Warning: highly subjective opinion-piece and a plea for enlightenment follows: no useful information imparted here….
A little while ago, my blog got nominated for an award. A single nomination was enough to put it onto a shortlist, made available for public voting. I have been thinking about what this means…. or doesn’t mean. At the same time, I’ve been thinking about those lists of ‘must read’ blogs which I come across from time to time – (inevitably, a more recent trend is for lists of ‘Twitterers you should follow’). I would also include ‘blogrolls’ in this category. I think all of these things are related, and I think I have broadly the same misgivings about them.
Take this whole business of awards for blogs. At one level it just doesn’t interest me at all – I would no more read a blog because it was given an award than I would go see a movie because it won an ‘Oscar’. Having said that, I don’t have anything against the Oscars. I think what bothers me slightly about awards for blogs, is that the perceived benefit, presumably, is to give more exposure to popular (or ‘good’) blogs. Essentially, it is another way of creating a list of ‘must-read blogs’ only this time it’s as voted for by you, the public.
I’m not the only one a little bothered by this. Doug Johnson says:
But I just don’t get it. What is the purpose of awards and rankings? Do we really need them in this long-tailed communication medium of blogging? In fact, might they even be counter productive? [...] But comparing the size (popularity) of mine to the size (popularity) of yours seems the antithesis of the “I’ll share mine if you share yours” world of personal learning networks.
But then again, there are others who are clearly very pleased to be nominated and seem to relish the competition, reminding and urging their readers to vote for them.
I think that the reason I don’t like the idea of such lists is the way in which they seem to embody a process of ‘received wisdom’. The marvelous thing about the blogosphere for me is the way in which the playing-field has been leveled. If you write compellingly about something in which people are interested then they will tend to find it. The opportunity for diversity of thinking and discourse on such a scale is still new – we should cherish this. The chance to make new connections, have new conversations with people with new points of view, is something that the blogosphere seems to almost uniquely afford us.
I am very interested in knowing who reads my blog, rather than how many. Writing this particular blog is an ‘extra-curricular’ activity for me, so metrics about how many hits I get etc. are not very relevant. When I discovered that someone had nominated my blog for an award, I was pleased that they had done so and, more importantly, was interested to read what they said in their nomination. I would have been equally pleased with this if it had been a random comment, out of any context of competition, about my blog. Perhaps the superstructure of a competition/award is necessary to bring out such comments?
This is not something I feel terribly strongly about – it doesn’t affect me much and until recently, I had been able to largely ignore it. I feel compelled to say something here mostly because hardly anyone else seems to feel this way. I feel slightly out-of-step with people with whom I normally have much in common. So I would welcome comments: what am I missing here?
Tags: awards eddies
I think I’m missing it too. My blog was nominated for an award earlier this year, and I was surprised and flattered, then disconcerted. I tend to think that my interests are so niche that no-one really reads it, so a new awareness of audience meant that for a while I felt self-conscious about what I posted.
Friends encouraged me to mention it, and to ask people to vote for me, and I did it a bit but ultimately wasn’t very comfortable with it.
I think generally I’d like more conversations with my readers and with other bloggers/twits – it’s interesting and rewarding. Other metrics might be nice but I don’t really get anything from them.
Thanks for this, Paul. I completely agree with you.
Mia,
I’ve experienced that phenomenon of a colleague wanting me to urge people to vote for my blog. I didn’t specifically mention this in my post – but it is this which prompted me to ask for comments, because I really, really don’t get why he thinks it is important.
It’s not that I don’t like competition in general (I’m about to fork out loads of money to watch Pompey get beaten at the Arsenal in a couple of weeks time). I just don’t see anything interesting in competing on blog popularity.
I think part of the function of awards is that it can make your blog credible to people who don’t read blogs, and can let them participate/show their support by going and voting for you.
I got nominated last year (but not this… hmm, why’s that then?;-) and found people in my department who don’t read blogs and have never used RSS let alone heard of it were congratulating me, because they had heard from somewhere that I was “nominated for an award”.
Tony,
I hear what you’re saying…. but this is exactly what I don’t want – people who don’t read blogs influencing which blogs get read…..
As for why you were nominated before but not now – ‘fraid that’s the lot of the pioneering early-adopter mate!
Well as the person who made the nomination I think I better explain myself…
http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/edublogs-nominations/
I decided to nominate as it was an excuse to explain why I read blogs, or whom has impressed me over the last year. It gave me an opportunity to explain to a wider audience the blogs I read and those that influence my practice. This doesn’t mean that you should read these blogs, you need to make that decision for yourself.
