First of all, congratulations to this year's contest winners!
Don't worry, this isn't a rant about being a sore loser, though I have, admittedly, been known to get a little pouty over such things.
But I do have an idea about how contests can be evaluated in the future.
ProU's existing point system is valuable, because what moderators in their right mind will read and evaluate thousands of blogs without some method of weeding out infrequent or poor-quality blogging? And besides, the idea is to encourage participation, and what better way than to offer the very greatest possible incentive- points. At the same time, it is theoretically possible that someone intending to abuse the point system could write hundreds of thousands of minimum word count blogs that are poorly written, lack originality, and be completely irrelevant.
This is NOT to suggest that this sort of thing has happened this year; I'm just suggesting it is certainly within the realm of possibility for contests evaluated in this way.
So, how do we better encourage MEANINGFUL participation? Why not use the point system to generate the top 25 or so participants, which creates a pool from which the best quality, content, and meaningful dialogue (comments, direction of content, etc) can be judged by moderators and other Progressive U team members? The point mongers can still make it to the top 25 or so, but a genuine contestants' earnest participation will still earn him/her a spot near the top, which any decent judge could determine to be better than an extremely freqent blogger whose ideas aren't necessarily as well thought out.
The idea is to up the ante on the general quality of the site's dialogues. The content I've read lately, especially while the contest was still going on, is pretty boring and, while thoughtful, doesn't reflect much more consideration for today's society than what appears on CNN or in the household-- it doesn't reflect what people observe, what people on the streets think, or how people act beyond the familial or televised scope.
I tried to find the blog where someone invited suggestions to the site, but couldn't and decided it was worth to get the word out. Because, you know, that's original and stuff.
Congrats to the 2007 winners, and happy blogging!
The ProU editorial team works very hard to make sure that all blogs that we count for the contest have meaningful content. The team has been known to delete comments and blogs of little relevent substance. We also check the blogs of the scholarship winners to make sure that each entry is relevent and progressive.
--Mike
Check out the ProgU News Feed:
http://www.progressiveu.org/news
I'm surprised there's not more blogs like this now. Last contest, there were like 20 that went up within a day.
We do have a system in place much like you describe. We pull the top (not necessarily 25, since there's only 3 scholarship winners), and go through manually, making sure their posts are relevant. I think we got a nice result this time. We also allow for plenty of bonus points opportunities that typically the people you talk about don't participate in.
I think we're changing the system (or at least adding to it) slightly for the next contest, so hopefully that will make you perceive it as more fair.
~C
Visit my blog: www.progressiveu.org/blog/mvenus929
Read the news: www.progressiveu.org/news
I would have hit "reply" but I think it applies to both Mike and mvenus' comments above.
Mike, I know that the work you and other moderators do at ProU is difficult, and that you are continually "progressing" to encourage more participation and increase the amount of users.
C, I agree that this year's winners deserved to be there-- not disputing this at all, nor the fairness of this year's contest. My suggestion was based on the apparently incorrect assumption that the Official Rules procedure (that is, "...winners will be selected based on accumulated point totals...") for evaluating winners was the only method of determining the winners.
Hopefully that clarifies things?
Perhaps we need to clarify that in the official rules, then. I'll make a suggestion about it for you.
~C
Read the news: www.progressiveu.org/news
Nominate a featured blogger: http://www.progressiveu.org/node/27612
That's all I was asking :)