Despite asking people NOT to spam on the new nomination form, the opposite has happened. One site alone has sent 150 people over and these people, blinded from their love of the site, have nominated said site for every single category. None of these people will now have their nominations considered. In total about 600 people have put the same URL into every form and submitted it. As a result I think I might switch the form back to the single nomination form.
So can all blog owners sending people here to nominate instruct your readers when nominating to stop fucking up the nomination database by filling in every category. Now in big letters:
ONE NOMINATION FOR A BLOG MEANS THEY ARE NOMINATED and make the long list.
The nomination round is not a popularity contest, it is not about how many times people nominate you for the same category. If you are nominated just once you will make the long list. The public vote is the popularity contest, tell your readers to save their paws until that starts.
After today, should I find any more blogs who are encouraging their readers to nominate them for every category I’ll ban them outright.
Next year, if we go for a nomination round, I guess we’ll need a more sophisticated form to stop spamming.
The nominations process was a little bit confusing I must say, because earlier you said to encourage your readers to nominate you, which isnt necessary at all at this stage as one nomination is enough. I encouraged my readers to nominate for me as well thinkin the blogs with the most nominations would get through. sorry.
I must say I got the same impression as Lili.
I doubt you’ll have any problems with my humble little site though, as I think both my readers only voted once each.
Down with that sort of thing. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that. Name them and shame them. What’s this wee country coming too.
I can kind of understand people’s confusion but can’t see how it could lead to the kind of thing Damien is actually complaining about. Encouraging your readers to vote for you in relevant categories is one thing (and fair game). Encouraging them to vote for you in every single category is quite another. Even without explicit instructions to the contrary, surely it’s obvious that voting for a blog as “Best Podcaster” (for example) even when the blog in question has never made a podcast is just taking the piss.
Like I said, I appreciate that genuine misunderstandings will happen, but clearly some people have been abusing an event that is largely about shared interests and goodwill for their own bizarrely selfish ends.
Yeah I think there was a bit of confusion about how many nominations were required, but anyone who was nominating a blog in every single category wasn’t confused, but rather just being a bollix! (Hope none of my readers (i.e. Mum and Dad) did so in a misguided act of devotion…)
I’ll agree with everybody else here and say the process was not clear – meaning it seemed this was this was the public vote re the post that said: “Encourage your readers to nominate you or a specific blog post of yours that they liked the most.”
I went ahead and did this and now find that if my site does make the long list that there’s another round – in which people will again be encouraged to vote – argghh.
Ah well; re: the spamming – why not an award for site that spammed the most?
Yep … I was confused too, and put a link from my site for those who wished to nominate/vote. If that has meant my site’s elimination, so be it; but you should accept some blame for unclarity.
I posted a link on my site as well – I thought that was what we were being encouraged to do?
This wasn’t made clear from the start *shrugs shoulders*
I stated when nominations opened
and above I stated
and
Nowhere did I say blogs would be banned for encouraging nominations.
Damien,
If my site has not already been eliminated by you, please withdraw it from the awards.
Many thanks,
Brian Byrne.
Editor, A Kilcullen Diary.
Hey, i can’t help it if a few thousand of my adoring fans think my blogs the shit and nominate it for best blog in the universe ever. Oh, wait, they think it IS shit. Ah, ok then.
Yes I encouraged my readers to vote, as I understood that was what was asked of us. I’ll happily delete the post now I’ve read this, however I most definitely wasn’t intentionally spamming, just doing what I thought was asked.
You’re fine Rebecca. Your readers did not spam.