Best ‘Best Weblog of 2003 Competition’ Competition

by Henry Farrell on January 20, 2004

The competition among Weblog competitions is heating up; in the last two months, we’ve had Wizbang’s “Weblog Awards”:http://wizbangblog.com/poll.php#BGB poll; the “Warblogger”:http://www.rightwingnews.com/special/warblogger2003.php awards, the Koufax awards at “Wampum”:http://wampum.wabanaki.net/ and now the “Bloggies”:http://www.fairvue.com/?feature=awards2004. It’s all very confusing: which competition should you be paying attention to? To help answer that question, I’m proposing the Best ‘Best Weblog of 2003 Competition’ Competition. I’m sure that y’all can come up with appropriate categories and nominees – in order to start the ball rolling …

*Most egregious award decision*
The winner by a mile: Wizbang’s “Best Overall Blog” award for _Little Green Footballs_. In fairness, this isn’t Wizbang’s fault; I imagine that thousands of slavering trolls from LGF’s comment section were clambering over each other in their frenzied efforts to cast their vote for the Dark Lord. Like a scene from the siege of Minas Tirith. If LGF were really the best overall blog on the Internet, I’d want to give up, right away.

*Vote early, vote often award*
A number of hot contenders for this one – lots of fishy business of one kind or another in various competitions. “Dive into Mark”:http://diveintomark.org/ at the very least deserves special mention for his script ensuring that anyone who clicked on the Wizbang awards from his site would find themselves willy-nilly “voting for him”:http://wizbangblog.com/archives/001268.php.

*Awards competition that is most likely to be any use*
A tie between the Koufax awards, and the Warblogger awards, I reckon. Given the vast diversity of blogs, it makes much more sense to concentrate on a limited section of the blogging community than to try to cover the whole gamut. Readers are more likely to find new blogs that are of interest to them among the nominees, which is presumably the point of the exercise.

*Most glaring omission*
Why the hell has “The Poor Man”:http://www.thepoorman.net/ not gotten a nomination in any of the broader competitions?

Update: Andrew Northrup does a perfect blog-post on the State of the Union speech within moments of its ending, “as if to prove my point …”:http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/002291.html#002291http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/002291.html#002291

{ 13 comments }

1

evan 01.20.04 at 9:59 pm

Similarly, I fail to understand what gives Not A Fish (Provincially Speaking) the rights to say her commentary trumps our overdominating presence of yellow.

2

alkali 01.20.04 at 10:05 pm

Well, if he had even a moderate amount of luck, then he wouldn’t be the Poor Man.

3

Patrick Nielsen Hayden 01.21.04 at 12:14 am

Andrew “Poor Man” Northrup did get nominated for “Most Humorous Blog” in the not-exactly-rigorous “Koufax” nomination process. I could swear I also nominated his original Gollum post for something, but I can’t seem to get Wampum’s archives to load.

4

andrew 01.21.04 at 12:53 am

…”If LGF were really the best overall blog on the Internet, I’d want to give up, right away”…

It is pretty popular though, right? And I’d guess it’s popularity comes less from the internet allowing trivial numbers of far-flung nutballs into agglomerate into a fairly substantial presence than it flows from LGF representing commonly held views. I think we’d be surprised to know how common. Of course, I live in the US…

If true, as blogs and internet groups grow in use, the percentage of readership that patronize such sites will at least stay constant. Or grow, if one considers that blog readers probably skew toward higher income and education currently. Just wait til the plebes get ahold of it.

For people who agree with the sentiments there, LGF probably is the Best Overall Blog.

5

Anticipatory Retaliation 01.21.04 at 1:24 am

Although I’m not a big fan of LGF, isn’t the distinction between what’s a good blog and what gets voted on, sort of like the difference between cinema and movies? Have blogs already developed some silly fine art model about what it is that people should like based on some esoteric criteria.

Sure, pop music ain’t made with symphonic arrangments to last the ages – but it’s not trying to be. It’s just trying to be popular.

6

robin green 01.21.04 at 1:53 am

To anticipatory retaliation – There are large and obvious problems with online polls of all sorts (save those involving some verifiable trail to meatspace entities). How do you prevent a person sitting at one computer, voting, and then going and voting from 10 other computers in a lab? Without preventing ten friends sitting next to each other from voting on those same ten machines in the lab?

You can’t, that’s how.

7

robin green 01.21.04 at 1:55 am

Oops, 1+10 does not equal 10. Apologies for any offence caused to arithmetical pedants by my last post.

8

Henry 01.21.04 at 4:46 am

Patrick – you’re right, the Poor Man did get nominated for a Koufax. And you did nominate him too (I saw your comment when I was preparing this post). But, I reckon that he deserved a nomination at least in one of the more broadly based awards, because he really deserves as big an audience as he can get.

9

ahem 01.21.04 at 6:28 am

For people who agree with the sentiments there, LGF probably is the Best Overall Blog.

Yes, and I’m sure that for people who agree with cannibalism, http://www.cannibalism.org is the Best Overall Blog. Or for people who enjoy sexual relations with their young relatives, http://www.infantincest.org is the Best Overall Blog, too.

LGF is Hatemonger Central, simple as that.

10

Andrew Northrup 01.21.04 at 2:30 pm

I’d like to thank Henry for using the end of his post to bring this important question to light, one which has troubled philosophers for years. I believe that once the answer is known, we will be well on our way to answering that other key question of our age: “why do the hot girls always tell me they have other plans?”

11

Anticipatory Retaliation 01.21.04 at 4:32 pm

I see your point on that. I guess I figure that there might just be that many folks in meatspace who like that stuff. It fills the slot occupied by Democratic Underground and Indymedia on the other fringe. If one could vote for either of those two sites as blogs, I’m sure they’d get a raft of votes.

12

Sigivald 01.21.04 at 11:54 pm

I like LGF.

I hate the LGF comments section.

LGF is not “hatemonger central”; its comments section might be one of many such centrals, though. As Anticipatory said, there’s lots of hate around, and some of it isn’t limited to commentors.

LGF is a great single purpose blog (anymore, at least. I remember long ago it wasn’t, back in the distant reaches of late 2001…) – that purpose being to expose the underbelly of militant Islam. I wouldn’t dare suggest that LGF is the best “overall blog” – hell, I can’t imagine what a best “overall” could be.

(I nominate Crooked Timber for the best Left-leaning blog with a title and subhead that suggest it ought to be Conservative. That quote screams “fallen man” and “imperfectibility” and similar old-fashioned Conservative sentiments. Who woulda thought?)

13

Satan Krishna 01.22.04 at 1:16 am

LGF is not hatemonger central?

Pig’s arse.

Charles (that’s the guy’s name, yeah?) has a very effective dogwhistle and he’s not afraid to use it.

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