Working Post during Nominations Phase [2]

This post continues on from the old one [below at the end of the categories].

Blogpower Awards:

Vote Early and Vote Often!!

Known Issues

24] 18:02, Tuesday: It's 21:00 my time and I'm going to take a coffee break. I've been processing slightly faster than they've been coming in [about 43 - 45 an hour]. So, I'm closing off the e-mail for now but will come and get the last three hours of nominations after I've posted this lot and made it look pretty.

The last three hours' nominations will go in a special post, instead of on the individual category posts and therefore you'll have to do your own mathematics as to who's in or not. I'll confirm that tomorrow morning.

Big moves by key bloggers, as expected.

23] 15:32, Tuesday: Look at these two scenarios, concerning bloggers and their scores:

A We have A [12] B [10] C [7] D [7] E [6] F [6] G [6] H [5] --- I [4] J [4] K [4] L [4] M [3]

OK, I and J get another vote each, bringing them to [5] and all is sweet. There are your 10 for the poll. Now K and L also get another vote, putting them on [5]. That is like busting in Blackjack.

According to our rules, H, I, J, K and L all drop out because the total places are 10. That seems unfair on poor old H, who was in before but now finds himself out, solely because I, J and K gained more votes and still weren't ahead of H.

B The solution to this problem is to take notice of "prior claim". So we have, instead:

A [12] B [10] C [7] D [7] E [6] F [6] G [6] H [5] I [4] J [4] --- K [4] L [4] M [3]

Before you say that that's unfair on K and L - remember, they came to their 4 votes later than I and J. You see, the order in each Category below has been arranged chronologically from the start. The man on 4 votes below another, also on 4, he gained those votes later. Hence our motto: Vote early and vote often.

Variant B fills all 10 places in the poll but variant A cuts out from 1 to 5 bloggers. i think we should follow variant B, maximizing the number of bloggers in the final poll, although it's a little cruel. I'll now go through and put the cut-off bars differently and you'll see what I mean.

23] 13:38, Tuesday: This thing is not hotting up - it's feverish and if you're a politics lover, you'd love to be inside my e-mail server right now. It's classic. Deals all over the place and lots of fun. Right, so I've done the latest crop and will put them on in the next hour and I think I'll then just add them as they come in.

On the other hand, if there's a huge rush of nominations, I'll have to just put them to Word and post them as a separate post late evening. I'm a little tired now. Really happy to see the major bloggers now coming into it.

It's not appropriate here to speak personally but as my two dream categories have me reasonably placed, I'm starting to get the jitters. That's a matter for my own site.

22] 08:21, Tuesday: Frankly, I'll be glad when the nominations phase is over. The problem of single votes will only be such in a few categories. I'm working on the basis, [subject to your outcry], that single votes just won't qualify. If it means a vote between three people, so be it.

Because of day-job commitments, I'll only update the nominations once more after 16:00, London time and then will simply save last nominations to Word and post them unedited before 21:30 this evening.

The actual decision over who's in and who's not will be made with a clear head tomorrow morning. OK, people?

21] 19:01, Monday: The cutoff points for the nominated bloggers, i.e. who's going to be in and who's not, is explained in the first post.

Working Post during Nominations Phase

This is an upgradable post. Our Motto: "Vote early and vote often."
_____________________________________________________

Known Issues as of Monday:

21] This post is retired to the end of the category posts. New comments are on the new Working Post at the top.

20] 17:47, London time:

1] Quotas and cut-offs for Categories 1 to 18. Unless there is violent opposition, they'll work like this/ Let's imagine:

Category A: Blogger 1 [12 nominations], B2[11 nominations], B3[10 nominations], B4[9 nominations], B5[4 nominations], B6[3 nominations], B7[2 nominations], B8[1 nomination], B9[1 nomination], B10[1 nomination], B11[1 nomination], B12[1 nomination], B13[1 nomination], B14[1 nomination]

Bloggers 1 to 7 go through, i.e. there are seven people only in the poll.

Category B: Blogger 1 [12 nominations], B2[4 nominations], B3[1 nominations], B4[1 nomination], B5[1 nomination], B6[1 nomination], B7[1 nomination]

All bloggers go through because "10 bloggers" was not reached.

Category C: Blogger 1 [12 nominations], B2[11 nominations], B3[10 nominations], B4[9 nominations], B5[4 nominations], B6[4 nominations], B7[4 nominations], B8[3 nominations], B9[3 nominations], B10[3 nominations], B11[3 nominations], B12[3 nominations], B13[2 nominations], B14[1 nomination]

Bloggers 1 to 7 go through.

The cut-off in Category C was 4 nominations. From the beginning of these awards, it was always the case that the categories were to be kept separate and not to impinge on any other category. Rules for one category were not the rules for the next.

