So, what are the people who didn't win the scholarship contest saying about it? (Of course we know that the winner is very happy!)
Stephanie at Poorer Than You:
A lot of people have come to me about the "unfairness" of awarding a scholarship, especially one of this size, based on an internet poll. I don't want to sound in any way like an ungracious loser, but I tend to agree. I hope that if College Scholarships.org offers this again next year, they will reconsider the award process.
Lacking the emotional appeal and/or existing promotional network of the top scorers, I was pretty much up the creek without a plunger...Though the proportion of voters who actually did check out all of the blogs was pitifully low, it does still look like it was around 1-2% of the voters, which is actually higher than I would have predicted...I get the impression that some of us running less well known blogs were a little disappointed about the format of the competition, but there's really no reason to be. All it means is that rather than being a contest for "highest quality" blog, it was a contest for "most effective" blog. Certainly, being able to get your "vote for me" message out to a larger range of people is a valid measure of effectiveness, so the results seem reasonable to me.
Kevin Lim, of Theory Is the Reason hasn't said much yet, but I really liked this quote from him about blogs:
While I could simply explain this as beauty being in the eye of the beholder, my pragmatic self tells me that we as bloggers are filling all the gaps on the web, from the mundane to the exciting, popular to the esoteric, making every search in Google return a result. Perhaps something I've picked up from Tan Pin Pin's "Invisible City" is how in reference to archaeologists digging up Singapore's past, the trash of today could be a valuable artifact of tomorrow. In essence, we're performing a service for mankind, especially if you believe that a "1″ (something) is better than a "0″ (nothing).
Karin of Musing of An LIS Student said this a few days ago:
4 days left in the blogging scholarship competition, and it looks like I don't have a prayer. It doesn't really bother me- as they say, it's an honor just to be chosen, and hey, I'm in the top half. Make that #10..
Shane Lavalette of /Journal hasn't really blogged the contest at all, after an initial post. Neither has Paul Stamatiou, Kambiz Kamrani of Anthropology.net, Chris Clark of Wife Advice, Matthew Burden of Black Five, Liz Funk of The View From Here, Amanda Kern of VCC Graphics Blog or Anders Ibsen of the Young People For blog. Randy Booth, of Over the Monster (a Red Sox blog) and Grant Bisbee of the McCovey Chronicles (Giants blog) probably had bigger issues, with World Series and all. Samuel Arbesman aka The Biourbanist hasn't blogged much at all since the start of the contest. Travis Addington of Scholastici.us is embroiled in some kind of lawsuit over the name of his blog.
Maybe they'll come over here and comment as to their thoughts.
Jess Kim of the MIT Admissions Blog said something I can totally relate to:
...thank you so much for the support! It's been a long month of spamming people I haven't talked to in years...
Thomas Peters of American Papist didn't post a response to the results today although I was a big surprised to see a statement from him on a Facebook group stating that he was the only Christian blogger in the competition. Now, how does he know that? (Not all blogs are as clear as mine on the topic!)
My thoughts on the topic are this: don't bite the hand that feeds. Heh. Well, not *exactly.* As someone who has been in this competition 2 years (along with several other of this year's contestants), I was hoping to see it move away from an American-Idol style popularity contest to a quality-based contest with a panel of judges who rated the blog in some kind of systematic way. However, one type of contest gets loads of traffic to the scholarship's host site, and the other doesn't. I can't blame the purveyors of the scholarship for choosing the first type of selection process, as it feeds their bottom line...without which, the scholarship may not have been possible at all. So, perhaps the lesser of two evils.
The other point is that the rewards of a scientific research career are not financial, so I guess I better get used to not getting the brass ring. ;) But the other rewards are much more valuable: the pursuit of knowledge, being able to genuinely help people with my work, the excitement of discovery. Everything else is just gravy.
Education & Careers
Comments
Even judging blog "quality" would be an equal challenge because each of you cover such divergent topics. There really is no "best" way to do this but I think you should take great pride in being runner-up two consecutive years.
