2009 Weblog Awards
January 5, 2010 6:25 PM Subscribe
The 2009 Weblog Awards are off. It's become too popular, and they can't afford the bandwidth needed to properly support it.
I have found new sites to read from these particular awards. It's not so much that I pay attention to who has won, more that I take some time to go through the entrants each year and see if any grab my fancy. It's a one off discovery thing but has lead to my following new sites for a while at least. This is the only award I spend any time on but I personally found the quality of entrants to be pretty high. The fact that the competition seemed to actually work without being totally biased or electronically influenced (e.g false votes and shit) was part of that and I'm sad that they can't run it again this year.
posted by shelleycat at 6:35 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by shelleycat at 6:35 PM on January 5, 2010
Let's stay calm, people. If you're in the mood for bullshit prizes, the People's Choice Awards are still on for tomorrow!
posted by dhammond at 6:37 PM on January 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by dhammond at 6:37 PM on January 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
Here's a pleasant list weblogs from Fimoculous.
posted by swift at 6:39 PM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by swift at 6:39 PM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
If you are that popular and fail to generate enough ad revenue to run your popular blog you are doing something wrong.
posted by caddis at 6:42 PM on January 5, 2010 [8 favorites]
posted by caddis at 6:42 PM on January 5, 2010 [8 favorites]
What, they're still around?
posted by bwg at 6:46 PM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by bwg at 6:46 PM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
My GeoCities page made Cool Site of the Day all the time!
...once.
...alright. I just stole the jpeg from someone else's site and put it on mine.
posted by battlebison at 6:47 PM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
...once.
...alright. I just stole the jpeg from someone else's site and put it on mine.
posted by battlebison at 6:47 PM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
I wonder if it'd be feasible to use twitter to vote. Pick a category per day for everyone to vote on by #hashtag and if it trends, it wins.
posted by stavrogin at 6:51 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by stavrogin at 6:51 PM on January 5, 2010
I think they're 'doin it wrong'. Bandwidth is pretty cheap these days.
posted by delmoi at 6:52 PM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by delmoi at 6:52 PM on January 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
Thankfully my eyeballs need no bandwith to view my navel.
posted by fire&wings at 6:55 PM on January 5, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by fire&wings at 6:55 PM on January 5, 2010 [3 favorites]
Andrew Sullivan's beard is wet with tears.
posted by unSane at 6:56 PM on January 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
posted by unSane at 6:56 PM on January 5, 2010 [2 favorites]
Can I haz my iron nees bak plz?
posted by jimmythefish at 7:04 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by jimmythefish at 7:04 PM on January 5, 2010
...So, wait, are these the Bloggies or the other ones or what? I can never keep track.
posted by mightygodking at 7:12 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by mightygodking at 7:12 PM on January 5, 2010
Well, if we can't have Weblog Awards, how about the Best New Blogs of 2009, at least according to those Bygone Bureau guys.
posted by netbros at 7:27 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by netbros at 7:27 PM on January 5, 2010
I agree with delmoi, I used to process this many "votes" for next to nothing. They need some good old fashioned Perl CGI or some C code, and some super handwritten html.
posted by niccolo at 7:30 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by niccolo at 7:30 PM on January 5, 2010
A million votes over a 7 day period is about 1.65 votes per second which is not that high, but then again there must be some kind of captcha-type processing going on otherwise it would be trivial to game. I don't know if the recaptcha project would be able to support that kind of load, so they probably have to roll their own which means a lot more CPU is involved than just receiving a HTTP POST and incrementing a column in a table.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:50 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by Rhomboid at 7:50 PM on January 5, 2010
Oh, you're all just so fucking above it all, aren't you.
Put a fucking sock in it.
posted by mr_roboto at 8:05 PM on January 5, 2010
Put a fucking sock in it.
posted by mr_roboto at 8:05 PM on January 5, 2010
See people, electronic voting is always going to have problems.
Pencil and paper!
posted by Jimbob at 8:10 PM on January 5, 2010
Pencil and paper!
posted by Jimbob at 8:10 PM on January 5, 2010
I'm guessing they just got bored with it.
posted by longsleeves at 8:48 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by longsleeves at 8:48 PM on January 5, 2010
I'm not all that upset. I still have my Top 5% of All Web Pages award from 1995.
posted by Spatch at 9:00 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by Spatch at 9:00 PM on January 5, 2010
My partner won three years in a row, then they wouldn't let her enter again, which I thought was a little unfair.
posted by quarsan at 9:27 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by quarsan at 9:27 PM on January 5, 2010
...alright. I just stole the jpeg from someone else's site and put it on mine.
