BLOB Awards : The rules

Mic testing.. Mic testing.

Good, now that all of you can hear me and given that we have spent enough time on the Categories, I will summarise the rules, some that we have already discussed and some that I shall propose (and would love your feedback on)

1. The poll contestants will have to be BITSians only. In other words, any blog that is nominated for an award should be a blog maintained by a BITSian.
2. ANYONE - bitsian or otherwise - can vote as part of the poll. If you have been following a BITSian blog and want to tell him/her how much you love his/her blog, you can go ahead and vote.
3. The final list of categories are the eleven categories you see here [link].
4. You can vote at most three blogs for each category.
   
5. The poll consists of two stages.
   
1. The first stage will be an open event where people can copy-paste URLs of their favorite blogs for respective categories. At the end of the first stage, the top three blogs in each category will be announced.
   
2. These blogs will be the nominations for the specified category and the second stage begins here. People can then vote for the nominated blogs and at the end of the second stage, we announce the winner.
   
3. The reason for doing this is even people who don't regularly follow BITSian blogs and wouldn't have voted normally can take time to look at the nominationsand make up their minds.
   
4. I have a suggestion here - the nominated bloggers can also make a pitch for their respective blogs during the second stage where they can introduce themselves and "campaign" for their blogs. The idea of doing this is to get to know each other through this process.
   
6. The nominations carry over the points they have got in the first stage into the second stage. In other words, it's one contiguous voting process.
   
7. There's currently no check done to make sure people vote only once. As mentioned before, if someone is voting for the same blog many times it only goes to show how much he/she likes the blog. So, you can vote any number of times you like [the assumption here is there's a healthy spirit of participation as I am sure we are dealing with mature individuals here].
8. The results will be completely transparent at the end of the stage. All the blogs that have been nominated will be announced at the end of first stage. We will also provide the different votes that each blog received at the end of the second stage.

So, what are the steps ahead?

We have shortlisted a poll site - Bravenet.com - which allows people to create a poll and the poll can be pasted on any site. So, everyone will be able to vote here in this blog. We also have yahoo groups [which however will require authentication and enrollment etc]. But the problem with both these polls are that they allow only multiple-choice type questions. so, having a free text field where people can enter blog addresses is not possible. We can definitely work around this problem but that will involve a little more work for anyone who's voting. A more tailor-made solution would any day be better [And a simple form that can be posted here and a corresponding back end which accepts GET or POST requests and does as much as even send me a mail would be the best :)]

Many thanks to everyone who's passed the word around. We are beginning to get some attention now and that's definitely good news. However, I still haven't got any volunteers for

1. Any other poll/survey sites that you might know, have heard about, have come across. Please do let me know if you have any in mind. If you don't, please ask around and let me know :)
2. If you are, or know someone who is, good with graphics and will be willing to spend LITTLE time in designing the "Award" images for the event, that would be fantastic. You will be duly acknowledged in this site :)
   

Would really [REALLY] appreciate it if you can take SOME time for this.

If things go as planned, we should be starting the poll on September 15th. I am not sure how long we will have the first stage open - I will leave this as an open point right now and decide based on the response we get. Hope that's ok.

As always, do pass the word around; please let me know what you think and make sure you have fed your dog :)

PS: If you have the time to participate in the pilot poll or want to be kept posted on this poll by mail, do send a mail to rathish_balakrishnan [at] yahoo [dot] com or just leave your email address here.