure to check out the prize page.

Congratulations to all our fine winners and nominees. Thanks to all who participated.

UU Blog Awards - Final Day of Voting

Just a reminder that today is the final day of voting for the Second Annual UU Blog Awards. If you haven't voted please take the time to do so, I will be cutting off voting at some point tonight, but I can't guarentee when.

Some of the races have gotten pretty close. So, for those who won't be checking in until later there is still a little mystery left. If nothing else you can be sure to check back to see the UU Blog Award Winner image created by CC.