Something bugged me about the SA Blog Awards.. I could not really put my finger on it until tonight.. walking home from the beach.

We’ve built up such a long standing tradition bitching about this event that I figure need to bitch a bit if only to improve the process. Since so few people are complaining I guess it must be getting much better (-:

It comes down to semantics, but I like analysing the obvious. You see.. to nominate and to vote is not the same thing.

The selection process had me confused.. mostly because of the language used on the rules page.

In my mind a nomination is something that happens to get something into the pool of possible voting options. Sometimes a nominee needs to be seconded, but in general a nomination implies just one nominating. At least in my mind.

I guess I was surprised to see the process go from a nominations phase to a top 10 voting round so quickly. I guessed the judges had looked at all the nominations and picked the top 10 which would move to the voting round.

I was wrong.

You see.. nominations are votes in the nomination round. I think what many people (or just me) miss is that you have to get a lot of people to nominate your blog.. not just one person.

I’m lazy. Most people are lazy. When I see a “nominate me” badge I think.. whatever, I’m sure somebody will nominate it, I’ll wait for the voting.. but that’s too late.

Also, in the nominations round, I figured.. no big deal, I’m guessing maybe at least one soul would nominate my blog, I’ll worry about it again when it comes to voting.

My suggestion.. make very sure the rules and the selection process is 100% uber clear and make sure the language used is tip-top.. or introduce another step..

1) Nominations (get option data for the database)
2) Big list of stuff to vote for (public voting)
3) Short list of stuff to vote for (judge voting)
4) Results

ps. Yes I know there is a section at the bottom about how the judging works that tells me nominations are actually votes.. but, I’m lazy remember.