Blogger Award (why?) and Professionalism (Eye of the Beholder)
Okay, I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and was thinking that I didn’t want to rock the boat, but a couple things I’ve seen recently just kind of sent me over the edge. It’s not like me to NOT speak my mind either, so at the risk of pissing people off, here we go.
First off, I think a single Best Blogger award is well intentioned but too simplistic idea. Jess knows I love her to death, so this is not a dig at her. I just think trying to distill down our community into one best blogger is pretty futile. To me, there is no Domino blogger that really rises that far above the crowd. Maybe Ed, or Mary Beth or Volker. And of course, Volker would argue (correctly) that he isn’t a Domino blogger. Others might argue that Volker’s posts are too inflammatory against Lotus. To me, I disagree. He is a great counter-balance to all the rah rah’s out there. You need both, and our community has both.
The reason I think this is one of the best blogging communities in the tech world is because of the combination of all of our voices. There is not a day goes by that I don’t find a valuable post in my feed reader. Every single day someone’s voice rises above the din and gives me some really killer info, makes me laugh, or solves a problem. I can’t say that about my other feed groups.
So to me, if you have to pick out the absolute best Domino blogger, It’s the community as a whole. Cheezy I know, but I truly feel that way.
Now I think if you broke out the Domino blogger awards into many categories, it makes a lot more sense:
- Favorite end-user tip
- Favorite administration post
- Favorite development post
- Favorite piece of code
- Favorite entertaining post
- Favorite companion product post
- Favorite Lotus informational post
- Favorite thread
etc. etc. You could include several different favorite blogs in there as well, and maybe an overall favorite blog makes sense at that point. I kind of like the word Favorite rather than Best too. Lastly, Chris put out the following:
“In my own mind, the criteria should include professionalism which absolutely means that profanity or other questionable content should never be included.”
Really? I know you said “In my mind” but let me say that I completely disagree with you as I always have on this issue. This is my personal blog, and quite frankly, if I want to include profanity or risque content I will. Should that completely render everything else I do moot? Maybe to a couple goody-two shoes, and that’s fine. But to disqualify me simply on those grounds is ludicrous.
In fact, you nominated Chris Linfoot (well deserved I might add) and today he points out that expertsexchange.com translates to Expert Sex Change. He emphasizes sexchange.com over and over (and in bold nonetheless). I think it’s hilarious myself, and made me pay more attention to the posting. But, would THAT be “questionable content?” Limiting nominees due to the most conversative sensibilities is well, simply, fucked.