I must have a guilty conscience or something. I checked the Homeschool Blog Awards site thinking that perhaps congratulating the winners would be a nice quick post if they had been announced. There I found out there had been some seriously suspicious looking voting.
After reading that, I instantly wanted to confess. Confess what, I don’t know. I voted. My husband voted…ok, so I voted in his absence…and I let my daughter vote from the library. And if my friends were cheating on my behalf they did a pretty lousy job of it since I came in third.
When I talked about getting ACORN involved, I was seriously just joking. Maybe I’m just feeling guilty for telling bad jokes.
You’d think…well, once there are prizes and competition involved, I guess you should expect that human nature would take over and mess up the whole system. Even if there is something a tad weird about cheating in order to win a stack of Christian prizes. But then there is that whole draw of anonymity…and a lot of us would do a lot that we wouldn’t even dare speak of if we knew there were little chance of getting caught.
I thought they had rules for who could vote, such as limiting it to one vote from each family member.
I have never cheated when I was involved in the past, doing one vote from me and one vote from DH.
This year I didn’t get enough nominations to qualify.
I did vote for you.
I’m feeling from the blog awards that they are like little cliques. I don’t blog to be a part of a clique. I don’t tailor what I say to make a certain blog clique like me. That makes me stand apart. I blog to write and communicate but I don’t spend all day visiting lots of other blogs. If I did that I’d not have time to actually keep my own blog.
Your blog is great even if you did come in third place.
People are so funny about these awards. I saw several people *begging* to be nominated on one list and making “I’ll vote for you if you vote for me” deals with each other. I only voted for a few blogs I genuinely thought represented the best–and yours was one of them!
Oh yeah, you are such a cheater, you!! Guilty conscience. Ha!
We didn’t get to vote our five votes either.
Our library wouldn’t even allow more than 1 vote. Chincey network that they have in our podunk little town. :LOL:
There is a comment on HSBA also about the large families that only get 5 votes per family, which I think is unfair, but what can you do? We are all human, aren’t we?
(((HUGS)))
I know. You feel guilty because you knew how to cheat.
But even knowing how to beat the system, doesn’t negate a conscience. At least, I hope not. It is weird to cheat to win a blog button and Christian curriculum.
And what a pain for HSBAs. Hope they can get all the hanging chads counted.
I should figure out how to cheat to get nominated!
You may be third place over at Homeschool Blog Awards, Dana, but you’re first with us!
I was, frankly, shocked that you were in third place. I fully expected you to win. Maybe you still will.=)
We have a family of nine plus a son-in-law who uses our computer, and we had four computers up last week (one has since broken), and only one of us was able to vote. Once one of us voted any given category, nobody else here could.
I did think about going to the library, but I felt guilty even doing that, so I didn’t. I am guessing those who cheated are not firstborn children.
I totally would have cheated. Good thing I wasn’t nominated. Of course I havent’t got a clue what I would have done with most of the prizes. I couldn’t even use them for blog giveaways as they seem to be mostly for evangelical protestants. I think I have two readers who fit that bill.
I remember when the same thing happened in the Wizbang awards a couple of years ago. It is a disappointment for those that are involved and trying to do things fairly and with good cheer. The Awards are a great way to spotlight dedicated bloggers and have some fun; winning is a bonus but cheating steals from everyone involved.
Hi
I just wanted to let you know that I have nominated your blog for an award.
Spunky, I remember that. And it has to be a bit embarrassing for the winners who obviously have very dedicated friends and readers but may not have wanted to get dragged into something like that!
And thank you all! I wasn’t surprised to come in second or third after looking at the other blogs in the running. I like my blog and I’m happy with my traffic, but it is by no means the highest trafficked blog in the homeschool world.
Dawn, I definitely see you cheating your way to the top and then wondering what on earth to do with the consequences.
I’m not even sure what I would do with all the prizes, but then I never got around to claiming most of them last year. I just think it is a sort of fun thing to participate in.
Hi Dana. Did you give a website called NetRightNation permission to post your work? If you look here you will see several of your posts. They have taken one of my posts from my website without my permission and without attribution. I’m letting everyone I “know” hear about this since I’m probably not the only one.
Cheating is such a harsh word. The rules are 5 votes per network and the majority of the “cheating” was done with cell phone calls on the same device. Not sure if some of these enthusiastic voters even knew the rules – or read the blogs they were voting for. Maybe they were just excited family members?
I honestly doubt that anyone in the awards as a finalist was soliciting cheating votes.
Next year we’ll be making some changes to keep things in the “clear”. No more results of polls until the voting is over – which is great news for underdogs everywhere… cuz no one will know who is winning until the end (and less temptation to call everyone you have ever met asking them to vote for you if you don’t know you are only 3 votes from winning)… and registration for voters (painless name, email, ip, cookie tracking). It may not stop every single “extra” vote – but I’m sure we will have a lot less than this year.
No matter who wins, I’m just glad for the awards so I can fill up my blogrolls and get to know new bloggers. There’s so much great stuff out there in blogland to read – and so many cool bloggers to meet (had brunch with three of them today).
By the way… Our family of 4 was only able to get off 3 votes this year, but all 3 went to you for politics/opinion!
Your tops in my book.
How funny. I just found one of MY posts on NetRightNation. Uh, what’s up with that?? LOL
Guess someone thought you were conservative.
But they have the issue fixed now, so far as I can tell, and have the links in place. The editor answered my email pretty quickly and explained it was just a mistake and they were correcting it.
Don’t know why they included your blog, however.