Kevin Aylward makes a surprising announcement. Guess I’ll have to settle for “nominee with a boatload of nominations“.
Update – The 2009 Weblog Awards are off
It is with a great deal of regret that I must inform everyone that The 2009 Weblog Awards are canceled.
Unfortunately the resources required to handle the load of voting (nearly 1,000,000 votes in 2008) could not be adequately provisioned. Even if the servers and bandwidth required appeared today it would be at least a few weeks before everything could be ready for voting.
This has always been a very, very labor intensive process, and in recent years with our success a very expensive competition to run. It’s hard to have unlimited resources provisioned for seven days of voting. In the past we’ve had to provision expensive servers for several months to prepare for the crush of voting.
We really tried to solve the resource problems with new ideas (such as cloud computing) this year, but ultimately we were not able to make things work to our satisfaction. I’m very proud of the voting platform we built for The Weblog Awards over the years, and the quality voting experience we’ve been able to deliver. The one thing I will not do is compromise that voting experience.
Rather than run a competition that had a high possibility of technically failing, the more prudent choice seemed to be regroup and consider our alternatives for hosting these awards going forward.
Thank you to those who have supported The Weblog Awards over the years, we appreciate your support, and our sorry we couldn’t make things work this year.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Well instead of voting perhaps we all should simply put $1 in the tip jar.
I’m not really very familiar with Pharyngula. Perhaps it is really “hate-filled.” I couldn’t say. But is the fact that it is “atheistic” very important?
Here’s a very unofficial count of the top five science blog sites based on number of nominations received:
1 — Climate Audit = 2,282
2 — WUWT = 1,734
3 — Denial Depot = 316
4 — Oil Drum = 193
5 — RC = 158
Note: Total includes both the nomination comment out of 142 comments as well as the number of “pluses” that were clicked on each nomination.
E.M.Smith (14:34:02) : I’ll put up a posting on my blog in a few hours so if folks want to thrash on this they can do so without cluttering up Anthony’s site with religious “stuff”.
Folks wishing to follow up on the “religion” vs “atheist” angle are welcome to take that discussion here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/darwin-expelled-and-religious-science/
Steamboat McGoo (13:23:56) :
“Darn, and after several of us took the time to get RealClimate nominated as the Best Religious Blog – and got it done! When the polls closed RC was a clear top contender in the finalist noms.
That would have been priceless….”
ROTFLMAO…. The tears are running down my face. I really needed that laugh.
OH REALLY … isn’t that special?
In most all cases now, they haven ‘t run ‘copper’ (T1s or 3) for over a decade; you get fiber to a CSU/DSU (Channel service unit/Data service unit) and are tariffed (charged) for a T1 or what ever it was your contract called for out the other side. From that point forward it’s just routing changes or keyboard changes in the ‘nailed up’ cross-connect connection.
.
.
_Jim (19:02:47) :
In most all cases now, they haven ‘t run ‘copper’ (T1s or 3) for over a decade; you get fiber to a CSU/DSU (Channel service unit/Data service unit) and are tariffed (charged) for a T1 or what ever it was your contract called for out the other side. From that point forward it’s just routing changes or keyboard changes in the ‘nailed up’ cross-connect connection.
I’ve configured CSU/DSU boxes. Nice if you have one, but lots of places are still wire, not fiber.
I’ve managed shops with big fiber infrastructure, and we had large blocks of copper still in the walls and the POP. Each layer just got added on top…
Yeah, for a ‘new build’ it’s all the new stuff ( I managed a 6000 person build out for a tech company about 6 years ago with multiple Cisco 6509s and 6513s with fiber cross connects in each building and a fibre MAN around the bay area to their other sites.) Nice stuff if you have it.
I’m just explaining how it might be a lead time issue, not saying it has to be. Especially as these folks are talking about a temp install and not talking big bucks established account.
(Built out one site with exactly the structure you are talking about. Fiber to a CSU / DSU with proportional billing and a ‘few hours’ SLA from the ISP. At the same site had a few dozen leased line T1s on copper… )
I’m old, but I’m not that out of contact…
Were I doing it, I’d host it at a COLO facility with a gazillion fiber feed and the ability to meter my share on an hour by hour basis. But we’re not talking about how I’d avoid the problems, we’re talking about how they might have ended up with the problems.
(I’d also run it on a virtual machine in a large virtual cluster environment with at least 2 ISPS and a big load balancer… if they had enough money 😉 and not buy any hardware at all.)
I disagree, Dr Doom. I think incompetence is more likely than a conspiracy to deny WUWT the crown. I’ve been working on stuff like this for a long time and one thing I’ve learned is that you should never underestimate incompetence. It’s fricking rampant.
Tom Fuller (11:35:38) :
“I will ask the editors at Examiner.com if they are willing to host the awards this year”.
Why not ask the editors of “Nature”?
it saves people the anguish of deciding between CA and WUWT. Though WUWT would have won. 🙂
Bah.
I’ll give you the results right here.
Best Global Warming Blog – WUWT
Best Conservative Blog – Ace of Spades
Best Liberal Blog – Google News
Blog most reeking of [snip] – realclimate.org
tada!
Tom in cold Florida (16:03:50) :
Well instead of voting perhaps we all should simply put $1 in the tip jar.
If everyone did that, Anthony would have enough to launch a class action lawsuit against the EPA.
Oh, great, so we’re (WUWT, TRF) the acting winners for another year. 😉
Dr DoOm (21:17:35) :
Yes it is pretty evident that the fix is in.
Good idea… If it can’t be done competently, it’s better left until it works… Otherwise people would be whinging…. Pity though. Hopefully it will return next year.
cbullitt (14:05:26) :
McGoo and I and our accomplices take full responsibility.
http://tinyurl.com/yakeulq
I’m not first at much in my life so fair suck of the lemon.
My nomination for RC went in on 10th November 11:40 AM
Robert A. November 10, 2009 6:17 PM a close second.
cbullitt November 11, 2009 9:53 AM you came in third.
Your web page came out on the November 11.
http://cbullitt.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/the-gospel-of-mcgoo-unto-the-agw-mongers-giveth-the-finger/
It was a case of spontaneous mischief.
Message to Kevin:
Sorry, but pulling a “tech overwhelmed me” just when your project is gaining major acceptance is – inexcusable. It’s a voting program kevin. Get a sponsor and lease the server space and sell advertising. You blew a lucrative opportunity!
I was nominated and in the Top Ten in 2008 for Best European Blog (non UK) and didn’t even know until a nasty competitor started posting mean comments on my blog, i.e. maybe five days before voting ended! I hustled as many votes as I could and ended up in second to last place, before the blog from Greenland.
The “winner” had a crew of cronies voting endlessly from different IP addresses and as much as admitted it on his blog. He continued to be base and petty even after his big victory, via commentary on his blog and mine.
(Oh, Look at That! I see my crass former competitor has found your site as well…Luboš Motl [see above] )
Though the nomination was a nice, unexpected ego boost I was left with a bad taste in my mouth afterwards, though no fault of Weblog Awards (it would have been nice to have been informed of my nomination by them, however.) I’ve ended up here on this blog a few times now via Red Ice Creations and I thoroughly enjoy your writing and the info you’re delivering. Nomination or no, KUDOS to you and keep up the Great Work!