Beating that dead horse
If you are sick of reading negative comments about the Anime Blog Awards, skip the rest of this.
I’m not against the awards. I occasionally participated in similar competitions in other regions of the blogosphere, and they can be fun as long as you don’t take them too seriously. I don’t have any grudge against the organizers — a couple of them are in my blogroll — and I don’t suspect them of having devious plots. There’s no reason to think that they’re not sincere when they list their goals. I’m willing to participate, and I have a short list of less-familiar weblogs to nominate.
But, as I’ve said twice already, I have a problem with rule #10: there aren’t nine categories of anime blogs in which I can make knowledgeable nominations. Owen, in a comment on a previous post, says not to worry about it; the organizers set that number so high to eliminate those who would only nominate one or two, and it’s okay if I just nominate five, six or seven. If that’s the case, then I would ask that they amend to rules to say what they mean. (I also question whether such a rule is really necessary. The pool of nominators is already limited to those who have weblogs of their own. Just how much of a flood of junk nominations did ABA crew expect?)
The ABA FAQ has a different answer:
It’s to fulfill our goal that all anime bloggers explore around blogs that they will not frequent and understand the community a little better.
Let’s see: I work full-time. I read a lot. I write unlistenable music. I go out and take pictures every day and post them on my other weblog.1 I have a little garden. Anime is only one of my many interests and not the most important, and there are frequent evenings in which I watch neither DVD nor fansub. If you think I’m going to spend scarce time reading about subjects I don’t give a damn about, e.g., plastic figurines, just so I can nominate a few blogs for a trivial contest, you’re out of your mind.
One minor point I shouldn’t have to make: comments left by visitors to this weblog do not necessarily reflect my own views.
- Except when I’m stuck in a wheelchair, as has been the case this year (By this time next week I hope to finally have two working legs again). [↩]
Tags: Grumbling and muttering
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April 8th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I think there’s an inherent assumption that if you write a blog, you’re probably invested enough in the medium and the community to have an interest in its various facets.
Otherwise, it seems like an attempt to get people interested in the sub-cultures of animeblogging that they have never experienced before. After all, you may not have an interest in plastic figures, but maybe there are other, less obvious faces of the anime-otaku culture that you’ve never experienced, but may interest you.
Having said that, I can’t find the time to participate to any great extent either. My final year of university has got my hands full enough already.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
> there aren’t nine categories of
> anime blogs in which I can make
> knowledgeable nominations.
I’m in exactly the same boat. I was invited to do some nominations, but I realized that there’s no way I’d be able to participate properly. Why? For the most part I ignore episodic, manga, dorama, and news blogs, I only quickly browse editorial and satire blogs, and I have absolutely no idea what an “influential” blog is. Heck, I don’t actually have one particular blog that I follow regularly. I just don’t have much loyalty to anyone.
I think the Anime Blog Awards is a good concept, and since it’s in its first year I’m going to cut it a lot of slack. However, for people like me, I don’t think I’m the type of guy who should be participating in the nomination process.
April 9th, 2008 at 4:44 am
I’m with Impz, mostly because I’m that sort of guy who never leaves a job unfinished.
Mostly.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:00 am
I’m with you on this one. My specific interest is plastic anime figures. If I hadn’t stumbled on your blog from a completely unrelated site, I would never have takent he time to search on my own for other categories.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:49 am
“I work full-time. I read a lot. I write unlistenable music. I go out and take pictures every day and post them on my other weblog.1 I have a little garden. Anime is only one of my many interests…”
I had to inwardly chuckle at that point, since my own situaton is pretty much the same, minus the photography (something that has been on my To Do list for what seems like years). I can understand why they’re limiting nominations to those who already have a blog, but I’m also hoping a broader ‘readers poll’ take place later on too since quite a lot of blog traffic is from people who don’t have blogs/fan sites of their own. As Niku pointed out, it’s a good idea but is only in its first year, so what we’re seeing here are hopefully just teething problems.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:11 am
I stand corrected. Originally we had this as a safeguard against people merely voting for their favourites, so I guess we know better than to have this rule again in the future.
It looks like it’s too late to rescind that rule and change your mind now, though (or is it?), but I’ll take this post of yours as a lesson for the future incarnations of the blog awards. It was more of a bid to get people to vote for more than merely their favourites, and we didn’t take a demographic like yours into account. Sorry for all that hassle.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Let’s see: I work full-time. I read a lot. I write unlistenable music. I go out and take pictures every day and post them on my other weblog.1 I have a little garden. Anime is only one of my many interests and not the most important, and there are frequent evenings in which I watch neither DVD nor fansub. If you think I’m going to spend scarce time reading about subjects I don’t give a damn about, e.g., plastic figurines, just so I can nominate a few blogs for a trivial contest, you’re out of your mind.
Heh, thanks for at least being concerned about it. I can fully understand your situation. I study full time for my masters, work full time, have a girlfriend, personal commitments such as my anime blog, my other interests in investment, politics and writing my dissertation at the same time. It’s a total pain because I have like 7 am – 11 pm days. We are at least glad to hear from the other side.
Cheers!