This is why, in these Blogpower Awards, the nominations phase is even more important in some ways than the voting itself.

Categories 19 and 20 are harder to make rules for. Let's see what happens with these tomorrow.

2] There're major politics going on with vote stacking just now, as you'll see but it's all within the rules, even down to entries scrupulous in their exactitude and politeness. Blogpower are babes in the wood by comparison. Hope they do something soon.

3] Please inform me if I've made any errors of fact or figure - double posting someone or putting people under two names etc. Some people have kindly done so already.

4] I plan to keep all e-mails for reasons of transparency, in case any issue arises, for one week after the nominations close. You realize that that falls within the voting time.

5] I introduced the update time in each post which now becomes more critical as we reach the death. I'm also putting in a red line to more easily see the cut-off of ten blogs.

6] The Freepoll system works and we'll go for it. It only allows ten blogs and therefore - the cut-off factor comes in. There has to be a balance somewhere. Your comments welcome.

19] 09:11, London time: Check out this banner to download and use to advertise the Awards. Thanks a lot to Ian Grey. I think The ThunderDragon is designing some badges for the actual awards to people later.

18] 08:57, London time: Updated category nominations are coming but the people not sending urls has slowed it right down. They'll be up about an hour from now.

17] 08:27, London time:I'm going to kill Colin Campbell for sending all his nominations without any URLs! What it means is that every one of the people he nominated I must put into Firefox individually to bring up the URL. I have better things to be doing. People, there are so many coming through now that I cannot accept them without:

a. Category based on the current numbers and terminology;
b. Name of blog in shortened form [to go in poll];
c. URL [without brackets please].

16] 08:22, London time: Many are asking when the nominations close:

21:00, London time, Tuesday, June 5th

After that, I'll put the polls together for the easy categories but where there are issues, these will need to be decided on this post and comments first. For example, Category 1.

Expect the voting to start in earnest late Wednesday.

Known Issues as of Sunday:

15] 22:27, London time: Signing off for the night [01.27 for me]. Today's Blogpower Uniques till now: 229; Hits 585.

14] 20:32, London time: Lists refreshed for the last time this evening and some categories are really hotting up. Nice to see some faces doing well in certain categories and against formidable opposition. Some real surprises too.

13] 18:01, London time: I've just posted two practice polls in the sidebar to see if the vote blocking works. It does.

12] New nominations posted as of 15:00, London time. You just might be there.

11] Westminster Wisdom gives one of the best rationales of these awards - well worth a read.

10] From some correspondents - please advertise it better. James' e-mail is not enough. Welcome your comments on this.

9] Good question from Notsaussure - how can we tell if someone averages under 100 hits? Well, of course, we can't but if someone were to take this award and he/she's known to be a medium/small blogger [e.g. yours truly] , there'd be an outcry. I think this thing actualizes itself.

8] Last crop of entries posted and more urls put in. I know I sound finicky, good people but please don't put brackets around urls - they're b-g--rs to extract.

7] People, can you please include the URL with your nomination? I can't cope! I'm up to the 12th category so far and will do the rest later.

6] Daily Ablution in "Sadly Missed". We're counting him as such for now.

5] Multiple nominations. Yes, they're allowed and encouraged, as are self-nominations.

4] Aren't these supposed to be Blogpower Awards, for members only? And the corollary - where did Higham get the authority to run an open awards competition? This is why I put in the Rationale post that the comp needed to be open. One e-mail suggested nominations only come from those I've put in my own Blogfocus but that didn't seem right to me.

As I say, the format was perusable and I awaited ill feeling on the issue. When it didn't come, I proceeded. It's true that comments are now disabled but they were open for two days. No doubt Blogpower will discuss this afterwards and might feel a closed competition better in the Autumn but that's up to members later. It might be a good idea to have two comps - one Open and one Closed.

3] Why haven't I been nominated yet? [No one stated this in as many words but the implication was clear from many quarters.] Firstly, it's early days yet. It only began last evening. Secondly, I also am feeling a little miffed that no one's nominated me yet for certain categories where I thought it was deserved. That's the nature of the beast - awards competitions. Everyone goes away a little disappointed in some ways and happy in others.

2] Too many single nominations and not enough instances of one person nominated by many. I admit I'm worried about this, even though it's still early days. You do know that just because someone appears on the running tally, don't say: "Oh his name's there already. Good, I don't need to nominate him." You do need to because if he doesn't get more and more nominations, he won't be on the final list. This thing is cumulative.

1] Can fellow admins join in? This post is accessible by all Blogpowerers with official access to the blog. Comments and additions would be welcome to this post but let's keep everything in this one post for now.