So I wrote a blog post about this but I figured there might be some better discussion in a forum style conversation. What do you think about the Anime Blog Awards that are going on? Personally I think it's kind of exclusionary to limit it to only bloggers doing the nominating and voting. I'm sure readers have their own opinions of what constitutes a good blog. I'm also not even sure who the heck is running the awards. Anyway, just thought I'd start a discussion in here if anyone's interested in talking about it.

I had a similar reaction, Hung, but I'm sure the people behind it mean well, so I'll probably submit some nominations at some point.

That said, I don't quite understand the "make a post about the contest on your blog," call to action in the mass e-mail that went out.  If the nominating and voting is limited to bloggers, and most bloggers received the e-mail (as I assumed they did), why the need to advertise the contest all over the place?  And, for that matter, if readers aren't allowed to participate, why remind them of the fact by making a post on your blog?  The whole thing kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Well, I can understand why the voters are limited to bloggers, because otherwise blogs like Random Curiosity would just take away every prize imaginable. It's indeed a bit elitist, but most readers just keep to one or two blogs, and it would just turn into a strange popularity-contest. 

Jeff does have a point, though, as posting on your blog does seem a bit strange of an advertisement.  

Uho! So Ani-Noto has some info on who's behind the awards. I really wish he'd allow comments on the blog. Anywho, I did lookup the dns for the site and all I got was that it was dreamhost. I probably could've found out more but I'm lazy.

Oh yeah, and good points about posting to the awards when it's only self-serving. I think we're looking at some kind of page rank upping syndicate conspiracy! Inbou da!

I think Impz is involved somehow as well, so I assume the committee includes some known anime bloggers.  Like I said, I think they mean well, and I can't fault people for participating (just as I appreciate the nominations I've received), but I'm not too personally enthralled with the idea and don't plan on advertising the contest on my blog.

Yes, Impz is in charge of it and it's mostly made up of the ABC treehouse. It was discussed for a long while on #animeblogger.

<saturnine> I told Impz to remove the damn donation widget if it was clear that the oldfags had their panties in a bunch over it being some scam
<saturnine> if we had revealed our identities earlier I bet people would've used it against us anyway
...
<saturnine> so xxxx can you offer some incisive analysis on why the older bloggers are so caught up in the WHO of The ABA that they're forgetting the WHY
<saturnine> I mean, you like pointing out stupid things
...
<saturnine> meh, I'll get Impz to handle it later
<saturnine> you have no idea how obsessed he is at this point with keeping it "secret"

Interesting. I like how they refer to us (?) as the "older bloggers" hahaha. Is there like a way to read the logs of #animeblogger?

Also, there appears to be a bug where if you edit your post it sends your post back in time...

I realize Anime Nano isn't the most cohesive anime blog community, but I wonder if things would've worked out differently had they gone through Anime Nano to do some outreach and planning for this awards thing.

BLOG DORAMA FTW! 

Came in to answer some queries.

 1. We are not a shadow group since it's decently obvious who is in this. We are not trying very hard to be secret. It's just that we do not want to put bias on anyone on nomination. For e.g. "Oh shi-, Impz is organizing this, so we should put that anime blog if not he might be meh.". I want to avoid the situation and reveal the committee after everything is over officially.

2. The nominations are done by bloggers because we do not want an extreme case of popularity where we have a very limited number of blogs. It's very likely that the extremely popular blogs will drown out any chance of any new blogs being nominated and seen. Using bloggers seem to be a slightly better gauge to nominate others, giving allowance to new blogs.

3. Reader involvement will come at the later stage of voting. We have a blogger's choice awards where bloggers vote first. Then after it ends, we have the reader's choice. Hence, there is involvement, just not now. The whole intention of spreading the news is to remind everyone about this, to churn out some interest. It's going to be hard to gather any anticipation by readers if we do not spread the news. It's like a double prong thing. First the blogger, then the readers. So, Jeff, I do hope that you give it some chance or awareness. We will be posting up information soon about this reader's choice. It's not the official launch yet, and some details are still X_X.

4. Technical stuff, Impz has no clue. I will refer it to the bunny X_X. Impz is a tech idiot.

5. The aim of the awards is firstly to promote new anime blogs and also to award/recognize the good blogs of our time. I will be the first to note that the format isn't the best, and there are some major flaws. Still ,it's the inaugural event, and we probably will screw up somewhere. It doesn't mean anything other than "we have to do it better next time". Heh heh.  