I've been reading you since the pre-Sb days back when we both had a mere pittance of traffic. Through your blog, I have learned that you are bright and articulate, with a breadth and depth of knowledge and interests that I wish were shared by students in my laboratory.
If this contest did nothing more than expose you to new readers, I'd consider it a success. The cool grand probably won't hurt either...congratulations, Shelley!
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | October 29, 2007 7:53 PM
As to American Papist being the only Christian blogger in the competition: There are Christians who are those who belong to a church or who identify some part of their life (spiritual, cultural, social) as being Christian. Then there is that subset, "Christians," who wear their Christianity on their sleeve and identify themselves first, foremost, and very vocally as such. In addition, "Christians" are very fond of defining Christianity as only consisting of their subset. I think it's obvious which type of Christian American Papist is.
Posted by: John McKay | October 29, 2007 8:54 PM
I just posted my thoughts on the contest on The Biourbanist, but here are they are below:
So, as I had hoped, I came in Not-Last Place in the Blogging Scholarship contest. As near as I can tell, I did this by about 2 votes. And from the fine print of the contest site, I think my prize is some sort of pre-worn gym clothing.
But about the contest itself. Shelley Batts, of Retrospectacle (a fellow science blogger who fared much better in the contest than I) wrote a little recap, and issued a wish to hear the other contestants' thoughts. Additionally, she astutely noted that I haven't "blogged much at all since the start of the contest". Very true. (Though in my defense, I normally post rather infrequently and didn't feel that strong of a yearning to change my style just for the contest.) Anyway, here are some thoughts:
Regarding the nature of the contest, Yes, it is sort of a popularity contest for the final part. But am I okay with that? I think I have made my peace with it. Frankly, it is somewhat of a fluke that I was a finalist at all. The Biourbanist is a tiny, infrequently updated blog, and is not really in the same league as most of the other blogs. Perhaps my essay on the joys of being a small and modest blog swayed the judges. And perhaps on quality I should've had a better shot. Nonetheless, my blog has a small following, and to be considered the best certainly must include some sort of readership metric. Yes, quality need not correlate with popularity, as many critics have discovered. However, a good blog should be good at getting readers, at least as one characteristic.
So, by being chosen as a finalist, I was bestowed with legitimacy (implying some aspect of goodness and probably the best thing to happen to a blog of my type), and the final portion of the contest was to see how influential my blog was (a different aspect of bloggy goodness). Are there other ways of measuring the quality of a blog? Certainly, and I would like to think that The Biourbanist would measure up in some of these categories (although frequency of posting certainly is not up there, Shelley). But am I okay with how it worked this time around? Yes. Perhaps a different contest next year could be in order, with judges actually doing the judging from start to finish. But, as they say, it's an honor just being nominated as a finalist. Now, please excuse me as I go gently cry myself to sleep over lost scholarship money.
Posted by: Sam Arbesman | October 29, 2007 10:09 PM
I tend to agree with Stephanie. The format of the "competition" was a bit disappointing. In fact, I sent Daniel Kotvach an e-mail about this at the beginning of the voting period to hear what he had to say. He responded:
What was problematic with this is that the exposure was not such and, as a result, the voting was not either. In other words, the majority of the votes were not unbiased. Those that proposed that Kim was getting sympathy votes may be right but it simply doesn't matter - the competition allows for this. I could've blogged about my own mother's situation with breast cancer as a full-time worker and mother of two (or any other dramas in my life), but I chose not to. I wasn't interested in competing.
Indeed, life is not fair. What can you do?
There's always next year.
And all this said, I was very happy just to be selected. This is definitely a innovative scholarship and a great one to be involved with. It'll be interesting to see where both the scholarship and the finalists go. Big congrats to Kim and everyone else involved!
Posted by: Shane Lavalette | October 29, 2007 10:19 PM
It's been a good run for me Shelly. Even though I didn't win (what chance did I have anyway!?!), I sure milked my friends with it too! ;)
Posted by: Kevin | October 29, 2007 11:36 PM
It looks like Kevin Lim said what I was trying to say about the value of blogs being their uniqueness, but he said it better than I did...
