Month: October 2003

Preliminary results for the Weblog Showcase have Irreconcilable Musings in a strong lead with the post Defending the Blogosphere Front in the War on Terrorism. Musings has 57 votes as compared to the nearest competitor, liberal favorite Hell for Halliburton, which trails at 42 links for the post Halliburton Again – and again – and again.
Contestants and other interested parties have until 5pm today to point out any perceived, alleged, or just plain wished-for anomolies in the voting, after which time I will certify the results. Press ‘More’ below for the full listing at this time.
In the Alliance contest for Showcase sponsorship, however, there seems to be no point in waiting. The League of Liberals comes roaring out of the gate in their first official week in the contest to deliver a staggering 100% (yes, 100%) participation rate among their 27 members. Full results are:
League of Liberals: 27 of 27 = 100.0 % participation
Blogger Alliance: 40 of 89 = 44.9 % participation
Axis of Naughty: 6 of 24 = 25.0 % participation
I am therefore declaring the League the winners for this week effective immediately, and their logo now hangs in the place of honor atop the Showcase. Congratulations to the League for their victory!

Continue reading “Showcase Results: Morning Edition”

If you are a member of one of the three major Alliances participating in the Weblog Showcase and are trying to keep an accurate blogroll of your fellow members, I’ve got a feature for you.
If you paste the Javascript code below corresponding to your alliance into your weblog template, it will automatically retrieve the current listing of your alliance’s membership in a simply formatted link list.
These blogrolls should be quite up-to-date, because just yesterday, I provided the leaders of each alliance with an interface to update their memberships directly, without having to wait on me to make changes for them.
As with everything around here, this is a work in progress, and feedback / suggestions are most welcome.
Click ‘More’ below to get the code…
-NZB

Continue reading “Alliance Blogrolls Now Available”

There has been a bit of a debate for some time as to whether individual bloggers should be able to cast more than one vote for participants in the Weblog Showcase.
Up until now, I’ve defaulted to saying that yes, multiple votes can be cast, as long as there is no obvious intent for abuse. The theory was that if a blogger really does mention the candidate post two or three times on their blog, then it means they feel stronger about the merit of the post than another blogger who only provides a single token link.
Well guess what: y’all have now convinced me otherwise, given today’s Showcase rankings:
Irreconcilable Musings: 210 votes
Hell for Halliburton: 73 votes
If it isn’t obvious, the vast majority of those votes were duplicates cast by a handful of bloggers. So, I’ve decided to implement filtering so that each blog can only have one vote per candidate count. Folks are free to link to the candidates as much as they want, of course, but it won’t change the vote counts for the Showcase. The code is already implemented and the current stats now reflect this change. (And to be clear, an individual blogger may still cast votes for multiple different candidate blogs — this is still not just permitted, but encouraged.)
Normally I don’t change the contest rules mid-week, but this was ridiculous, so everyone can feel free to get annoyed at me if they like.
And by the way: yo, Axis and Alliance members! The League of Liberals is kicking your conservative butts.

Please welcome the of Liberals to the Showcase sponsorship contest.
Let the games begin!
-NZB

Sorry for the delay in certification, but I heard no complaints this week, so congratulations to manis2society at Spy Game: he (she?) is our winner for the post Novak Knew Better Than to Burn Valerie Plame.
And indeed, the Blogger Alliance retains the sponsorship title with 31.4 % participation as compared to the Axis of Naughty‘s 25%.
I unfortunately neglected to save off the link counts last night (long day), so these are not truly accurate (they are from this morning and things have changed), but to at least have some record, here’s a rough take on the full results:
The Spy Game: NOVAK KNEW BETTER THAN TO BURN VALERIE PLAME
( 50 links)
Hypocrisy & Hypotheses: Same Thing Every Year…
( 29 links)
She Who Will Be Obeyed: LIfe, the Universe, and Everything…
( 25 links)
Vox Popoli: I am the Penguin
( 13 links)
WiredOpinion – Jonathan’s Journal: Foreign Born Presidents?
( 12 links)
Misohoni: Misohoni – Diary of a Web Designer in Hong Kong
( 9 links)
mjxm: what exactly is annoying?
( 9 links)
Information Pollution: Inspiration
( 4 links)
Theognome’s Thoughts: What’s Cookin’
( 4 links)
Notes to Myself…: Father Joe’s Corner…
( 3 links)
Barnga!: More Republican infighting
( 3 links)
Dissento\’s (Culture) War Journal: Bush Pays Respect to \’Sacrifices\’ in Iraq, Golfs Two Under Par
( 2 links)

