Blogger of the Year is...
UPDATE: Just read my comments below! Let me introduce a bit about myself. My name is Swerver and I live in a fascinating island known as Mactan in Cebu, Philippines. Google that up and you’ll know what I’m saying. Anyway, I won (surprisingly!) the coveted title last year. This is why I’m co-hosting this year’s edition. Nopigeonhole Multiply Blog Award is a brainchild of Mike aka Tortoiseboy aka Nopigeonhole, a brave and indefatigable blogger himself. (Mike is based somewhere in U.K., by the way.) Ultimately, this aims to search for the Blogger of the Year. Another humble aim is to recognize outstanding bloggers for their efforts the whole year round. Making it to this list, thus, already makes you outstanding. Sort of. The selection process, however, had never been easy. For one thing, there are damn too many great bloggers out there. It has been said that one person’s trash is another person’s literature. Another thing we’ve noticed is that a lot of “old-timers” are now hooked to Facebook. Even if they are qualified skill-wise, they are not here because they are not as active in Multiply as before. Ergo, this is a subjective exercise and never would we claim that this is THE definitive Multiply Blog Award. (We are opening talks to some big folks at Multiply so maybe this is an idea that they could apply in the future.) Aside from Nopigeonhole and myself, Dockbillin (India) helped in the selection of nominees. The winner of the first edition of Nopigeonhole Blog Award should know what a good blog is. So what indeed is a good blog? Well, there is no clear consensus to it among us. But, let’s hear what Nopigeonhole himself said last year… “I define a 'blog' here as a whole Blog section, not single articles... nominees' must contain original writing of their own, as opposed to copy-pasted links etc, and different topics / audience / depth of information / personal style / number of hits, replies and originality have been taken into account. Some are spiritual, many political, it could be a travelogue or a Socratic monologue, it might be humorous or provocative. Some I barely know very well at all, and these have generally made a strong impression on me after only a few reads... others are among my closest here, but there is neither favouritism nor any sycophancy implied. It's not just me voting anyway...” There are two groups: Team A and Team B. This is the Voting Round for Team B. For you to make it to the next round, you have to be among the Top Five in Team B. This blog will be opened for everyone for 10 days. Voting ends on Sept. 27 (GMT+08:00). If you've been nominated, feel free to campaign and link this on your page. Let’s start the fun already, read the first two comments below for more details. So who are you voting, why?
May the best blogger win! 
 | There will be 22 nominees all. The nominees will be grouped into two, 11 each. (Let’s just call the groups Team A and Team B.)
There will be two rounds: (1) Voting Round and (2) Panel of Judges Round. In the Voting Round, everybody (including the nominees themselves) is allowed to vote one nominee for each team. In other words, everybody can vote twice during the Voting Round, one for each Team.
The Top 5 Nominees from each Team will proceed to the next round. Hence, there will be 10 qualifiers all in the Panel of Judges Round. In that said round, a panel of judges will choose the ultimate Multiply Blogger of the Year. There will be around 6-10 judges (still negotiating for willing souls at this moment). We assure though that only capable and mature judges will be chosen for this endeavor.
Each judge will rate the 10 qualifiers with these scores 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 5 is the highest. It also means that each judge will only choose his/her Top Five bloggers and the other five won’t get any vote from him/her. We will tally the results and proclaim the Multiply Blogger of the Year as soon as possible.
In case of tied scores during Voting Round or Panel of Judges Round, we will figure out a way to break it. :-) |
| The poll system we installed here is supposed to allow only one vote per computer. So even if you have multiple Multiply accounts or would use different browsers, you can only vote once. Hope this system works fairly for all. No cheating. ;-) |
 | congratulations to whoever wins. =) |
 | Some damn good Americans here... |
| And you're a Facebook addict too, you primate. Alice told me |
 | Thank you again for the nomination. I'm honored just to be here, regardless of the outcome.
|
 | Thanks for the nomination! |
 | Well, i have a favourite blogger who's not nominated so now i have to make a choice between these excellent bloggers who are.
Gonna need some time to ponder my choice.
