Well it seems someone isn’t too keen on The Guardian’s blog competition. Tom argues that the compo goes against the essence of blogging; that we shouldn’t be judging people’s outpouring of thoughts, emotions and ideas. On the face of it, this may seem a sound objection. But those of us in the blog community judge web logs all the time; there are some we visit regularly and others we’ll visit once and never return to. We are inherently making judgments on subconscious or conscious criteria – we love /loathe the design, the tone of voice, the insightful writing, the links, the dog photos – we have our own (maybe mental) lists of blogs which are ‘good’ and forget about blogs which are ‘poor’. Is The Guardian not just bringing this into a public arena?
Yes, the judging will be highly subjective. A blogger constantly slagging off the paper or the competition judges is surely less likely to win. But I find it hard to believe that people will be tailoring their blog content in an overt attempt to impress the judges; it’s certainly pretty sad if they do. I do concede that folks may pay more attention to their blog – keeping it updated more regularly, may be even checking the spelling – not really such as bad a thing.
You can position your cynicism of The Guardian’s motives anywhere you like from a benign celebration of British blog culture, to a shallow attempt to get more readers and ad impressions, but I for one will be entering the competition. Not because I think I could win, or even that I want to (£1000 aside) but because I want more people to read my blog. That’s what it’s there for.
efesar wrote:
(my salon.blog is broken because salon.com’s server is dead <sigh> so i’m linking to my other blog instead of my personal blog) ...
ON TO THE COMMENTS … yeah, i agree that “judging” someone’s blog is kinda crappy, especially if they haven’t thrown their hat into the ring. but for something like hotornot, it’s something they volunteered for and are probably looking for feedback.
it’s the nature of competition. it weeds out the crap. but who’s to say who’s life is crap? in an ideal world we wouldn’t have subjective standards.
oh well, life goes on.
Tom Coates wrote:
Only thing I’d say about this is that there’s surely room enough for crap on the internet. It’s not like there’s a lack of space or anything. So if there’s no need to eliminate the crap, doesn’t it just seem a bit like you’re simply weeding out the unpopular people? And the criteria that they use – it’s like having a “Best Person” competition and judging it on the basis of how many pairs of shoes they own.