Earlier this year, Eric over at Evangelical Underground presented the 1st Annual Evangelical Blog Awards. He gave recognition to some of the leading sites in the Christian blogosphere. Sadly, he did not recognize those bloggers who deserve demerit. That is what I intend to do today through the 1st Annual Christian Blogosphere Awards of Demerit. You can find the list of awards and winners right here, right now.
RSS Aggravation
This is awarded to the blogger who most often edits his or her posts, causing people with RSS Readers to scream in frustration at being notified multiple times about the same post.
And the winner is! Phil Johnson, the Pyromaniac. His obsession with detail may make him a fantastic book editor, but it is not so wonderful in blogging. Hey Phil! How about proofreading before you post an article? We don’t all want to be notified every time a comma becomes a semicolon!
Honorable mentions in this category go to:
- Amy of Amy’s Humble Musings who recently edited a post 11 times, possibly the record for a single post. In her defense, the post was announcing some pretty special news and she may have been a bit giddy. I’m willing to forgive her if you are.
- Centurion who likes to tamper with posts two or three days after they are first written.
Most In Need of a Template Change
This is awarded to the blogger who is most in need of a template change. This year’s award go to:
James White and his crew at Alpha & Omega Ministries. I am thankful that they fixed the most pressing of the Firefox problems (there are a few remaining!) and actually added some margins to the permalink pages, I think it’s time to upgrade. How many copies of Scripture Alone (great book, by the way) do we need to buy to convince you to find a new template?
Honorable mention goes to the Blogger or WordPress users who have the same template as any of 250,000 other bloggers (you know who you are). A quick Google search will turn up hundreds of free templates available to you. Why not try something new?
Blogroll Bloat
This is awarded to the blogger with the most bloated blogroll. These people do not seem to realize that each link they add to their blogroll decreases the value of every other link. While linking to some other blogs is expected and perhaps even necessary, blogrolling is a bit like drinking: it’s important to know when to draw the line.
This award goes to Dory at Wittenberg Gate. She has a whole lot of linking going on. I’m guessing that if she actually read even a tenth of those blogs she wouldn’t have time to do much else.
Honorable mentions go to the seperated-at-birth-brothers Jollyblogger and Adrian Warnock both of whom must feel obligated to post the full list of users associated with the aggregators they manage.
Worst Use of A Foreign Language
Using foreign languages in the title of a site is all the rage in the blogosphere. This award is given to the blogger who displays the worst use of foreign language.
And the winner is Schadenfreude. Because of people can’t pronounce it and can’t spell it, they can’t visit it.
Honorable mention goes to Echo Zoe. The name necessitates the use of special characters which appear on blogrolls as this gibberish – Îχω ζωη. Okay, then.
Design Discontentment
This is awarded to the blogger who shows the greatest discontent with the current state of his site’s template, no matter what the current state may be.
And the winner is…Tim Irvin of The Irvins. Tim constantly fiddles with his design (though usually for the better) and as this is being awarded, is transitioning from WordPress to Movabletype and starting with a whole new template. Again.
Honorable mention goes to What Is This. James is a web designer and so I feel his pain. But sooner or later you’ve got to just let it rest! I can’t think of any of his templates that have been bad, yet he rolls out a new design every couple of months.
Comment Ratio
This is awarded to the blog with the lowest ratio of comments to posts. It seems we have a tie in this category. This years co-winners are:
Boar’s Head Tavern and Alpha & Omega which each average precisely 0 comments per post. Coincidence? I think not!
Special Achievement in Demerit
This award goes to a blogger who shows special achievement in the blogosphere.
This year’s award goes to Hugh Hewitt, who, despite writing a book about the subject, does not offer many of the staples of effective blogging. His site has no RSS feed and features archives that are nearly impossible to negotiate. And yet he managed to figure out how to add a tip jar. Come on, Hugh, email me and I’ll get you all fixed up! It’s time to walk the talk here and get back on the cutting edge. How many copies of Blog do we need to…ah, never mind.
And that wraps up this year’s Christian Blogosphere Awards of Demerit. I hope you’ll join us again next year, when we once again poke fun at the best and worst of Christian blogging.
(Please take these awards in the spirit they are intended – a spirit of humor and deliberate exaggeration. It’s supposed to be funny. I take full responsibility for any lack of humor.)