Wow! The people i'm familiar with here are awesome. Can't imagine the rest and i don't want to compound my decision any further so.... give me a day or two... Yikes! |
| Thanks for including me. I'll have to read all the nominees before I vote, a couple of them I am not familiar with. It's a shame Multiply itself doesn't run some of these, it would be a fascinating way to find new worthwhile sites to read. |
| Pia is currently leading, followed by Astra... |
|  Thanks for including me. I'll have to read all the nominees before I vote, a couple of them I am not familiar with. It's a shame Multiply itself doesn't run some of these, it would be a fascinating way to find new worthwhile sites to read.  Y/360 had a 'featured blogger' program of which I was a part for far too long (they fired everyone who ran it, so the last of us were frozen-in-place, as it were).
The original idea was to have six people from each region, with their avatars and blog-descriptions randomly displayed - 12 in total. Every 45 days, they'd change them out for a new crop of 'Interesting Pages You'll Find On Yahoo/360."
Really helped me when I started - the 'features' were expected to act as ambassadors for the site and help others get started. Several of those followed me here to Multiply.
Several of us suggested that to Multiply as a program when we came over during the Great Exodus from Y/360 - the idea was downplayed by someone who acted as though he was in 'charge' of everyone.
Personally, I think it's a great idea - it would require some changes at Multiply, but they'd be minor - plus, it would require that they appoint someone to run the program, but that would be light-duty, I'd expect.
Something to suggest again, if so inclined....
|
| Aside from a little programming work on their part - which they seem inclined to do whether we ask for it or not *cough* *cough*, they probably wouldn't have to devote much in the way of time to it since we pretty much are doing it on our own at this point. I suppose we can come up with a group blog to cover the subject in the meantime. List all the current voting and the winners there, and we have enough contacts between all of us to get a couple of different interest groups involved.
The question would be how to publicize the group, and what controls there should be on the voting to have a "valid" contest. Let me think about how to do that... |
 | I feel very honoured that people felt me worthy of being nominated. It is very encouraging. Thank you and best wishes to everyone. Regardless of the outcome I think we are all winners. |
 | the only issue about this type of voting is one person can vote a million times..hardly gets anyone a fair outcome |
| I wouldn't sweat it too much. The one run last year didn't have any significant ballot box stuffing. There is a decided lack of a profit motive for it after all *grin* |
 | keisv wrote on Sep 16, '09 hi pats. :) nice way to motivate me to post haha. congratulations in advance to the winners! |
 | ni vote gyud ko. loyalista gud hehehe |
| There rarely is a perfect system in a democracy. The polling system installed for Multiply Blog Awards crashed last night, after only a few hours of working fine. It became possible for a single person to make million clicks. Glad to say, nobody ever did million clicks. But indeed the system became very susceptible to manipulations. I would refuse to believe that one or two of the nominees cheated, maybe their friends and relatives did. But we should not dwell on that and just try to move on.
For this reason, we are momentarily suspending the polls for both Team A and Team B. We are looking now for a replacement system to the old one. We will try our best that the new system will be much less susceptible to manipulations, if at all. We will resume the polls after an hour or two.
The latest vote updates before this suspension should be counted nevertheless. We will just have to add those votes to the new votes that will be generated by the new system.
Much apologies for the hassle.
Swerver |
Comment deleted at the request of the author. | Stalled Votes, which will be added during the final tally of votes:
TEAM A:
goodstuff4u (Thailand) - 1 vote
zytrexx (Philippines) - 30 votes
cosmicbrotha (USA) - 1 vote
ilovemad (Philippines) - 6 votes
ongsegg (USA) - 3 votes
plorwaks (Philippines) - 45 votes
sithan (Brazil) - 2 votes
frankyx (Malaysia/Ireland) - 8 votes
immortalundead (Philippines) - 10 votes
aaranaardvark (UK) - 7 votes
blondino (USA) - 2 votes
TEAM B:
cosmicrat (USA) - 2 votes
prettybrowneyez (USA) - 11 votes
rcouchenou (USA) - 4 votes
worldofalbert (Philippines) - 5 votes
irianithewitchnz (New Zealand) - 14 votes
astranavigo08 (USA) - 25 votes
pissycat (USA) - 6 votes
translucence (USA) - 22 votes
otsopya (Philippines) - 54 votes
diiogenese19348 (USA) - 2 votes
keisv (Philippines) - 3 votes |
 | swerve its still not working daw...
