I got an email informing me that the preparations for ABA09 are underway. The committee is making the contest even better this year, and they’re looking for feedback from the community. If you liked/disliked something about ABA08 now is your chance to express your thoughts.
Things I Like
- Soliciting feedback early: These contests always draw hate, but the committee is clearly taking complaints seriously. Impz has even withdrawn THAT from the running simply to avoid conflicts of interest.
- Nicer website: The 2009 blog is much cleaner and easier to navigate. WP2.7’s threaded comments are supported with great effect. I thought last year’s website was difficult to navigate with changing permalinks and haphazard deletion of comment links (please just close the comments after the nomination period is over). The history and mission statement are welcome additions.
- Idea of a showcase: I guess everyone has to fill out a description of his/her site and provide some info. There will be a library compiled of these sheets, to help readers browse the nominees. This sounds like a great idea (glad I don’t have to code it =3), and really goes along with the mission of the ABAs. I wonder if a small screenshot/thumbnail can be provided as well, since that would make the library even prettier and enticing to browse.
- Platinum: Ora ora ora ora! At first I was like “Huh? Four awards now?” but then I actually read the text and found that this is a special category for if you repeat as a top vote-getter. This is a nice compromise between disallowing repeat winners and letting great blogs get recognized yearly.
- Love for newbies: I guess a special deadly strike force will be assembled to hand out a few editor’s-choice-esque awards to overlooked sites in the showcase.
Overall, I like the progress that is being made. The things I recall annoying me the most last year were missed deadlines, a few confusing categories, and the kinda buggy website. It’s great that the process is starting early this year and I am excited to see the blogs showcased this spring. I’ve added my comments about which categories I think can be combined (thought provoking & editorial, funniest & satire) and added (music, general culture, professional).
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I guess being around for almost 3 years, I’m not considered a newbie anymore lmao. But yeah, what they’re doing with it looks promising so far.
NO offense to anyone but I thought the awards last year were terrible. It was completely disorganized and in the end I didn’t know who won what and then Impz had the brilliant idea of letting a fuckface shithole talk trash about my blog.
Honestly, I haven’t gotten any emails but I’m purposely avoiding these awards like the plague. Maybe they are less poorly run this year but I couldn’t care less about some blog award if it involves my blog getting trashed in the process. (In addition now that JP and I share a blog it makes things a lot different anyway)
Team blog?
I can understand your hesitation, considering that Impz asked for guest posts about winners, and for some reason Randall read “praise the site” as “trash the site”. Impz did have the post taken down really quickly, but you have a good point about some of the disorganization. You should comment about this on the site so they know to fix these issues this year (e.g. proof guest posts before they are published).
I was going to make a post about this, but you did a better job than I possibly could. I’ma just link you I suppose.
I’m with Hinano on the “who won what” thing, I really still don’t feel like I have any idea who won anything. hopefully diligence on the part of the people maintaining the blog will keep that from happening this time.
If there really was unprofessional behavior in the announcements, that’s just stupid and makes me not want to participate. Well, it would, if I didn’t think OH! deserved all the awards :P
The announcements were staggered, but I believe the people’s choice awards were about a week or so late (Impz was out and I think no one did the counting or something). The incident Hinano refers to was that after the winners were announced, Impz asked some other bloggers to write up nice little posts about some of the winners. Unfortunately, one guest writer wrote a nasty post instead of a nice post.
Is why he should have had me write a post in the future.
If anything, more feedback is always good. So by all means people who haven’t done so should try so. :P
I don’t remember too much about last years ABA but I do remember most of the large blogs taking prizes and less on the newer blogs, which seemed kind of against the purpose of this contest. I don’t think THAT should be excluded but I think that all committee members (and their co-bloggers) shouldn’t have rights to vote in anything. As it stands now, it’s like the president of a company not being able to vote in the best business award but all his employees can (and feel pressure to).
@Hinano: I can’t deny your ambivalence or even hatred for the awards. It was the first time we did anything of that scale, and it got a bit messy because I was the only person working on it. Even worse, my techie skills are close to 0, so everything was messy. This year will be better.
I know that last year’s dorama was a total screw up by me. Anyway, I can’t cry over spilled milk because I fail to take note of shit. I just want to move on and make it better this time.
@Caitlin: Well, we also have NO rights to vote in anything too. The main committee cannot vote or be nominated at all. I thought it’s quite clear in the post. @_@
I realized that having provocative categories is good – it makes people really consider the blog[ers] at hand so investigating and archive binging is more important. Especially bakaraptors ‘best comments’ blog – how would you know unless you read?
then again, that’s insofar as people read…
I barely remember what happened last year, but I’m really excited about this upcoming contest. It makes blogging so much more interesting because if it weren’t for the ABA, then every year of blogging would be exactly the same as the previous. Still, improving the 2008 Anime Blog Awards is a great idea even though I personally had nothing against it. It’s too bad THAT has to be excluded though. In fact, I couldn’t care less WHO won what; I’m just there for the fun of it
Although I’m crossing my fingers that Yukan gets at least top 7 for best blog-related comic and maybe team as well :P
@Impz: Looking back, I’m not seeing anything concrete, but I think I see what you’re saying. The problem is the constant switching of titles/descriptions for the same thing w/o using the same titles.
I hope next year will become more succes for anime blog award..
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[...] Kabitzin wrote a better post about this than I ever could. Go check it out. Mad props to him for approaching the ABAs with such reason and constructive thought, and for being quicker to combo than any idiots other than myself (and I was extremely premature). [...]