We’re in the home stretch for popular voting for the 2016 Best Construction Blog competition. The popular vote ends at 11:50 p.m. on?March 31.
The number of votes cast for individual?blogs are an important, but not the final, explanation?of which blog will win the competition. It is important for the blog to get to the home page in the listings — that is the first seven blogs — because, while the individual judges can consider all the blogs, most of the judges will narrow their short list to the top page.
Then other factors are taken into consideration, including the blog’s design and content and, as a possible third consideration, the vote quality. For example, a very large company can induce many suppliers and employees to vote for it — while as smaller business may attract strong support from a diversity of clients.
In earlier years, I tried controls to manage this vote quality aspect, but failed, by setting a rule that only one vote would be allowed from any IP address. This had the effect of shutting out larger businesses with multiple employees working at single locations and biased the results in favor of smaller one-person shops with wide social and contact networks. (Is it fair to deny larger businesses access to the competition?)
The other solution, completely eliminating the popular vote and relying solely on judging, doesn’t seem right to me either. “Get out the vote” campaigns undoubtedly indicate that the organization submitting the blog cares about its audience and has an interest in its success. The diversity and resourcefulness in the vote-getting process certainly helps to attract attention and relevance.
The result we have is a compromise. You need enough popular vote to be taken seriously, but you won’t win just because of it.
If you wish to vote, please feel free to cast your ballot now and of course you can share the voting opportunity with friends, colleagues and family members. You can vote for as many blogs as you wish in one ballot, but you won’t be able to vote again. You can monitor the results real-time here.
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