@6000 – If it’s only a popularity contest, then why have judges at all? In fact, for this award, I’m left feeling that the judging is really superficial (because someone somewhere thought that there should be some degree of judging) rather than a real understanding of why there should be such an intervention.

Also, it’s not actually a matter of ‘don’t like it don’t get involved’. I don’t think anyone involved in the awards thinks that they’ve worked out the complete and best way of designing it. And it’s a community-driven process – which means that this process of debating the best way forward – is exactly part of being involved. It’s as important as agreeing with it – perhaps more so.

At the end of the day, another community might choose to start their own blog awards. Or manage the next blog awards. In both cases they will be different, but they’ll only be better if more people do get involved.

Re the SABAs: By making this a totally public vote, you make it a popularity contest. By making the vote totally oligarchic, you make it easily manipulated and potentially unrepresentative of general opinion.

The shared voting between judges and public is the most transparent, open and fair method. All credit to the organisers.

The rules were there and upfront from the start. Don’t like it, don’t get involved – simple as.

6k.
Double finalist and er… double runner up. *sigh*

The other thing I’d like to suggest is that instead of getting corporate sponsorship for prizes, to try to source prizes from within the blogging community. I’m a textile designer and illustrator and although it was never my intention, my blog has been an incredibly useful business tool for me, growing my business’s reputation all over the world. I’d love to sponsor a prize from my online shop for the next blog awards, and think that this kind of thing would be much more appropriate than getting a goody bag mostly full of pointless branded stuff.

Cheers,
Heather