Vote for THE FILIPINO SCRIBE at the 2015 Philippine Blogging Awards!
The Filipino Scribe is currently nominated in the 2015 Philippine Blogging Awards (#BloggysPH) under the news and events category together with 60 other blogs. Open nominations began last September 1 while blogs which qualified for the voting stage were announced last October 5.
To vote for The Filipino Scribe, please go to http://bloggys.ph/section-2/and look for FilipinoScribe.com somewhere in the middle of the list. After checking the box on the left side, please proceed to the bottom of the page and register your name and email or vote via your Facebook account. Online voting will run until October 31.
According to the organizers, they received a total of 2,693 nominations from which 1,026 eventually made it through the voting stage. A panel of judges which includes Rappler.com chief executive Maria Ressa, Philippine Daily Inquirer editor-in-chief John Nery, blogging pioneer Janette Toral, and 12 will determine the finalists and winners for each of the 17 categories. Meanwhile, the blogs that will get the most number of online votes in each category will get the People’s Choice Award.
Commentary on the competition:
Prior to #BloggysPH, it’s been four years since a competition was held to recognize Filipino bloggers from every niche. As noted two years ago, organizing a competition is not easy especially considering the need to gather sponsors for cash prizes and to fund the contest in general. For that, the individuals who are behind this effort must be commended.
Nevertheless, let me use this opportunity to point out two critiques about the conduct of this contest. While there is nothing wrong with open nominations, I hope the nominees were at least filtered first before the online voting. For example, among the 61 nominees in the news and events category are entries that should be downright disqualified based on contest rules:
- Blogs owned and written by any member, officer, judge, volunteer or partner of BLOGGYS 2015; and their relatives up to the first degree of consanguinity.
- Blogs that are owned by popular celebrities and media personalities.
If the website is obviously disqualified, what’s the point of including them in the voting stage? Another concern is the fact that there’s no running total provided even for those who’ve already voted. I hope they’ll be more transparent in this regard.
I’ve already relayed these concerns to the organizers last week although I’m yet to see any improvements. That said, I am fervently hoping to make it to the finals at the very least. 🙂
Please “like” the Facebook page of “The Filipino Scribe”!
About Author
Brother Ely Soriano is the True Preacher. Thanks be to God.