I got this welcome comment from one of the judges.  I put it up as a separate post because I think it deserves to be highlighted and my spammator killed it…

It comes from the author of 

 http://thefamilyvoyage.blogspot.com/

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My blog was one of the 5 shortlisted in the Specialist category. I was also a judge.


As a judge I noted the use of the words \"actively blogging\" in the period to mean that the blogs had to be posted to regularly from July to December.

As I mentioned in a <a href=\"http://thefamilyvoyage.blogspot.com/2009/02/irish-blog-awards-great-times-but-how.html\">post I wrote earlier today</a>, I judged the blogs using that interpretation and severly marked down blogs which were not active from July to December.

I also noted my reasons for the lower marks in the space left on the judging sheet, noting that the relevant blogs, (for example) \"didn\’t start until October\" etc.

If the rules were supposed to be that the blogger needed only to post at any point in that period, then I have discriminated against some bloggers and may have prevented other worthy winners from going forward.

I think the rules must be clarified before next year.

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If you read the comments that follow this piece, you’ll find grannymar another judge who interpreted the rules in the same way.

Here is another judge’s view :

eddie said…I don’t know why some people signed up to judge in the first place. I did it to have an excuse to do some good reading, which is what I did for most of last weekend, and I enjoyed it. I thought it only fair to have a good read of the posts and read as far back to June on most of the ones I was rating. I know for a fact that four of the judges who looked at my own site didn’t read a single post but just looked at the homepage. There seems to be a lot of inconsistency in the quality of the actual judging

And another…

Sharon said…

… Like you I wanted to be a judge to discover good blogs and also to help out, to be part of the event and to pay back a bit for the wee boost I’d enjoyed when I won last year. I think it’s hard to know how much the other judges looked at on each blog…I know I can’t tell how much of mine any of them read but I trust that they all did a good job.