Why Do I Have To Vote In Every Category?

By Maurice | View Comments

• categories
• voting

“For your award survey to require folks to vote in all categories is [W]ack!”
“[W]hy is is mandatory to cast a vote for every single category even if I’ve never even heard of the blogs listed.”
“[V]oting in every category is dumb – i only keep up with three blogs here; i’m voting for whatever in the rest”

This is probably the question we’ve been getting the most since the finalists were announced, so it’s time we explained why the voting is done in this manner.

The Black Weblog Awards recognizes bloggers out there that work hard doing something which they love, and they love sharing that with all of us. As evidenced by the increasing number of categories over the years, that knowledge spreads across many different realms of knowledge and experience, and we think it would do those blogs who are finalists a great disservice if they didn’t have an equal shot at everyone’s vote.

The opinions above are a bit discouraging; even if you only visit the finalist blogs (or blogs within that genre) this one time for the sake of voting, it would behoove you to broaden your horizons past just the blogs you’re familiar with and learn about some others. Who knows…you might stumble across one you like, and then you’ve got a new favorite blog to read!

We obviously can’t control user intent; we can just hope that those voting will be proactive and smart enough to realize the importance and intent of the Awards, and use that information to vote accordingly.

This question and post will also be added to the FAQ page.