AsiaPundit is pleased to announce the commencement of the new round of Asia Blog Awards. The awards are based on the Japanese financial year, which ends on March 31, and nominations are now open for the April 1 - June 30 period, full-year awards are to be based on the quarterly contests.Details are below, nominations for the categories can be made on the individual pages until the end of June 16 ~ Samoan time.
(The Indonesia page is here.)
Awards are at present limited to English-language or dual-language sites.
Winners will be judged in equal parts on: (a) votes, (b) Technorati ranking and (c) judges' selection.
While judges will naturally have biases, they will hopefully offset imbalances in other areas, such as inevitable cheating in the voting and inflationary blogroll alliances in the Technorati ranks.
The names or sites of the judges will be public.
Judges will be ineligible for nomination. As the awards largely intend on providing exposure to lesser-known sites of merit, we are hopeful that authors of 'A-list' sites that tend to dominate such contests will disqualify themselves by being judges.
The contest has been endorsed by previous ABA host Simon who is also serving as a judge, thereby disqualifying Simon World.
Traffic - the most telling and accurate measure of a site's popularity - may be a consideration in future awards. However, at present, there is no clear or universal way to accurately measure and contrast traffic. This is all imperfect and will be tweaked in future events ~ with transparency, of course.
Most importantly, this is intended to be fun.
Jakartass likes fun and supports the extention of free expression, as you may have noticed. As yet, it appears that not one English language blog from Indonesia has been nominated, yet compared to a year ago we do have a vibrant blogosphere .
If we don't want our voices to be drowned out by the blinkered and bigoted groups which plague Indonesian society, then we must 'do our bit' to promote ourselves. If a beauty contest such as the Asia Blog Awards can help, then let's do it by voting.
I've got the ball rolling, by submitting my blogroll, as follows:
Yosef Ardi
A. Fatih Syuhud
Paras Indonesia
Indonesia Anonymus
The Fool in Bandung
(I've left out the Guvnor, Enda Nasution, as his blog is mainly in Indonesian. Respect, sir.)
Expat Blogs
Indcoup
Java Jive (Possibly as a photo blog?)
Jakarta Kid
Greenstump
There are many more worthy of inclusion, but please note that nominations close next Friday, coincidentally the day of the Jakarta BlogFest.
Postscript 10pm
I've agreed to be a judge, thus reducing the number of possible nominees by one ~ i.e. Jakartass is ineligible for an award but I still get kudos. And if your blog wins, then you too can be on the "A-list" and be a judge next time.
Buying me a beer in Jalan Jaksa next Friday at the BlogFest won't be construed as bribery, but may well affect my judgement. See you there?
