Rules

• The Black Weblog Awards are for weblogs authored by Black people. If you’ve got a question on what a Black weblog is, feel free to browse the winners from past years.
• Those nominating a blog must have a valid e-mail address for submitting. When you go through the nomination process, you will have the option to subscribe to the Black Weblog Awards Newsletter. Please read our privacy policy if there are any concerns. Your information will not be used in any other way than for our e-mail newsletter. Ballots submitted with no name or e-mail address will be deleted in our vote audit, and you may only submit one ballot per IP address.
• Please do not submit nominations through our contact form or through any of our social network profiles. Any nominations received through these means will not count towards nominations or finalist vote counts, even during the times the Awards are not active.
• Only one nomination form and one finalist voting form may be submitted per person, with the exception of entries for Best Microblog and Best Blog Post Series. Bloggers can nominate their blog in multiple categories, but blogs which are nominated in every category will be flagged as ineligible.
• Nominations which do not fit into their nominated categories or are not relevant within their category will be removed.
• We reserve the right to disqualify any nominees, finalists, or winners that violate any of the Black Weblog Awards rules, invade privacy, make specific threats of violence, spam others, or compromise the integrity of the awards. All decisions relating to nominations and vote counts are final and made at our discretion.
• Blogs with “hate” language or other offensive content are not eligible.
• The Black Weblog Awards does not accept payment or gifts for nominations or finalists.
• Several categories have specific rules:
  • Aaron Hawkins Award: This award is appointed by the Black Weblog Awards judging panel, and can only be won once per year.
  • Best Blog Design: No stock CMS templates; custom designs only. Heavily customized stock CMS templates are allowed. As part of our vote audit, we do check the source code on blogs for authenticity.
  • Best Group Blog:  Posts must indicate who the author is for each post; it cannot be one person blogging as different people/personalities for judging purposes.
  • Best LGBT Blog: Pornographic blogs or blogs containing pornographic material are not eligible.
  • Best Microblog: Twitter profiles must be available for public view (no private/locked profiles). If you change your Twitter user name during the nomination or finalist voting process, any votes you received under your old user name won’t carry over.
  • Best Teen Blog: The age of the author must be easily identifiable.
  • Best Video Blog Series: Nominated blogs must contain original video content by the author, not music videos of popular music artists.  YouTube profiles may be submitted in lieu of a separate website for the video blog series.
  • Best Writing in a Blog: This category is judged on the overall posts of the blog, not a single entry.
• Blogs which have won in a particular category over multiple years a maximum of three times are no longer eligible to win in that particular category. This includes categories which have changed names or spun off into other categories. Click here for more information.