Hey, Blogging Friends, I’d like to do some straightforward talking about blog awards. During my time at WordPress, I have been the happy recipient of a number of awards and have gladly passed them on to other very worthy bloggers. And just this past week two other blogging friends graciously nominated me for new awards:
Gerry at http://cobbies69.wordpress.com/ and
LubbyGirl at http://remissionary.wordpress.com/.
I had just finished the very involved tasks of following the rules of accepting an award two weeks prior to that, and I simply did not have the time — with all my other online responsibilities — to accept and follow all of the rules accompanying those two new ones. I felt bad, but — you know what — the truth is that I should not have to feel bad, because the problem here is not of my making.
I’ve found that several of my blogging friends are in the same situation. And most of those people have felt terribly frustrated because they do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings by turning down the award or by explaining their own feelings. A few have already determined to just turn down any awards at all because they know they cannot deal with all the work involved. So I’ve decided that it’s time we see these facts in black and white here on our WordPress platform.
It’s not that we are not honored to be considered so kindly by our peers. It’s just that there is an inordinate amount of work involved in acceptance rules: answering all the questions, determining who should be a new recipient, visiting every one of their blogs to scour them carefully to make sure they do not already have that award, notifying them, and then making sure to put a link to everyone’s site on our own. It is not that those bloggers are not worth that effort. That is not the case. The point is, quite frankly, that the awards themselves are not worth all that effort. And here’s why I feel that way.
While I understand that the idea of passing on the awards and posting the links is based on the attempt to help us get to know more bloggers and interact with them, the truth is that if any person is worthy of an award — for any reason — then he is worthy of receiving that award without having to perform any other tasks in order to accept it. He either earned the award or he did not. Period. And there are many other ways to encourage bloggers to interact with new bloggers. Some of us have simply posted lists of several blogs that we find worthy of attention and encouraged others to visit them. Or we re-blog articles from other sites. That accomplishes the same purpose without causing the bloggers themselves to have to “work” for the honor we’ve paid them. They have already done that.
I’m never sure who originated these awards. And everyone who receives an award feels obligated to keep obeying every rule, so the people we have received awards from in the past year probably have nothing at all to do with making those rules. It’s worth stating again that I feel sure that the original awarders had in mind trying to get more interaction among folks in the blogging family. But people who become very popular in that family sometimes find themselves with so many awards that they have no time for their own blogging responsibilities because of having to do all the work involved in accepting those awards. Well, I think it’s time we admitted that this situation is based on faulty reasoning and needs to be changed.
So — hoping that all of you can understand my heart in this matter — I am announcing that, as of today, I am not going to be accepting any more awards that require me to comply with a list of rules and extra work in order to receive them. The problem has to stop somewhere, and for me it stops here. However, I fully intend to continue promoting blogs that I find a blessing and encouraging others to visit them. And, frankly, I have in mind a couple of awards that I want to grant to others in the future, but they will be in honor of the fine work they are already doing — without requiring anything else of them.
Please know that I am truly grateful to all of you who have considered me worthy of an award. And please be assured that, if I nominated you for awards, it was because I genuinely believed you deserved them. However, I will not be accepting or passing on any future award unless it is one that has no strings attached.
Please feel free to comment in agreement or disagreement and let others know how you feel on the subject.
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I don’t have snow!!! And I don’t understand. I have the box checked on my settings. I even unchecked it and re-checked it, then saved the settings again — just to make sure. I have snow on my other blogs, but not on my main one — this one. Two of my readers tell me they can see it snowing on this site, but I still can’t see any snow. I even checked the site in a different browser, and that made no difference. Is anyone else out there having trouble seeing your snow?????
The Happy Wordcrafter 