...Is it naivete or just plain stupidity that I JUST NOW realized that you could cheat it this easily? Oh god, the squandered opportunities for my Tripod.com Hanson fan page!
posted by sarahsynonymous at 9:46 PM on January 5, 2010 [4 favorites]
...Is it naivete or just plain stupidity that I JUST NOW realized that you could cheat it this easily? Oh god, the squandered opportunities for my Tripod.com Hanson fan page!
posted by sarahsynonymous at 9:46 PM on January 5, 2010 [4 favorites]
A million votes over a 7 day period is about 1.65 votes per second which is not that high
That's assuming that voters are nice enough to line up and wait for their turn, though, rather than skipping over to vote when the voting is opened and the site's being linked to by the usual suspects.
Does anyone have more information on how they managed to avoid "false votes and shit", btw? On an Internet where you can buy "real people" cheaply, that usually only means that nobody cares enough about the outcome to even try.
posted by effbot at 12:17 AM on January 6, 2010
That's assuming that voters are nice enough to line up and wait for their turn, though, rather than skipping over to vote when the voting is opened and the site's being linked to by the usual suspects.
Does anyone have more information on how they managed to avoid "false votes and shit", btw? On an Internet where you can buy "real people" cheaply, that usually only means that nobody cares enough about the outcome to even try.
posted by effbot at 12:17 AM on January 6, 2010
Blogs are so last decade. I'm not even joking.
posted by w0mbat at 12:34 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by w0mbat at 12:34 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
more people have read this comment than your blog.
posted by monkeyJuice at 1:35 AM on January 6, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by monkeyJuice at 1:35 AM on January 6, 2010 [3 favorites]
I think people are getting confused between this and the Webby Awards which are still going (I think).
posted by PenDevil at 4:01 AM on January 6, 2010
posted by PenDevil at 4:01 AM on January 6, 2010
I don't know if the recaptcha project would be able to support that kind of load
Well, Ticketmaster uses recaptcha and their load when tickets go on sale presumably dwarfs this.
posted by smackfu at 6:14 AM on January 6, 2010
Well, Ticketmaster uses recaptcha and their load when tickets go on sale presumably dwarfs this.
posted by smackfu at 6:14 AM on January 6, 2010
Oh, you're all just so fucking above it all, aren't you.
Put a fucking sock in it.
You should put that on your blog!
posted by Ratio at 7:55 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
Put a fucking sock in it.
You should put that on your blog!
posted by Ratio at 7:55 AM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
Well that explains it then. Clearly Google is at fault, a company like that obviously has no clue how to handle huge bandwidth.
posted by caution live frogs at 8:25 AM on January 6, 2010
posted by caution live frogs at 8:25 AM on January 6, 2010
(Wait was I supposed to say hamburger? It's 2010, can we say "fish sandwich" instead now?)
posted by caution live frogs at 8:26 AM on January 6, 2010
posted by caution live frogs at 8:26 AM on January 6, 2010
Well, Ticketmaster uses recaptcha and their load when tickets go on sale presumably dwarfs this.
In my experience, Ticketmaster's site manages to barf on its own quite well when a big concert open up for sale.
posted by kmz at 8:33 AM on January 6, 2010
In my experience, Ticketmaster's site manages to barf on its own quite well when a big concert open up for sale.
posted by kmz at 8:33 AM on January 6, 2010
Wait a minute, a small internet startup not capable of scalability? What has this world come to?!?
posted by toekneebullard at 8:50 AM on January 6, 2010
posted by toekneebullard at 8:50 AM on January 6, 2010
Rather than run a competition that had a high possibility of technically failing, the more prudent choice seemed to be regroup and consider our alternatives for hosting these awards going forward.
Thank you to those who have supported The Weblog Awards over the years, we appreciate your support, and our sorry we couldn't make things work this year.
High possibility of fail all around it looks like. I've never heard of this site (ripping off Webby's much?), but much like everyone is saying -- they probably weren't making as much money off of this as they'd hoped they would (no one needs contests to find good blogs anymore) and just scrapped the idea, threw up some awful excuse and sat around trying to figure out how to monopolize on a contest for the 'best' Twitterers.
posted by june made him a gemini at 12:42 PM on January 6, 2010
Thank you to those who have supported The Weblog Awards over the years, we appreciate your support, and our sorry we couldn't make things work this year.
High possibility of fail all around it looks like. I've never heard of this site (ripping off Webby's much?), but much like everyone is saying -- they probably weren't making as much money off of this as they'd hoped they would (no one needs contests to find good blogs anymore) and just scrapped the idea, threw up some awful excuse and sat around trying to figure out how to monopolize on a contest for the 'best' Twitterers.
posted by june made him a gemini at 12:42 PM on January 6, 2010
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Does anyone pay much attention to things like this anyway? I can't think of a time I sought out a site because it was "award winning."
posted by cjorgensen at 6:29 PM on January 5, 2010