Now that the finalists for the Food Blog Awards are up and we can breathe a little, just wanted to make a little suggestion. When combing through the hundreds of nominations we received this year, and verifying their eligibility, there are a number of sites that a) don't have visible contact information and/or b) don't have accessible or visible archives. When I discover a new site, I like to go back through the archives and see what I missed. As far as contact information, I know that spam is sometimes an issue, but what about a contact form? Just a suggestion. :)
Cate from Sweetnicks, Well Fed and Mad About Martha.
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19 comments:
...and my earlier comment went where?
I was also wondering what happened to that comment because I thought KM raised some valid points.
Only saw the comment on Well Fed, so not sure what this one said. The one on WF has been addressed and rectified.
Cate,
It said pretty much the same things as the one on WF (which I did give Cate the ok to remove since it was still awaiting moderation even though there were comments posted *after* it which seemed odd) but I thought since we food bloggers do talk over here it was useful for discussion.
For those who missed it, it was a question of why some non-qualified blogs were in the finals.
Do you mean in the "New" category?
I see that the comment is now gone in both places. And I did see it on Well Fed earlier, so it must've emerged from moderation at some point.
this is what i posted on wellfed, which I gave Cate permission to take down since we had exchanged mail and she had resolved the issue I saw. (Note that I didn't check all the categories, just noted a couple of obvious ones, others may see other blogs that don't qualify.)
original comment from Well Fed
Cate,
I am curious as to why you bothered to have qualifications for nominated blogs if they were, once again, simply ignored by the judges?
Many blogs were not nominated because they didn't have enough posts, yet blogs that didn't qualify made the finals.
The only category I have bothered to check has at least one blog that does not meet the baseline number of posts required - and since that site has LOTS of fans, they will probably win.
Cate, care to address the lack of fairness here?
Again, Cate has addressed the issue with the blog(s) that I noted.
btw, you all should go vote for your favorite blogs too!
I am reposting this here because I think the discussion is important.
Kitchenmage mentioned three sites in particular in her comment on WF. I did not publish the comment at the time, because I wanted to e-mail her directly to address her concerns. One of the three sites WAS entirely eligible. One we were already in the midst of dealing with, and the third one she was unfortunately correct on. She and I exchanged correspondence back and forth, and I explained our follow-up actions. As far as I was (and am) concerned, the issue is closed. I did not publish the comment since a) it was taken care of privately and considered closed and b) she said it needn't be. Simple as that.
There were literally hundreds of blogs nominated last week and verifing the eligibility of each one is not an easy task. Mistakes happen, I take full responsibility and hopefully we can move on.
Cate,
I was not questioning what happened to my comment on WF, I was wondering about the one I left HERE. I assume that you cannot delete comments on your posts here, Cate, and thus it had to have been done by someone w/admin privileges here. It didn't seem like Sam would have done so without talking to me.
So I was curious.
Still am.
I have not deleted any comment here. A few other people have administrative permissions for FBS so let me write to them and see if any of them know anything about it.
Blogger was having some serious moments yesterday - took me forever to get a post up. Maybe a tech glitch on their end.
To answer Cate's inital point -- having contact info on your blog --
I do it through my blogger profile, I enabled the "email me" feature which seems to result in very little spam yet those who want to can find me.
One caution, I've had blogger mysteriously turn it off on me once so I periodically check to make sure it is still there!
How do you set up a contact me???
To answer FJK's question, I have my email address right on my blog, but it's an image instead of text, not clickable or copy/paste-able. I think it keeps the spam down, but unfortunately doesn't do away with it completely.
I have a page about how to contact me linked in the sidebar with a link that says "how to contact Kalyn." It has my e-mail address with (at) and (dot) and doesn't seem to have generated much spam.
An alternative is to create a blog specific email address. I did this.
I then set it to permanent vacation setting on. My vacation setting has a hefty tome of reasons why I probably will not respond to the mail that the stranger/reader. Try it - send me a test mail to becks.posh.food.blog@gmail.com (just put test in the subject so i know not to pay attention) and see what you get in return.
Creating this was like having a wweight lifted off my shoulders - I highly recommend it. It is an email address for strangers. I owe nothing to strangers although some of them think they I should give them my time for free. No siree. I tell 'em straight.
By this stage - most people I know - know my real email address.
And I still respond to the nice people who write to me there - but believe me they are in the minority, so it is great to be able to have this auto explanation in place.
I really don't mind at all if you all send an email to that address so you know what i am talking about.
By the way, as one of the judges for this set, you should be aware that it is HUGE amount of work - HUGE.
There were over 200 blogs (maybe 300) to read. And a quick look isn't good enough - you have to read and go back and read some more. I blew my whole weekend on the project - until 1AM Friday and Sat nights. I took it very seriously - and it wasn't easy - we had multiple go arounds in several cases.
I believe that these awards are good for the community and far more fair and authoritative than the other food blog awards out there.
I understand that to some extent it is always going to be a popularity contest if you want everyone's opinion to count. Bu this would be true even if it was just a few judges.
I think the awards are valuable to the food blogging community and help recognize and reward extra effort and/or talent as well as publicizing good blogs we would all otherwise miss out on
Owen,
I understand exactly how much work this kind of project can be, which is why, after I perused one particularly difficult to navigate blog and discovered it didn't go back as far as I thought it would have to in order to qualify, I commented on it in the NOMINATION thread. That comment was ignored and the blog was made a semi-finalist anyway.
This was troubling, since there were other sites, one of mine included, that would have been nominated if the 6x6 requirement was going to be ignored. So I asked. I don't believe that I named any blog by name (see pasted in comment up a few here) because I had only personally verified the one (I'd heard of others via the foodblog grapevine). Too bad my comments are gone so we can't check, huh?
My concern would have died with a public response from Cate here. The disappearing comment (which I do not believe is due to a technical glitch, Cate, although it was a nice try *grin*) lends toward more conversation - something that whoever deleted it should have thought of.
Oh well, not so smart, that one.
But whether you believe it or not, Owen, my intent was to save you one tiny smidge of work. Not to mention the outcry, which I see, is beginning on the voting page for that category.
I mentioned a possible technical glitch for two reasons - it took me forever to get this post to publish here on FBS (and likewise had the same issue on another Blogger site) and because I am still finding comments in moderation on a few Blogger sites, without having received an e-mail notification. Simple as that.
Quite honestly, I debated about even putting up this post here because I didn't want to turn it into another debate about the FBAs - that wasn't the topic and certainly not the intention. Was merely trying to highlight something that I felt some site owners might want to think about. If someone comes to one of my sites, I want them to be able to contact me easily if they have a question or navigate through my archives easily if interested.
Cate,
I am sorry that I usurped your post and sidetracked the discussion you were after. I came to post something of my own and, seeing your post, thought I'd ask a question where you were sure to see it - since I don't know if you check FBS regularly. Again, I am sorry.
My rejection of the 'technical glitch' explanation was because the problems I have seen/heard about do not impact comments that have been posted, only pending ones. Thus, it seems unlikely that that is what happened here. The question of what happened to my comment remains open, where it shall, apparently, stay.
I will bow out of the thread now and return you to the discussion of contact info and archives, already somewhat in progress.
~km
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