The Troppo/On Line Opinion best blog posts anthology is now becoming something of a venerable internetty tradition. Nominations for 2008 are open – read all about it over in James Farrell’s post at Club Troppo. And go forth and nominate!
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LPers’ picks would be most welcome (and not just confined to LP, either – any OzBlogPost you really like, from any blog). For various reasons we don’t have the ‘Missing Link’ coverage we’ve enjoyed in the past, so are more dependant on your eyes and ears for finding the good stuff that’s out there.
Glad to see the judging panel is at least 20% female [/sarcasm], wonder what gender the “possibly one other blogger” will turn out to be.
From the submission guidelines:
“Posts should be 800-2000 words, although nominations outside this range will be considered if exceptional. Thus they will generally be of the essay type, developing a substantial argument. They main contain quotes, but these should not constitute the bulk of the post. They may contain pictures, but this exercise is largely a homage to the written word, so pictorial essays are not eligible.”
To my mind if you ignore the unique things blog writing has to offer and hand out gold stars for op-ed writing on a blog, you shouldn’t call it “Best Blog Posts”.
Requiring a word count before nominations is going to put a lot of people off nominating. Also, as Zoe pointed out, in the context of blogging it’s possible for a very long or short post to be awesome in some non-op-ed fashion. (One that’s very image heavy, for instance.) I would ask why this is necessary, since providing a link and comment to an idiosyncratic post doesn’t take much – win or lose, it’s not like the internets are going to be too full, or something? If a post doesn’t have merit it won’t win.
I think there’s a place for spotlighting longer pieces, especially as that’s what Online Opinion does themselves. Theys what hands out the gongs, makes teh rulez.
This would not preclude another competition with categories such as Best LOLCat (Deliberate Elaboration on Text), Best LOLCat (Stand Alone), Best LOLCat(As Reply/Complement to Post on Another Blog), Best Snark (Scrolldown), Best Snark (Under 10 Words), Best Post with No Comments, Best New Meme etc.
Best Post You Skimmed Over Until You Saw Days Later it Had Heaps of Comments and Other Blogs Linked to It And So You Went Back and Read It and Felt Disappointed As Others Who Read It First Time Had Left All the Good Comments and Now You’re Just Bandwagon Jumping.
etc
Best Post with No Comments
Excellent points Amanda. But what about Best Blog Comments Without A Post? Nobody’s given a prize for those, yet, either.
I demand a prize for best blog post that wasn’t actually written but did exist in my head where it was oh so wonderfully witty and full of razor sharp insights and amazing profundities but something got buggered up in the blogging software I use and I lost everything so ended up posting a Lolcat instead.
Was it a good LOLcat?
It was an absolutely brilliant one FDB. But then I deleted it by accident as well.
Shaun, I see your blogpost and raise you: The post that was oh so wonderfully witty and full of razor sharp insights and amazing profundities but I never got around to putting fingers to keyboard.
BUT it would have been TOTALLY the best post for the year.
Heh. Looks like a few categories are needed Helen. I also nominate the brilliant post developed under the influence of booze that my hangover removed all trace of next morning.
Maybe drunken blogging (and commenting) deserve their own category.
“I also nominate the brilliant post developed under the influence of booze that my hangover removed all trace of next morning.”
Even worse is finding it the next morning. And then googling with a massive hangover for softwear that guarantees to permanently wipe your hard drive.
I also think the 800-2000 word limit is unnecessarily restrictive. Perhaps to help encourage nominations and pad out the awards night, there could be a range of categories.
Best blog post under 500 words.
Best comment on a nominated blog post.
Best use of a quote by Guy Debord in a blog post
Best use of LOLcats in a blog post.
Best Costume Design.
Best Sound Design.
“This concludes the non-televised part of the evening”
Best blog post over 500 words.
Best blog post over 1000 words.
Best blog post over 2000 words.
People’s Choice award.
The Graeme Bird Lifetime Posting Achievements Award.
Just so people are aware, I didn’t make the word length rule (and, to be fair, it’s the word length rule that’s riled Tim Blair in the past and led in large part to him refusing to participate). If you’ve got shorter posts (or ones that are just ‘different’), then go ahead and nominate. I’m the kind of editor that’s always going to be impressed by interesting exercises in chaos — goes with the libertarian territory.
… and I had so many Tim Blair posts I was going to nominate!
A question for the hive mind:
What open girtbysea blog posts have managed to ‘synapse’ beyond the usual oz-2.0-citizen echo-chamber such that a currently elected member of a government ( ie the not-counting-the-protean-andrew-bartlett clause) has 2.0-engaged, exposed themselves, in their own name, as a commenter or a poster?
When I say open I mean to exclude partisan stooge, and government pr-hack jobs, and the msm-sponsored op-ed tropes, like Lindsay T’s.
I mean evidence of someone in a position of democratic power and privelage, who can stand up in parliament or council to ask a question, or put up bill, having been attracted to, informed by, engaging with, contributing to the open democracy of the oz-2.0 discourse.
I can think of one, here at LP, but I don’t get out much so wouldn’t have noticed – for all I know it happens all the time, but I doubt it.
I doubt it too, judging by Question Time
We need a special category for this cracker of a post
Never bury Barry-too-white’s granny
Who’s hosting the awards this year? I hope it’s that nice Billy Crystal.
I nominate this for the Most Syndicated Post by a Boring, Irrelevant Ideological Purist award.
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