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The first annual @JPNaude awards
So I’ve had a long and colourful history with the SA Blog awards. I wrote the post that inspired ‘em, I’ve judged ‘em, I’ve sponsored ‘em, I’ve hosted ‘em, I’ve been frustrated by ‘em, shit I’ve even won a few of ‘em.
The last few years though I’ve tried my best to stay away from them altogether, it’s just one fight after another (much respect to Jon Cherry for putting up with everyone’s shit as long as he has). It seems no-one has managed to find the right system for judging.
This year, well hey, let’s just say I’m a sucker for punishment.
I get a call from Chris asking if I’d be willing to come on board as a judge, I said yes, and last week I get sent a list of blogs that I had to go through in detail.
It took me a few hours but I did it, I went through each of the blogs, painstakingly checking off on all criteria. My category was best business blog, and in my mind there were two blogs that clearly stood out from the pack: Quirk and Tall Horse wines.
I then see the finalist released yesterday, these two were no where in sight, based on the wide margin I had them ahed by, I was curious so I tweeted about it and got the following reply from one of the organisers:
“@jpnaude release the results Sun morning after public vote tally & is using weighted judges’ votes to determine winner out of final 2.”
Now I’m confused. You waste the judges’ time going through 10 blogs, then tell us that our vote only counts for the final two anyway? Basically, the finalists in each category were determined by the initial public vote. The judges’ vote counted for shit.
I replied saying as much (in under 140 chars), and got the following reply:
“Real f*up sorry Rich. Large vote margin btwn 1,2&3rd place in all categories so JP decided to give finalists more time to RSVP for event”
Now, I don’t know JP, but from the look of his site he’s been blogging for a year and has written a total of 13 posts (I stand under correction though) and this guy is acting like Deus Ex Machina. Crazy loco.
It sucks, but it’s sadly business as usual for the SA blog awards. Which are this year, in my mind any way, a complete and utter farce.
This, in case you didn’t get it, is my way of completely distancing myself from the outcome and the awards themselves.
Maybe next year will be different… just kidding…!
Update: I had a really nice chat with JP last night and I will say the dude’s heart is without a doubt in the right place. He’s coming at this from the outside, and a little perspective can’t be a bad thing. I still stand behind the statements I’ve made above, but am now more than willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. You should too.
September 20, 2010 at 2:31 pm | 25 comments
Hiya Rich, just stumbled across your blog (using StumbleUpon no less), and RSS’d it for added lols and insight into your extremely odd mind.
Working my way backwards through your posts. Take care man.
i have nothing to gain in these awards, except to acknowledge my favourite sa blogs and I have to say that this year seemed to be a complete waste of time – between the multiple voting phase, websites (not blogs) and extinct blogs getting through the nomination phase, a few other oddities and now this…
Congrats to those who made it through – but it’s all just: meh.
So agree with you. SA Blog Awards is up to crap. A load of crock. Right now I am glad I am not a nominee.
Ah man, brings back some memories… blogging used to be so much more fun back in those days!
What annoys me about the awards aside from the crazy judging system is that they appear to be having a closed event. At least last year we could all get trashed at the bar!
*sigh*
Ah, this just seems to be more of the same with the SA Blog Awards. I agree that Jon Cherry deserves a certain amount of respect just for persevering with the Awards but as a blogger (well, loosely, I don’t blog nearly as much as I used to) this isn’t exactly the highlight of my year.
I thought I’d try a super late nomination effort for my work blog and when I didn’t get through to the next stage on the basis of a lackluster effort to promote my site as a business/company blog … well, I just got back to work and publishing more stuff to my site that adds to its value to the people who read what I write.
I am sure we will see more controversy next year and every other Blog Awards because it is 2 or 3 parts populism and 1 part merit (not to denigrate some excellent entries, there are some great sites and content creators in the mix, they often just don’t get nearly enough attention).