At the end of the day, the end result is not important (from my perspective) it is much more about how I feel and I used the nomination process to allow what I thought to be expressed in a blog post.
I find it more amusing that one of the blogs nominated, the blogger has stopped posting and there have been no new entries for months…
I am guessing what this all comes down to, is why do you blog? And the blogger who has stopped blogging said this:
“I wrote about what would bring me traffic instead of what deserved traffic”
At the end of the day, I stand by what I wrote about Paul’s blog. “I always enjoy reading his blog entries and they make me reflect on my practice and how we run our Library service.” This is what is important, the nomination, the awards they are merely incidental to the reason I nominated.
I dunno why anyone nominated yours. It’s bollocks.
Sorry. I jest, obviously. Well – I like it. But not *that* much..
The motivation for blogging is an interesting one. Watching user numbers come in can get addictive but is ultimately flawed. I notice for instance that in times when I’ve been a bit lax at writing (ie now) that I *still* get 50-70 visits a day just from passing traffic, and haven’t written a damn post for a fortnight. So what does that say about the quality of my writing? Not much – just that blogs have good SEO.
Personally I’ve also noticed that my blog writing habits have changed with my blog reading habits. Twitter replaces my “news junkie” requirements and I now look for posts that are particularly insightful or opinionated. Wheras once I used blogs for tech news and updates, now I look for something different. And overall, I just simply want *less*..
Once upon a time I used to post stuff just because I thought I ought to. Now, I really cringe when I see those obvious “been on a backburner, waiting for lean times” posts…
Overall, I do it because I enjoy the process of writing, of – without sounding like a twat – “word-smithing”. It’s nice that people read my blog, but ultimately I think I’d still do it if they didn’t.
Mike,
I agree with some of what you say. The ‘bollocks’ part, obviously.
And I also noticed my web stats going up even when I wrote nothing at all for a month.
If no one commented on what I had to say then I would probably stop. If I caught myself ‘word-smithing’ I would seek help
The value of comments is an interesting one.
I had lunch with @keirwhitaker (Carsonified) earlier in the week and we got chatting about the diminishing returns you get on comment value once comment number reaches a certain point. I think you and I tend to get fairly thoughtful, insightful comments – maybe 3-10 per post. Once you get, say, 100 comments, the value of these drops off hugely – both from a reader perspective but also in terms of quality per comment. Ryan’s recent post on Carsonified about redundancies is a good example – currently 132 comments – half of them “great job, Ryan” and the other half the opposite. What possible use is that to anyone – either Ryan, Carsonified, or to the people reading? And what motivates people to post comments at this volume? Vanity?
Once systems start letting users “digg” comments up and down (for example http://www.intensedebate.com/) then things take on a whole different dimension.
But yes, I think comments are good motivators, albeit with a kind of Dunbar-like upper limit to quality…
Just got a recommendation to add Brian Kelly’s blog from Google Reader (part of its brilliant new functionality
) so seemed somewhat apposite to add this here. FWIW, I’d agree with Paul that blogs are about sharing your thoughts with those you respect and there is an element of eroding that if you start giving out awards and having lists of ‘must read’ blogs. There is an element of ‘but how do you know about good blogs’ but surely that is part of being in a community and (sometimes) using good old fashioned methods of interacting.
Anyway, to pick up on Mike’s comment ‘Way to go Paul!!!’
.
The Shorty Awards are a case in point, and I said as much in a Tweet:
– http://twitter.com/t1mmyb/statuses/1051335252
On comments having a limit of usefulness: absolutely. Just look at BBC News’s Have Your Say or any local newspaper’s web site. Forum-like discussion going on in a bizarre, hard-to-follow reverse-chronological threading-less format. Utterly bonkers.
Hi Paul,
I appreciate this post. I was beginning to feel a bit like a lone voice in the wilderness, judging from the comments I received on my blog post on the topic.
Soldier on!
Doug
> I am very interested in knowing who reads my blog, rather than how many.
I read your blog.
I agree with Tony, these awards play an important awareness-raising role among colleagues who haven’t got a clue. My nomination made it onto the UoL website – more than my blog has ever done. As long as we all remain cynical about the whole thing we’ll be OK
Vote for me! http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/
Alan,
I do understand your point. If your motivation for writing a blog is (at least partly) to educate the ‘clueless’, then awards and lists would seem to be an effective way to reach them. I’d recommend getting some paper-fliers printed as well!
My motivation for my blog is not to educate others – it’s mostly thinking aloud and sometimes hoping for commentary from people who will help me to clarify my own thinking.
Conversational, rather than educational I guess?
Surely it’s possible to do both in a single blog? I certainly aim to.
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