two friends have tried to cast their votes now,
hindi daw sila allowed kay nacast na nila ang votes nila?
on asking them if they did already casted their votes
wa pa man daw. they own their own laptops,
just got hold on them through chat,
just relaying though. ;)
|
 | bakit first time ko pa lang nag vote..sabi " you can not vote repeatedly" agad??? |
| patskie, would you like me to stage a picket, this is disenfranchisement (whatever the spelling is lol) i have over 6 more friends on the top of 3 yesterday who wasn't able to vote. ;) just kidding anyway on the picket part :o hope this would be cleared ;) |
| wait patskie. tanggal na ako? hahahaha. lol.
what happened here? im not anymore nominated? (kulit kasi hahaha) |
 | prettybrown eyes i like!! |
| Is this working now? Some people have told me they haven't been able to vote for me... |
| swerver wrote on Sep 17, '09, edited on Sep 17, '09 This is working fine, feel free to vote. :) |
| To all nominees: just make sure you are one of the Top Five in your respective teams. The real battle is in the next round where judges would scrutinize quality of contents. |
 | swerve, maayo pa people vote mano-mano.
just type the name of their candidate in one post on the comment section
where everyone can see and count with you. very transparent.
mas alegre! |
 | bro, i voted at the extension poll. They're in team B right? So I only need now to vote for one entry at Team A? I want to make sure because I don't want to make a mistake that will compromise the fairness of this contest. :) |
Comment deleted at the request of the author.  | I have requested that I be removed from the Multiply Blog Awards ... There simply have been too many boondoggles to think any kind of legitimate result can be expected ... "Please remove my name and blog links from the voting ... I am voting "No Confidence" ... better luck next time ...." |
| I tried voting again just to test and it didn't record it. so it it seems to be working. |
 | What happens EXACTLY when the Top 5 have been chosen? |
| A panel of judges will choose the one best Multiply blogger for 2009. |
| I'm sorry for the questions. Two of my favorite 'bloggers' seem to be making it...so far...into the Top 5 and I'm probably just as...if not more... excited as they are to see them here...:) |
| So who are you voting? Why?
You are free to campaign for them here.. maybe the undecided voters and the judges in later round might be swayed.. :-) |
| I can tell you though...that Will and Eddie are my favorites. I'm sure Will is sitting somewhere holding his breath hoping that I don't blurt out Suck My Pie and Eddie...on the other hand...is hoping that I do...:) |
| I have linked your contest to my own page...encouraging my friends to vote. I must admit that I am finding myself addicted to vote counting! |
| i see many Astra supporters going in.. where are the others? |
| Wow...Will went from 18 to 31 while I was sleeping. Eddie...where are your avid readers? |
 | Though I can see Astra doesn't need another vote...still I just couldn't resist...:) |
 | Dang it Eddie, I tried to vote twice! Your still the greatest! |
| Put me down for astranavigo08 also. There are a number of really good sites in contention though, I am going to have to go back and read some of them in more detail. |
 | You always have my support! |
| Everyone, make your strongest moves now. Remember, we have the "stalled votes" which we will account in the final tally. |
 | locarb wrote on Sep 26, '09, edited on Sep 26, '09 THIS VOTING SYSTEM IS BROKEN.
This voting system is a farce. It is completely broken. It allows you to vote as many times as you want to vote and clearly people have been doing that.
You do not have to be logged into Multiply to vote. You simply need to come to this page.
Once you vote you are given a cookie. If you delete your cookie, close your browser, re-open it and come to this page again you can vote again.
You can vote as many times as you wish simply by erasing the cookies in your browser.
I could give anyone here as many votes as I chose to give them.
You all need to go back to the drawing borad because this is bullshit.
|
| Thank you for that opinion. We already know that. Hopefully people are being adult and not doing that. Now maybe it would be more appropriate to bring up a better way to do it for the next time around. After this is over, thanks. |
| Once you vote you are given a cookie. If you delete your cookie, close your browser, re-open it and come to this page again you can vote again. Lol. Thank you for stating the obvious. And thank you for suggesting something to the too naive (but I doubt if there is one like that here).
