Weblog Awards Winners Named

Votes have been tallied and the winners are announced!.

I must admit, very few of my personal faves ended up winning, but congrats to all, and to Kevin Aylward and crew, for doing their usual great job.

I was saddened to hear from one blogging friend that his site seemed to be under attack during much of the voting time. He never made the accusation that there was a connection, so I won’t, either, but the timing of the attacks against him seemed to co-incide with the “voting” time-frame.

I was distracted through much of the voting, and didn’t know all that was going on, but it was very upsetting to read that anything untoward had occured in the Best New Blog category which resulted in questionable votes being logged for a couple of blogs, including Hang Right Politics. I know several of the gang over there and I can say without equivocation that Jeanette possesses neither the technical knowhow or the spiritual emptiness necessary to cheat on a contest like this. Aside from the fact that she is almost as technophibic as I am, she simply would not do it; it would not occur to her to do it.

The Hang Right folks are feeling badly and they’ve taken down all references to the awards from their blog. I think that’s a mistake. I understand why they’ve done it – they’re mortified and feeling very badly – but they shouldn’t be. HRP is a good blog that caught up in all the goings-on of the awards, particularly once it was discovered that one large website apparently gave instructions on how cheating might be accomplished. They apparently talked about it a lot, one of the HRP gals tried a suggested method to see if it worked. It didn’t.

Stupid to post on it, some might say, doing so only makes you look like you were trying to cheat…to my way of thinking, it’s simply evidence that they are THAT transparent. When you’re doing something wrong, you hide it…when you’re simply curious about something and checking it out – and chatting publicly about it – you’re not thinking about how that will read to others, especially those who want to believe the worst of you. Rather than “cheating” I suspect the HRP team are being hung up by the evidence of their own openness, or maybe naivete is the word.

Best course of action when nominated for anything, is to acknowledge it, do a little light, fun shilling and mention your “competition” in the most positive light possible, if at all. Then turn the page and focus on something else. Blog Awards and things like that are supposed to be fun, and if people are in their right minds, it can build a little community and give everyone a chance to mingle and get to know each other.

If the Weblog Awards are simply one other place for haters to hate and for malice and venom to insert itself, then who needs them?

That’s not in any way shape or form a criticism of the Awards or Kevin Aylward and his fine crew. I think they’ve got a great idea that promotes blogs and blogging in a very positive way – and it’s too bad if either bloggers or their readers can’t maintain a sense of “good will toward all” for the brief time voting is going on.

I’m simply making an observation about the state of things. And it should maybe make us all ask questions about how far “hate” for the other side has seeped into our lives, how welcome we have or have not made it and, if we’ve made it welcome, how much of ourselves have we allowed to be consumed by that hate?

If you are a person, left or right, who has felt the need to cheat by overdoing for a blog, or trying to discredit other blogs, or if you’re participating in DOS attacks against blogs because of a damn contest, well…that’s pathetic and sad. I hope it does not continue.

It was supposed to be FUN, folks.