What’s also a joke are how some of the finalists (cough…I’m thinking of a blog that’s something to do with a vibe and a couple of oceans), are more concerned about winning than writing quality posts (i.e. vote for me and I’ll wear a pink thong kind of vibe). It’s pretty pathetic.
Perhaps there should be a ‘I proudly didn’t win a blog award’ badge as well.
I totally agree with you…. I am dumbfound at the results thus far!!!
I’m not much of a blogger so I have no say in this matter, but it does not surprise me what happened. Like most things in this country, it’s the musicians, bloggers, artists etc that have the least amount of talent and skill that win the awards and recognition. The true artists and bloggers will always be unrecognized. Once the novelty of the so-called winners has worn off the true bloggers will still be around delivering quality content.
Keep up the good work Rich!
I agree 100% Rich. I still do not understand how some of the blogs in the original nominated list made it on there. Boggles the mind !!
Nicely said richard. it’s basically just a popularity contest. Quoted you in this article: http://belowthelion.co.za/?p=1066
Love it!
Had a great laugh with this. But also knowing how ridiculous the whole thing is, is a bit sad.
Glad you’ve put this out there. “Maybe next year will be different…”
(Jolene’s comment was on the button.)
Damn you Rich.
After reading this, I had no choice but to go and read what that pillock had written.
I regret it. That guy really likes banners..
It’s nice to hear other people’s opinions on the farce that is the SA Blog Awards.
The entire thing has been a joke from beginning to end and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Who in their right mind thought a daily vote would allow the cream of the crop to rise to the top? The top quality blogs have far better things to do than post “Please vote for me” stories on a daily basis…
You have echoed my thoughts quite accurately Rich. I did vote for a few blogs – people I actually know and whose blogs are worth reading but not many off them made it in.
To me it seems there is a category or two missing from the contest. “Most adverts crammed into one page” and also possibly “Most brand names dropped in one post”.
Sadly the commercialism that has infiltrated blog culture means that the most popular blogs are going to be targeted by advertisers (which is not a bad thing, everyone needs to make a living) but this echoes the days before our sportsman turned professional. The pro athlete had more time to train and prepare for events whereas the amateur still had to grind out his 9-5 job. The blog awards would probably never acknowledge this or split the nominees into ad-ridden and ad-free as this essentially is a commercial event with lots of sponsors and cash rolling about.
Anyway, lets see what happens. I would enjoy seeing the certain unnamed blog involving a number before 3 but after 1 dethroned but it is not going to happen due to a larger army of sycophants reading it for their daily dose of re-posts and triteness.
Hahaha. Have you seen the response on his blog?
“Yes I don’t blog much… I’m a businessman and radio presenter”
Of course, the rest of us are all sitting about doing nothing else. Ridonkulous.
Your link to Tall Horse Wines goes to Quirk. Thought you’d want to know.
Agree with all these comments, its a bit of a joke..but I think we need to have more insight or explanations into the categories. Maybe we need to have specific sub categories within certain sections – as we are NOT comparing apples with apples for most of the entrants in the same category and this is a major issue.
Lets take “design” for instance.
Is this for the best designed blog? or the best blog about design?
One of the finalists use and out of the box wordpress theme which they purchased…hmm and they dont talk too much about design…what the heck? they clearly have a large audience and have been voted in with pretty much ZERO link to the category that they have entered.
Sorry, editing a few php pages and CSS simply of a purchased theme should not allow you to crack it..
The above is something which is prevalent across numerous categories..its not a rant its a serious issue which has been discussed at length and needs to be addressed in future years.
Eish man, I was nominated this year and I was stoked at the mere thought that my blog was worth a nod. But like you said, the rules were not clear and from the way that whole voting thing was set up, it seems as though the winners were determined a long time ago. It does not make sense to me how we can close the voting on Friday and then have the ceremony the following Saturday. How the heck would a random blogger in Polokwane make the trip to CT? Unless of course such a blogger was tole to clearly pack up their bags 2-3 weeks in advance, which is what I think happened.
