And the ‘Bloggie’ goes to...

HONESTLY speaking, when almost everyone in any field can receive an award for excellence, why should bloggers be left out? After all, there are many bloggers out there who put in a tremendous amount of work into their blogs.

While some like to tinker with their templates, adding new interactive features every now and then, others take ages to type their entries to provide an entertaining and intellectually stimulating read to their visitors.

It seems as though some webmasters are thinking along similar lines. A quick search on the internet shows that there are now certain websites which are completely dedicated to giving out blog awards.

One such website is Asia Weblog Awards . Awards here are quite analogous to the “Viewers’ Choice Awards” which is a popular feature on most television channels. Similarly, these are “Bloggers’ Choice Awards.”

Probing further into this website, one can’t help but wonder why these awards are being given out in the first place. According to the webmaster Phil Ingram, director and co-founder of Upstart Design, a Hong Kong-based company, “someone was doing something similar in the US — and 95 per cent of the world was in the foreign category so while sitting in the bath I suddenly thought why not do something closer to home? I coded the whole thing in a day.”

Categories anyone?: There are about 26 categories including “best essayist,” “best political blog,” “best designed blog” to name a few. There are national categories too, “best Pakistani blog,” being one of them. So how did Ingram decide on these diverse categories? “The categories were just what came to me. I added a few by popular request over time,” he explains.

Of course one has the right to be a tad sceptical about the winners.

After all, voting is done through the internet and its quite possible that one person casts his/her vote an indefinite number of times, especially if there isn’t a foolproof system to prevent this. So how did the webmaster manage?

“Voting control was done though a combination of IP recording, cookies, and going through 24000 votes by eye, sorting them by different fields, looking for obvious patterns. I’d say I was 99 per cent accurate.”

The “Best Pakistani Blog” Award went to Zackaria Ajmal (http://zackvision.com/weblog/). When asked about his thoughts on the fairness of the voting process, he replied, “Any internet voting process cannot, by definition, be fair. However, Phil did his best to weed out spurious votes. My guess is that it should have removed a majority of vote stuffing.

There are still ways to vote multiple times but it requires a bit more effort. There is also an extra bias based on which internet users find out about the voting and are motivated enough to vote. That means only readers and friends of those bloggers who publicized the awards would vote.”

Furthermore, he pointed out that “a blog award is not an Oscar. I think of these awards more in terms of the publicity they give the nominated bloggers than in terms of winning. For example, I got quite a few visitors from the Asia Weblog Awards website. I hope some of them stick around and become regular readers” (the official website of this year’s Asia Weblog Awards is http://2004weblogawards.com).

Apart from Asia Weblog Awards, there are many national websites awarding bloggers. Two notable websites in this regard are the Philippine Blog Awards and Australian Blog Awards .

The Guardian also held its second British blog awards . Of course the downside of these localized awards is the limited number of blogs to which one can relate to, unless there is an award in the foreign category. Websites which award bloggers from around the world are more extensive and have a wider range of interesting blogs to bookmark.

One example of the latter which has already held its fourth blog awards ceremony is Weblog Awards

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It picks out the best in the blogging world during a year and then awards them as “Bloggie.” Aspiring bloggers can submit their nominations via the website. Some of the fascinating categories include “Best Weblog Directory,” “Best Article or Essay about Weblog,” “Best Web Application for Weblogs,” “Best Programming of a Weblog site” and “Best Group Weblog.”

What is interesting to note is that the website gives out awards not only with respect to their content, layout and programming, but it also awards those websites which offer a blog-related service such as commenting and blog directories. Bloggers are also awarded according to region such as “Best Asian Blog” and “Best American Blog.”

Although there are no cameras or lights and no victory speeches, getting a blog award is definitely an ego booster. One hopes that such awards will become more popular and will be publicized more effectively around the internet.

It is after all, the competition spurred by the awards, which will go a long way in improving the quality of blogs in general. And the average internet user will ultimately benefit from more thought-provoking content presented in a creative way.