Who stole the weblog awards 2004?

If you think about it, this behavior makes sense. Everybody wants to wins and a few will always do whatever it takes to win. That’s just how it works, its human nature.

Of course, cheating is bad… bla bla bla… but it’s really naïve to think that things would happen differently. It doesn’t matter where a vote happens, if you don’t prevent people from cheating, they will do it.

I will point my finger at the bogus vote counting system first. The Weblog Award site has taken steps to try to stem the cheating. A code has to manually be entered (this prevents the use if an automated script) but voters might still be able to vote once per 24h.

Given the number of “professional” blogs, it should also be recognized that beyond the fame, there are also big bucks that go along with the bragging rights to be the recipient of the Award. Fame turns into traffic that turns into ads clicks and sponsorship. And getting all that is not a bad thing, it is just business. It’s not any different than winning an award if they were a magazine or a TV show. I’m just pointing out that as the stakes are getting bigger (exposure, reputation, money), so is the temptation of cheating.

All this doesn’t mean that the Weblog Awards are doomed, but, to make it meaningful, the voting system has to be more secure than this. I guess that we will see in 2005.

“What about turning the whole thing into a programming contest? One has to be naive to think that people were not cheating *before* the Kos published some code samples.I guess we should do a best internet infrastructure category to decide who has the best voting farm”. (posted by myself yesterday in the comments)

[ "count every vote" discussion]

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