 If there are any more questions, please shoot. It's not officially launched yet per se. So we are still hoping to find animenano to help out with doing some outreach ^^. So, Hung, I hope you give this a chance too \o/. More details will be on the site soon.

How would reader nominations do anything but increase the number of blogs nominated? Is there some kind of scheme where only the blogs that get the most # of nominations will be in the running for voting? If this is the case you should make it clear on the site. I thought that a blog that got any number of nominations (even just 1) would be in the running for the vote.

And even with just bloggers nominating, see how skewed the nominations are? Someone pointed out that Riuva was nominated for every category! So much for diversity.

I can see what you're trying to do, but so far the popular blogs seem to still be dominating. That's sort of how awards work though, I guess. 

Hey Hung,

In the about section, it states clearly that the top 5 nominations in each category is selected for voting. So, I do not know where the confusion comes about. There is no reader nomination by the way, because of reasons I explained earlier.

Well, on diversity issues, it's impossible to control it. We cannot say something like "you cannot vote popular blogs, you must hate them and vote for only indie blogs". There is a reason for blogs' popularity in general, and that is good content after getting initial traffic from other blogs' hyperlinks.

We are thinking of a Sundance version of the Anime Blog Awards, so it's more indie. The truth is that we have tried our best to limit whatever we can, and we cannot decide for anyone. I think you will understand.

 If you wish to ask more, please come to #that on irchighway.net. Any one of us who is online will be glad to talk to you about this. I really do not hope that it ticks anyone off (even though people will whenever there are awards), but I do not want to turn off someone because I didn't explain well ^^

Regards,

Impz 

sorry for double post.

We also changed the tab to "RULES" from "About" so that it's clearer for everyone that it is the rules section. ^^ I hope that helps.

Ah, my bad for misunderstanding about the nominations.

What we'll probably see, however, is a skew towards the popular blogs anyway with the "top 5" rule. Is there a better way to include smaller blogs? Probably. Do I know of one? No. But this is the kind of thing you could've discussed in an open forum instead of keeping things closed to your small group so that it would at least seem more "fair" when the rules have finally been announced.

The "rookie" category is a good idea, btw. Perhaps splitting each award into a newcomer and a oldcomer (?) award would be appropriate if you really wanted to highlight newer/smaller blogs. It's probably too late to change this, but like I said before, this is why you want to have some open discussion on things when you're planning something for a community.

Hey Hung,

 Having both the new and old blogs together will be too long a nomination list. As said earlier, will you make a 30 category voting system. Second, will you vote for it? All 30 of them? I know I will get turned off if I have to nominate anything more than 10. Much less 30.

Too many cooks spoil the broth, with everyone thinking something else. Yes, I might sound offensive (sadly ;_:) but too much open discussion usually ends up with nothing. Actually, the idea has been thrown around with discussion with quite a few bloggers in #animeblogger (around 15 or so). It's just not in the forum here. =3.

I believe you can understand that we cannot open up discussion with almost everyone in the community. Nothing will ever get done.  ^^. You can tell that I do not have that much faith in open democracy, where it just takes 2-3 months to get it moving. The above statement is not representative of what the committee thinks, but me. I hope this clears it up. I believe I did enough to get a well rounded view of things from bloggers of different view points (we have so many #@%#$^#$^$ moments during decision making)

We are going to have the Indie version (for newer blogs) after this in the near future. Requirements will be set in a way (it's in the preliminary stage) that popular blogs cannot be voted. That will give anime bloggers 2 award ceremonies to look forward to in a year. This, I believe, will make it worthwhile for everyone. It's in our long term plans. ^^ So, you do not have to worry. I think I repeated this point more than twice in my replies. 

The intention to get the newer blogs is part of the plan, but we cannot start off with that because we want to get everyone involved in this thing first, before going with a more indie version. Without any recognition or precedent, no one will be that involved. I hope I paint a better picture.

 Impzie has to sleep now ;_;. Please email us at staff@animeblogawards.com if you wish to get the answer quick. Or u can wait for my reply here.

Cool. Thanks for your clarifications. I really hope the awards turn out to be a success. I disagree with you on how it's been set up, but it's really your awards and you can do them however you want, right?

;_; i guess so if you make it this way ^_^. Impz goes to sleep now. I hope that this makes a nice compromise to most parties. I must really be a closet maschoist, setting something up for nice dorama.

DORAMA FTW!