Ordinary Gweilo

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Asia Blog Awards

Phil is too busy, so Hong Kong’s most hyperactive blogger has temporarily taken over the Asia Blog Awards.  I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this, but honestly I’m not.  I’m not doing this in the expectation of winning any awards, and if I were then I would go about it in a different way.  It’s easy to see that other people are posting more regularly, are funnier or sharper or better informed or just do more crowd-pleasing stuff – and they are the ones who are are likely to win whatever prizes Simon has on offer. 

Anyway, how exactly do you choose your favourite blog?  There are several that I enjoy, and others that I admire for one reason for another. 

The other thing I don’t like about this is that it seems impossible to stop people "cheating".  Phil tried last year, but what can you do when someone claims that one whole building has a single IP address?  This year Simon is allowing people to vote once per day, which just seems plain weird to me.  As I can’t imagine that "ordinary" voters would be bothered to vote every day, it surely means that real votes will be swamped by a small minority who are probably using multiple IP addresses as well as voting at least once a day.

If you can summon up the enthusiasm, there may still be time to nominate a blog.  Last time I checked there weren’t very many nominations for Hong Kong, and so far no-one has nominated their own blog. 

This is not meant as criticism of Simon, who does more than anyone else to promote Asian blogs.  I just think this is the wrong way to go about it.

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4 responses to “Asia Blog Awards”

  1. Simon avatar
    Simon

    The once a day voting is a limitation of the voting service I’m using. I know there’s likely to be cheating, but the main idea is to garner more exposure for Asian blogs. If people find some new things to read, mission accomplished. At the end of the voting I’m going to list all the nominations for each category and leave them up for good. I still get hits from people looking at Phil’s awards last year so here’s hoping it can increase all our traffic.

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  2. ran avatar
    ran

    I know what you mean. Personally, I also agree that a lot of the stuff out there is pretty conventional, which in turn appeals to a lot of people. Seems like a lot preaching to the converted, and in the end, how’s this any different from a high school year book? My praises out to Simon, because it’s still his time he’s investing, and I like your blog. A gweilo, maybe, but ordinary, you’re not quite. Free drinks to the two guys in the back.

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  3. Chris avatar
    Chris

    Simon,
    Yes, I’m sure it will bring some publicity, and I think it has some value (so perhaps my final sentence is unfair). I just can’t get very excited about it.
    Ran,
    Well, I wasn’t fishing for compliments, but thanks anyway. You remind me that I’d much rather have an email or a comment from someone than a vote in the Asia blog awards. If I didn’t get any feedback I think I’d have stopped doing this a long time ago.

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  4. Giles avatar
    Giles

    Well, I think I’d like to mention my site – Best Blogs in Asia Directory. Mine includes voting, but is mainly a Directory system which lists all blogs in Asia and promotes them all year round.
    Wish Simon all the best with his though, all though it hasn’t changed much from the one last year….

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