July 18, 2002

3:55 AM

Best British Blog. The Guardian has launched a competition to find the best British weblog. Is this another case of the mainstream media not really understanding what blogging is all about?
posted by crayfish (18 comments total)

i don't think so. Why do you say that? It seems that the Guardian is one of the few papers who has a finger on the pulse of the net. I would be concerned on 6 weeks being enough for a blog to come to maturity, but if the idea/method behind a blog is fresh and original then good.
posted by Frasermoo at 4:04 AM on July 18, 2002

crayfish, could you explain to me what Blogging is all about? ;-)
I just had my slashalike described as a "communal blog", and i wonder if that is an apt description.
posted by dabitch at 4:08 AM on July 18, 2002

Yeah, I agree with Crayfish. We know full well some A lister like that PlasticBag guy will win. :-D

It's the first law of blogging: The more incoming links a weblog has, the better it is.
posted by wackybrit at 4:15 AM on July 18, 2002

dabitch: Due to it's ad agency content, I'd describe it as a 'portal of pure evul' ;-)
posted by i_cola at 4:18 AM on July 18, 2002

Well, I guess blogging is about communicating your ideas with graphics, images and words. It's about having the freedom to write what you want to write and being empowered to publish it. Can - or should - this be judged by a group of select panelists? The criteria on which they are judging the weblogs seems a little superficial ('quality of the links?') and I just don't think blogs can be assessed in that way.
posted by crayfish at 4:29 AM on July 18, 2002

Well, I guess blogging is about communicating your ideas with graphics, images and words. It's about having the freedom to write what you want to write and being empowered to publish it. Can - or should - this be judged by a group of select panelists? The criteria on which they are judging the weblogs seems a little superficial ('quality of the links?') and I just don't think blogs can be assessed in that way.
posted by crayfish at 4:29 AM on July 18, 2002

*moahahahaha* a much better description i_cola.

and now i know what a blog is thanks to wackybrit. ;-)
posted by dabitch at 4:30 AM on July 18, 2002

yes, crayfish, 'quality of the writing' would probably be better criteria for judging blogs. The few i read usually have no links at all.
posted by dabitch at 4:32 AM on July 18, 2002

Andnow perhaps bloggers can try to figure out which is the best UK paper.
posted by Postroad at 4:56 AM on July 18, 2002

Nah. Let's have next year's Bloggies have a Best Best Blog Contest by a Mainstream Media Outlet category.

But to answer the original question: Probably, but more in the sense of Fraser's question about 6weeks being enough for the entries to be at all relevant. What if after winning, this "best" blogger stops caring, and the place goes to shit? Will they take the prize back and give it to the runner-up, like with Miss America?
Come to think of it, these contests are just about as relevent...
posted by Su at 6:12 AM on July 18, 2002

There can be only one.
posted by ph00dz at 6:26 AM on July 18, 2002

Su: perhaps, but they do give you cold hard cash. [sarcasm] Maybe soon British bloggers can make $2,000 a month from their blogs! [/sarcasm]

Looking at the judging panel I'd imagine that a fairly decent blog will win, these guys aren't going to do some sort of 'celebrity' stichup. As noted above this is just anther sign that the Guardian is (despite my total disagreement with their politics) the only British papaer that really 'gets it'.
posted by nedrichards at 7:44 AM on July 18, 2002

I have less of a problem with the contest than I do with the author's credibility in the third paragraph. He writes:

The first of these was peer-to-peer file sharing. We have to say "was" because the music industry's lawyers have dealt a near fatal blow to the peer-to-peer world by stamping down on Napster and, most recently, Audiogalaxy. Both services will, no doubt, adapt and survive, but the glorious free-for-all days are over.

Um, Gnutella? KaZaA? Sure, some file sharing services have been hit hard, and who knows what will happen over the next year, but right now it's arguably thriving now even more than it did in the days of Napster.
posted by realityblurred at 8:36 AM on July 18, 2002

Rest assured that I'm doing everything in my power not to win it, as a cursory look at plasticbag.org would demonstrate. Not that it would happen anyway - judges are way more discriminating than real people... :)

Actually I'm trying to get as much press as possible for webloggers thinking it's a dumb, missing-the-point idea.
posted by barbelith at 10:32 AM on July 18, 2002

Well, I resist the idea that there is some specific thing about which blogging is, and that therefore when someone doesn't see it they have missed the point. Blind men, elephant, etc.
posted by dhartung at 1:47 PM on July 18, 2002

Maybe I could have won it if I'd bothered to continue blogging. And if my numerous blogs didn't suck.
posted by davidgentle at 5:50 PM on July 18, 2002

Barb: Oh well, sorry for picking your name out of the hat then. It was the first that came to mind, especially after seeing the 'Top 40' lists of late. Replace my original mark with 'that notsosoft woman' instead.
posted by wackybrit at 8:26 PM on July 18, 2002

well the guardian have a good take on weblogs and have several of thier own. i just disagree with the idea of 'best' in a blogging context. it is the diversity and countless individual voices that make blogging such an interesting phenomenon.

good, interesting, topical and unusual are probably better categories.

my blog is rubbish.
posted by quarsan at 12:30 AM on July 19, 2002