Indiblogger of the month - Voting Procedure Recommendation
I have been going through the stories that are put up for the 'Indiblogger for the month'. There is a lot of awesome writing there. And this got me thinking
I fear that the current voting procedure rarely ensures that the best blog for the competition topic wins. The current procedure, more often than not, will ensure that the most popular blogger wins. My rationale for this is:
1. Everyone plugs their blog among their 'blogger friends'. I did this too. My blogger friends would, by first impulse vote for me because the know me and not because they think I am the best blogger in the competition.
2. Once they vote for me - there is no incentive for them to read any other post. I am convinced that very few people read more than one (or maybe less than a handful) blogs before they vote. BECAUSE THEY CANT VOTE MORE THAN ONCE. What is the point reading more posts once you have voted
3. This would mean than the blogger who has the highest number of friends wins and not the blogger with the best blogpost for the topic of the competition.
My Recommendation
Allow everyone to vote multiple time for multiple blogs. BUT no one can vote for a blog more than once. And ofcourse noone can vote for themselves.
This would ensure than people have some incentive to read a number of blogs and keep voting as they go on... people can come back to indiblogger through all the days of the competition to vote for blogs and spread their reading across a number of days....
I would love to know that you think... and would love to have indiblogger implement this... technology, time and cost permitting of course :-)
Finally I hope this is not seen as a criticism of indiblogger... They have done a brilliant job by giving us a forum... that by itself is a huge benefit for us blogger... I only try to recommend an improvement (and this one can be complete rubbish really) as a forum member...
Reason: Update
Instead of altering the voting process , why not have a stage,where a sort of synopsis of each author/ their 'best' work is presented? As in what they are writing about etc. This would make people read more posts and thus they might be able to get a clearer idea...
Ok, thinking aloud here - we get the blogger to submit the best snippets of each post while they give in the nominations. We also get a short description of who they are and why they blog on that subject... and all this goes onto the "stage" right? This makes sense, although the no. people visiting the actual blog will be less... and our mods will have to verify that the synopsis is in fact, a part of the blog post...
Nevertheless I like the idea. Will try and find workarounds to implement this!
Hmmm... Renie... I agree... a snippet can influence... a well written snippet can in fact be better than the post... also... added load for moderators to verify if the snippet is actually relavant... rather... cant the first paragrah / or first few lines of the post appear as a tool tip pop up on mouse over against each post submission... that would take away any subjectivity... also... if possible... the name of the post instead of something like "Post 1" would make the competion entries more reader friendly....
There are a few blog platforms where in a snippet from the post can be used..it can be something like this...when I moved my poems to a new blog (recently) I used this method to inform my readers in my main blog...many do click and al least go through whats written ..yes that should do the trick..what you can do is, have a disclaimer and once the ovting starts , verify for the top blogs, if it not a snippet from their blog, you can disqualify them
I have not been able to read all the comments posted before due to lack of time, but here is my suggestion, in case they are already discussed please ignore.
#1>I don't think there is any need for 5 nomination posts per user, fairly I can judge my post well, so i shd be good enough pick best 2/3 of my posts.Because it would take lot of time to read all the 5 posts of a user and there are so many nominations. And also, it would not be fair for me if i vote for someone just after reading 1-2 posts, so posting 2-3 nominations gurantee fairness to a extent.
#2>Alternatively, some sort of internal scrutiny. Let the user nominate 5 posts, then indiblogger internally review them and publish Top 2(not three because already one round of review has been done by indiblogger itself) posts for public voting.
#3>I could not agree more with the thought that one user shd be allowed to vote multiple times but not on the same blog.
#4>To make the procedure more transparent, why don't we break the 100 into different category and their corresponding marks allotment (e.g. content 30, writing skills 20 etc etc)and publish this break up to the user only along with publishing the cumulative rank to all. This would help me identifying where are my areas of improvement, otherwise I barely know how to improve my ranking...
Thanks,
Guys, stay tuned - these changes are being tested right now. 2 days is all we need. Blog Gore and everyone else here - you're awesome. Keep the ideas coming! 
hello everyone,
i have not read all the comments completely, so this may be a repeat suggestion. but still what i feel is...
why not make different categories ? like Best look n feel, Best content in words, Best content in visuals, etc.
where bloggers can participate their blogs. so that only active bloggers will be part of this event.
even this will help people to vote in categories of their expertise. this will save blogs from wrong valuation. someone like me will not read the blogs having lots of text, so my vote will not be vote, it will be a guess.
and again, this will help lots of talents to come in limelight, who are not perfect in everything. like a good writer may not be able to keep his blog clean n neat. that doesn't reduce his writing skills.
so, this is it. a basic idea.
just see if it is doable...
regards
PRASAD
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