I think that's fundamentally what's wrong with the contest's attempt to attract a "mainstream" voting population to pick which one they liked best. Even leaving aside the fact that 98%+ of the voters showed up on the voting page already intending to vote for one or the other of the blogs - which obviously undercuts the stated intent of the competition - a "mainstream" population is biased - towards mainstream subjects. That makes having an off-the-wall, unique theme a hinderance in this type of competition, while I tend to be of the opinion that having an off-the-wall, unique theme is a primary benefit of the blogging format.
Still (and I mention this in what is presently the current post on my blog), I'm really only seriously bothered by this format in one respect: it results in essentially no feedback from the judges - even the tiny fraction who actually "judged" the blogs rather than voting for whoever they came to vote for and leaving. Over the course of the contest, I managed to drag my score up from 1st loser (where I was for the first few days) to 5th loser, and I still really don't know what people liked or didn't like about what I was doing along the way.
To end on a positive note: I think the best thing to come out this other than having gained a few more regular readers is the conversation that is only now ensuing online between many of us in the contest. I actually didn't expect that so much, but I like it.
Posted by: SMC | October 30, 2007 12:50 AM
The other point is that the rewards of a scientific research career are not financial, so I guess I better get used to not getting the brass ring. ;)
*sigh*
a sad commentary on how fubar funding priorities are.
maybe, someday, being a scientist will actually be something more of a tenable career choice. As it is right now, the expectation that becoming a scientist should only be done for "love of the profession" simply makes me pissed off.
I rather think it's become an almost ingrained excuse for not funding science properly.
All I can tell you, Shelley, is NOT to give in to the lowest common denominator if you can at all help it.
You should expect a decent wage for what you do, and maintain that as a public perception. If all prospective science students did that, maybe things might start to change.
Posted by: Ichthyic | October 30, 2007 1:03 AM
I did post something about this before the contest started - that I was wary of joining because I knew it would be a big burden contacting/soliciting many, many people. I don't like doing that at all. =/
Posted by: Paul Stamatiou | October 30, 2007 4:05 AM
I am the author of www.wifeadvice.com and never really mentioned the contest on the site. I only started the site on October 3rd, 3 days before the submission deadline, so I was busy getting the site looking decent for all the visitors. I loved the fact that I instantly got a following because of the contest. Most of the sites have been around for a while, so I knew I didn't have a chance.
I think that the method to determine the winner was a little crazy. I work at a company with thousands of people, but only one person could vote because of the IP address issue (we recently moved to wireless).. I am in the IT department and mentioned this to a group of IT managers, and they indicated that a "thumper" could easily be created to continuously vote for me on the thousands of IP addresses we have. I decided not to do this because it seemed a little unethical, but someone could have easily done that. I think a panel of judges rating the blogs on various aspects would be a better method.
In the end, I benefited greatly and my site has been featured in several papers and newsletters. I think it's pretty cool! Congrats to the winners.
Posted by: Chris Clark | November 1, 2007 9:37 PM
I don't think this was a bad way to decide the winner, though obviously we were pulling for you. Good blogs tend to have a lot of readers and being able to mobilize people is part of that.
Given the response this got I am not sure it would be difficult at all to have this sort of thing a few times a year. Get readers to chip in a dollar and accept nominations, narrow it down and give the money away to whomever wins.
I wouldn't mind organizing it and hosting it. It can't be that much work and we'd just pick a committee of 5 or so to narrow down the field. Readers would basically provide the prize.
Posted by: Campbell | November 1, 2007 11:31 PM
As to American Papist being the only Christian blogger in the competition: There are Christians who are those who belong to a church or who identify some part of their life (spiritual, cultural, social) as being Christian. Then there is that subset, "Christians," who wear their Christianity on their sleeve and identify themselves first, foremost, and very vocally as such. In addition, "Christians" are very fond of defining Christianity as only consisting of their subset. I think it's obvious which type of Christian American Papist is.
Posted by: film izle | March 20, 2008 11:49 AM