Gold Stars For Everyone!

Web Log Awards season is upon us again, and this year instead of simply keeping quiet I’m going to go ahead and speak my mind. In fact, I’m not even going to spell check or take the time to craft this post into my usual format of short paragraph, statement, short paragraph. I’m not even going to try to make it funny. I’m just going to speak my mind for once and let the dust settle where it will and if I upset some people so be it, because what I really want to do is make everyone think about these awards in a different light and maybe, just maybe, change them into something much better for everyone. You see, when I look around the internet I see that people who are taking these things as seriously as if they were some kind of REAL awards ceremony and I don’t understand why because they’re not.

Now, hold on there, Sparky. Don’t get all righteous on me just yet.

I know what you’re thinking right now and you’re wrong. This isn’t a bitter post of hatred towards the awards by an angry, disgruntled writer who didn’t get nominated for something even though he thinks he’s all that and a bag of dried monkey snot. The truth is that I have been nominated for these things in the past and I’ve even won a couple.

But so what?

All of the so-called awards being given out by these well-meaning Bloggers are good for an ego boost but not much else. They’re basically a popularity contest, where the Blog with the biggest, most loyal readership wins every time regardless of whether they deserve the win or not. That’s why I believe that even though I’m sure the people running the awards sites are doing everything they can to be fair and unbiased; they are unfortunately merely perpetuating a really big high-school clique-fest.

And every year it’s the same. He, or she, with the most friends; wins.

And before someone writes me an angry email saying that those who have the most popular sites DO deserve to win because they are so popular, let me state here and now that you’re wrong. Well, you’re wrong if the goal of the award is to reward excellence and not popularity. There is a very big difference between being popular and being a shining star of Blogging excellence. For an example of what I mean we need look no further than the music industry. Britney Spears, Ashlee Simpson and Outkast are some of the most popular artists out there right now but how many of you would ever hold their repertoire up as an impeccable example of musical perfection to your grandchildren? You might like them and enjoy them, but I doubt you could keep a straight face if you were trying to claim they deserved accolades for their musical talent.

To reiterate, popular does not mean extraordinary. It just means popular.

Now I’m not one to simply spout off without having some sort of solution in mind, and this is no exception. I do have an idea as to what would help “legitimize”, for lack of a better term, these awards. Basically, the main problem with ALL of the Blogging Awards as they now stand is the fact that they’re voted on by the general public. However, if you remove the general public from the entire proceedings then no one will actually care enough to tune in and thus the awards themselves stagnate and die. So what I’d like to see, what I think the Blogging community needs now that it has finally grown into something more than a small collection of hobby sites into an exceedingly large and diverse group of mostly personal websites, is a better method of soliciting nominations and voting on the nominees. Something that will also help the winners feel that they are actually winning something, even if that something is just the respect of people they believe to be their peers in the Blogging community.

It wouldn’t hurt if there were a statue or certificate, though.

Now, I’m no statistician, but it seems to me that there has to be a way of incorporating general public voting with a sort of elite group of opinion leaders who would do the final voting and/or tallying to discern the eventual winners. Something like an amalgam of the Academy Awards and American Idol, whereby the public at large has a say in the outcome, but a small group of respected peers in the Blogging community also have a say, thereby keeping the awards from degenerating into a popularity contest. I’m just talking off the cuff here, but I think it might work something like this;

1. The general public nominates whoever they think is worthy for each category,
2. The top XX in each category are then presented to a small group of highly regarded reviewers/bloggers for review,
3. This elite group votes for the 5 Blogs in each category they believe to be the best,
4. (If applicable) These 5 Blogs are then contacted and must submit a single post from the past year that they believe exemplifies why they should win in their category,
5. The general public, or better yet, an ever-expanding ‘Academy’ of past Blog Awards winners, then votes for the winners.

With this system, or one like it, the award truly becomes a mark of recognition by your blogging peers, and not simply a popularity contest decided upon by mob mentality. Not only that, but it also makes it that much harder to cheat since real people need to review the nominees and possibly even vote on the winners. No automatic web-scripts will influence the results and so I believe that those people who actually make it to the final five in each category will actually feel that they HAVE been honored, that perhaps they are being recognized not only by the general public, but by people who they themselves might look up to and admire.

Say what you will about how elitist this system might sound to you now, but if you found yourself in the final five and knew that people out there who’s writing you admired had actually liked your writing enough to nominate you, I bet you’d be thrilled.

And really, isn’t that what an award is all about?