It’s a tight race this week, folks, so check these results carefully! As is now practice, I’ll accept feedback until 5pm PST today, after which the final results will be declared certified.
Spy Game holds a narrow lead with the post Novak Knew Better Than to Burn Valerie Plame. While on the weblog alliances side, the Blogger Alliance leads (as usual) with 31.4 % participation as compared to the Axis of Naughty‘s 25%.
But the Alliance shouldn’t feel too comfortable: I am currently in discussions to bring a new competitor into the Showcase sponsorship contest, effective this week: The League of Liberals ! Will the upstart lefties be able to unseat the incumbent Alliance? Or will their entry awaken the slumbering Axis?
Stay tuned this week!

With the great help of Lewis at Haired Boy, a feature I’ve long considered is finally available: the ability for bloggers to show their current Ecosystem status on their very own web pages.
If you are interested, go to the Ecosystem details page for your weblog, and you’ll find a small snippet of Javascript code to cut-and-paste into your blog. When you do, you’ll get a box that looks something like this:

The text is deliberately not formatted so that you can make it blend in with (or stand out from) your own weblog design as you wish. (The entire thing is surrounded by a DIV tag labeled Ecosystem, so you can use that as you will).
This is a first version of the feature; I’d welcome suggestions / requests for future enhancements. And many thanks to Lewis for coding the tough parts — all of it, really — for me!

Like many, I’ve been getting hit by comment spam lately. Thankfully, whatever odd algorithim or method the spammers use has generally targeted posts so old that most readers here may never have even noticed.
That said, it’s annoying, and I’ve gone ahead and installed Jay Allen’s plugin. Thus far, it seems to be functioning quite well, but if you have problems posting a comment (and you are not trying to sell Viagra), drop me an email.
Many thanks to Jay for his major contribution to the community!

Congratulations to Madfish Willie’s Cyber Saloon for winning last week’s New Weblog Showcase with the post Hangover – Part I.
In our weekly Alliance contest, the Blogger Alliance remains triumphant, with 23 of 83 members voting (27.7 % participation), defeating the Axis of Naughty once again, which had only 4 of 24 members voting (16.7 % participation).
Full results are as follows:
Madfish Willie’s Cyber Saloon: Hangover – Part I
( 24 links)
Staunch Moderate: Quit your preachin\’
( 9 links)
Ain’t Done It!: I Love This State
( 8 links)
The Kingdom of the Geeks: News from Baghdad
( 7 links)
The Cult Of Random: When Good Tacos Go Bad
( 7 links)
Say Anything: Sunday Night Sensibilities
( 6 links)
WiredOpinion: Abolition of the Death Penalty
( 5 links)
Georgie W Bush’s blog: Graham Out
( 4 links)
Five Wasps: look away
( 4 links)
CurryBlog: The Echo Bubble
( 3 links)
The Meandering Mind of a Seminarian: Various Meanderings…
( 3 links)
Mambrino’s Helmet: Words are not enough
( 3 links)
ms. frizzle: Monday, Sept. 08, 2003
( 0 links)

Preliminary Showcase results are:
For contestants:
Willie’s Cyber Saloon leads with 24 votes for the post Hangover – Part I
For Alliances:
Blogger Alliance: 23 of 83 = 27.7 % participation
Axis of Naughty: 4 of 24 = 16.7 % participation
As is now becoming custom, I’ll take feedback on any perceived voting anomolies until 5pm today, at which time the final vote tally will be certified. (Hey: ever notice how much faster I am at certifying my votes than, say, certain large Pacific coast states?)

Based on CNN’s reporting on the 2002 governor’s election, and on their current count of the recall (with 96 % of precincts reporting), Arnold has achieved one more major milestone: he received more actual votes than Gray Davis in 2002:
2003: 3,459,933
Davis 2002: 3,127,588
Schwarzenegger is just shy of a true majority (with 48 %), but that’s still fairly impressive given the massive field he was up against. And by the way: it’s the same percentage Davis was elected with in 2002…

Dan Weintraub (and his editor) have genuinely insightful thought on Schwarzenegger’s recent “groping” issues:
For all the venom hurled the LA Times