Mr JP is a joke I think. I have been blogging for a year and I have more posts in a week than he has in a year. And the writing is shocking. How the heck is this guy in charge of the awards?
I am not peeved at losing out at all. I am happy that my awards made it this far. I just wish the process was a little more transparent. Perhaps Mr Naude has been taking some advice from The ANC’s Media Appeals Tribunal commitee…
I’m quite curious to know if this @JPNaude owns any other shirts other than rugby jerseys
I spent a cornucopia of time and energy tailoring my sports blog for the SA Blog Awards. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself a finalist when the top 10 were announced. I feverishly posted (what I felt) were quality pieces to ensure that my blog was not only receiving the care and upkeep it deserved, but also to distinguish it from ‘the rest’.
I was irked to receive an obnoxiously generic email from the ‘organisers’ explaining that owing to ‘limited seating’ I would not be invited to attend the ceremony. I took it plainly that I had not achieved a top 2 berth!
Now while I will not allow my failure to bring home the silverware consume me, I am cheesed off that I received absolutely NO feedback on my work. How can I improve? What were my strengths? Where were the other competitors better than me? Where was I placed in the top 10? How many bloody votes did I receive?? The organisers completely failed to amuse my curiosity (to put it lightly).
Both myself and another finalist (from another category) were sure that the winner had been picked before the ‘acclaimed’ top 10 were announced. I fear that the energy I spent was all part of one big ‘tease’ to encourage the South African public sphere to contribute to online forum through their blogs. God knows how much time I could have been devoted to my university work had I never made the final at all. Clearly an overhaul is needed to ensure that everybody benefits.
I would be interested to know if any of the other finalists feel the way I do.
Fixed, thanks Nick.
Hi All,
I’m one of the chaps looking after the awards with Dave and JP and just thought I would let you know the way the judge votes were scored for the categories was that we give them a 30% weighting (i.e. 70% public & 30% Judges). For this category once the public vote and judges votes were added up neither of the choices Rich gave a higher score to made it to the top 2 (it was close). For the overall blog of the year though the judges vote counts 100% (Rich is still a judge, and a good friend ).
Hope this clears things up a bit, if not please drop me a mail at chris@huddlemind.com and will try my best to get back to you asap (please give us a bit of time as you can imagine am a bit busy with the awards being a couple of days away).
As for JP maybe he has not been blogging for long but he is a wonderful, fair, and kind chap and has helped us immensely to expose our community to the greater public, this helps to benefit us all at the end of the day.
All the best and have a wonderful day,
Chris
I understand that that was how it was supposed to work Chris, but based on my discussions with Dave and JP, that’s not how it went down. Due to disparity between judges, the judges votes did not influence the jump from 10 to 2. We only kick in in the next phase.
That’s broken (and is the reason for the post).
I still have a man chubby for you though bro
hi richard:)
Interesting article.
I was pretty surprised myself you get into the finals for Best Personal as I had only been blogging for 4 months.Do you know wh o the judge was for this category and what criteria they judged on? I an just curious how this whole thing works as I had never heard of it before.
So not too many SA Blog award winners writing here in response so I thought I’d drop a quick comment. Firstly, for those of you that won – congratulations. The sea of whinge against the SA Blog awards almost makes it a little sucky being a category winner – it’s almost as though these articles aim to suggest that most winners are not there by merit (Richard I’m sure that’s not your intention but I do hope you can see how I would likely arrive at this conclusion given your article).
Anyway, I’m really glad Wonkie won something this year and it’s great getting recognition for our small team. In just over 20 months we’ve gathered over 11,000 email feed subscribers and a good few thousand fans on facebook. We’ve also been invited to speak on BBC radio about SA politics and at local schools to get students interested in current affairs through the use of humour. So kudos to the team and thanks to the loyal fans that voted for us. Sorry for those of you who didn’t win anything and are bitter about it – some legitimate points I’m sure but don’t take anything away from those of us who did. We blog for free and the award is a piece of plastic (that breaks by the way) – we do it because it does make a difference… cheers