Sarcasm aside, we know that, we all know that. It was the same problem last year (and I believe even in the previous years also) in using Multiply's poll system. The only possible way to address that is to set the post "for contacts" or "for network" only. But we cannot do that. It would defeat the purpose of democratic exercise that we are trying to do here. For instance, how would all the fans and supporters of Astra be able to vote for him if we set it only for my contacts? So we made these posts "for everyone" and goes with it the compromise of getting manipulated. By you, by me, by the nominees, their friends and relatives, anybody.
It is exactly the reason why we tried to use an outside polling system (not Multiply's) at first. But it failed us twice. Twice. (You can read all the comments in this thread and the other ones how we ended up going back to Multiply's Poll instead.)
But after using Multiply Poll, we never tried to deceive the public that what we have is a perfect system. We've always appealed for "no cheating", as you might notice. And I think nobody did, or at least in the large scale.
To be frank, this stage of the Blog Award has become, and I'd like to believe so, a gentleman's game. Like paintball. There's not much fun in paintball if the players are dishonest when they get hit. Same thing with this Blog Award. As what Diiogenese said, we just hope that the nominees and their supporters are "mature enough" to play this fair. ;-) |
| locarb wrote on Sep 26, '09, edited on Sep 26, '09 Then when you get around to doing this next year let me know.
I will provide you the use of my domain and polling software. |
| I could give anyone here as many votes as I chose to give them. I'm sure, based on our sparkling relationship, that you hit "translucence" several times! Thanks! LOL |
| He is right astra, either clear your cookies or sign on with a different computer and you can vote again. |
| I wasn't recommending you do it, just pointing out how it was done. It's not like there is a $1,000 cash award for first place.
Um, there isn't a cash award for first place, is there Swerver? *grin* |
| I think you must have heard the news now, Manila has been flooded to almost biblical propotions. Thousands of people stranded, some died, streets are flooded making almost everybody to halt their activities. Even moviestars and politicians are affected. Fortunately for me, our place is far from Manila. We are not affected here and also this poll goes on. Still the same, it's a serious matter for my countrymen in Manila now. They need food, water, maybe even some clothes to get by. The priority right now is to transfer those stranded people to safe places. Manila needs our help, if we all can.
Still the same, the show must go on. I can close the polls anytime now. We are already Sept 27 (8:00+GMT) here. But I will extend a bit. I'm going to the city and I won't be around for at least few hours. I'll close the polls as soon as I'm back. So this is a last call, if you still have remaining relatives who can vote for you, tell them. Be back. Goodluck to all! |
| Once I'd close thi poll, only myself, Nopigeonhole and Shanti (our unbiased and most regular visitor in this post) can see THIS POST. I will tally all the votes, including the Stalled Votes. Nopigeonhole and Shanti are there to make sure that I don't put any atomic bomb to a certain nominee or two. Lol. Counter-checking. Again, good luck to all. You have few more hours. |
| India could use some of that water, they are having a drought. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Good luck getting through that soggy mess. Floods can get pretty nasty here too. |
| We have accounted the stalled votes and the ones you see above.
Congrats to: prettybrowneyez, astranavigo08, translucence, otsopya and diiogenese19348
You five made it to the next level, Jury Round. Will keep you posted. For those who didn't make it, thanks for being a sport and for your participation. It would not have been as lovely.
Total Votes:
cosmicrat (USA) - 7 votes
prettybrowneyez (USA) - 50 votes
rcouchenou (USA) - 6 votes
worldofalbert (Philippines) - 8 votes
irianithewitchnz (New Zealand) - 46 votes
astranavigo08 (USA) - 98 votes
pissycat (USA) - 7 votes
translucence (USA) - 55 votes
otsopya (Philippines) - 96 votes
diiogenese19348 (USA) - 55 votes
keisv (Philippines) - 11 votes |
 | hey where am I on here? damn democratic processes. |
 | When will we know who won, please? |
 | Multiply blog of the year award?
This must be some sort of community thing, or is this some kind of joke? |
| It's a community thing flatpaul but it is a very large community. This is the second (to my knowledge) year it has been run. |
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