The Plan of Action

Well, now that we've established that the real JIBs won't run until around May, and have decided to devote this month to highlighting Jblogosphere in general... we need to start working on a plan of action for the future. Some ideas being discussed thus far: 1) Hosting Some of us have suggested that the Jblogosphere blog would be a good place to host the awards for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's a blog devoted specifically to the Jblogosphere and highlighting Jewish blogs. Secondly, it's run by a number of people (as you can see in the sidebar), rather than just one person. Think about it as having a panel of jury to discuss the outcome, rather than having one judge making all the decisions. Also, the hosts of the blog have their own separate blogs and interests, so Jblogosphere IS really the place for all J-blogs and not for any individual agendas. I'm not exactly sure how that would work in terms of neutrality - does that mean that we would merely abstain from the nomination process and the blog would not be involved in the nominations either, or would that further mean that our individual blogs wouldn't be eligible either? In any case, I think the idea has merit. However, other suggestions are welcome! 2) Organizers Well, I think all of us involved in running this blog would probably contribute in some way, but I think there's always room for other people to get involved. Perhaps we could bring in more left-wing bloggers on the "team" to make the teamwork a bit more diverse. After all, if we want to highlight Jblogs, promoting unity among Jblogs should be one of our absolute priorities. I really think that it would be more fun for more people to get involved, since the whole point is forming a community, and in the past, the competition element seemed to overshadow the "working together" part o of it. 3) Format As Dave pointed out, the People's Choice Jblog awards digressed from the original format of JIBs. Which means that whoever is working on JIBs in the future would probably preserve the original format. Getting a large newspaper to help promote and advertise the awards, as was done in the past, would be incredibly helpful as well. 4) Categories In the past, JIBs had a large number of categories... and nevertheless received a fair amount of criticism from various bloggers who felt left out. Well, there've been several propositions to help deal with the issue. a) create separate categories for mega blogs b) create numerous separate categories for smaller/lower-ranked/newer blogs, the way it was done in The Weblog Awards (if you recall, they had a number of categories, choosing the best blog of each ecosystem level). c) create separate categories for right and left-wing blogs (or at least for the political ones) d) perhaps include more categories - Jewish/Israeli Blawgs? More miscellaneous categories? Separate Current Events from Punditry? Different types of advocacy blogs? 5) Nominations The goal would be to highlight the best of Jblogosphere, so diversity would be encouraged rather than discouraged. Just as in the past, the nominations and voting would be open to everyone, so that as many Jblogs as possibly could be reached, at least potentially. 6) Advertizing Guys, that's what we really need to work on. This time around, part of the reason things didn't work out was because no one really knew about what was happening, no one was advertising, and a limited number of people was nominating and voting. I really hope that'll change in the future. I know some of you don't like the competition element of it, but come on, this is really more for fun than anything else. It's not like we're earning huge prizes or eternal fame here. The whole point is to highlight good blogs, and encourage merit and Jblogosphere in general. 7) Criticism We've discussed the tension between being open to feedback and criticism from bloggers and the flame wars, which have erupted in the past because of a few individuals, who, um, offered less than constructive criticism. Well, trolls are just a part of life. Come on, we're way more mature than that, or at least, more than the trolls. If they want to be mean, that's their problem. We're here to have fun. Period. I'm sure I'm leaving a lot of stuff out, so I hope to hear more ideas and suggestions from all of you. I'm hoping that we'll have learned from past mistakes, and the spirit of good sportsmanship and fun will be preserved.