Comments on: Attention Blog Owners – Encourage your readers not to spam

By: Damien

Damien — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:07:02 +0000

You’re fine Rebecca. Your readers did not spam.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:01:45 +0000

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.

By: Gerry

Gerry — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 09:38:11 +0000

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.

By: Brian Byrne

Brian Byrne — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 19:58:38 +0000

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.

By: Damien

Damien — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 13:39:52 +0000

I stated when nominations opened

Encourage your readers to nominate you or a specific blog post of yours that they liked the most.

and above I stated

instruct your readers when nominating to stop fucking up the nomination database by filling in every category.

and

After today, should I find any more blogs who are encouraging their readers to nominate them for every category Iâ€™ll ban them outright.

Nowhere did I say blogs would be banned for encouraging nominations.

By: Cailleach

Cailleach — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 13:27:29 +0000

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*

By: Brian Byrne

Brian Byrne — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 11:17:07 +0000

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.

By: Jett Loe

Jett Loe — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 01:57:23 +0000

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?

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:04:59 +0000

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…)

By: fÃºstar

fÃºstar — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 01:28:18 +0000

I can kind of understand peopleâ€™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.