UPDATE: Disregard this post as the BABA awards turned out to be a mess! Polls
were rigged and had to be shut down. Thanks for all who took the time
to vote for me!
Monday is the last day of voting for the BABA (Best Arab Blog) awards. Mental Mayhem is nominated in seven categories. If you think this blog is worth a vote, please follow these links and vote:
- Best Jordanian Blog
- Best Photography Blog
- Best Arab Blog (English)
- Best Blog Design
- Best Essayist Blog
- Best Everyday Life Blog
- Best Personal Blog
Remember, you can vote once each day for the next three days. Thanks for your support!
Thank you all for your kind words and your support. Your encouraging comments really made my day. I promise you to do my best to keep improving this humble blog.
Mahmood and Haitham,
Thank you for you very candid, and supporting message. Apologies accepted;-) Best of luck for next year’s BABA award. I’m sure that the glitches that occurred this time will help us all improve the competition. Keep up the good work.
This blogg rocks!
Natasha, Jeff and everyone who visits this blog: Good evening!
I am an ardent supporter of Natasha and value her insight, hence my continuous visits to this site which will not diminish now or ever. I think Natasha is a wonderful person with a good heart. I know how disappointed she must feel because of the actions of a few who wanted to hijack – and almost succeeded in – the first ever encompassing Arab blog awards. It is people like these who because of their selfishness typify what ails this nation. No matter, we shall not succumb to them.
Natasha, we (yes that includes Haitham) are NOT against you personally, nor did we ever consider you anything but another pioneer blogger whom we respect. I know that there has been a misunderstanding, but please treat it as just that, a passing summer cloud. You were not, and will never be targetted personally for defamation or any other derogatory end. WE hold you in very high regard.
Our fault in doing the Arab Blogger Awards is that, most probably like you, have been too trusting. Had we done the award polling like what others have done in demanding authenticated email addresses, restrictive IP pools, allowing only registered users to vote and the myriad of other restrictive practices, this situation would never have happened. We accept the responsibility, from which we can assure you that when next year rolls up, will be taken fully into consideration.
We believe that whoever was desperate enough to want to win, might have targetted you as well in order to aleviate suspicion. It is a very cheap trick, but it might very well have been used.
As there is another full day of polling ahead of us, I cannot divulge any technical details to support this argument; in my attempt to “keep the peace” I might never do so. Not because of exhonoration or pointing the finger of blame most definitely. I find the exercise pointless. It will create wars of words which we can do without.
True that we have suffered from credibility issues because the tools we chose didn’t stand up effectively for such attacks, but even the best award sites get hickups from time to time, we’re chalking ours to inexperience.
In this first ever blog awards, you have become a victim through no fault of your own. I hope that your enormous heart will find a way to forgive us our inexperience, and we both promise that next year we will ensure that things like this – as much as in our power and our abilities – will not happen again.
For now for the polls which have not been tampered with, the show goes on.
Best regards and whole heap of sorryness to you personally, and to all the others who have been affected by this unfortunate incident:
Haitham and Mahmood
Jeff,
Even without your call for support, I feel the readership would rise up in support of Natasha. This site is quite amazing and really don’t feel my day complete without at least one visit here daily. I am just waiting for the network adminstrators at work to block my access as I usually sneak a peek in the middle of the day 🙂
To Natasha, I unequivocally and wholeheartedly support this site…although I may not agree with everything that is said and choose what to respond to, this site has amazing character, allows for the flow of ideas, has many intellegent readers and it is eveident that respect for others is practiced by almost all…except for the few times when “outsiders” come here to spew their hidden agendas or make false accusations. But their concerns are addressed by you and I feel that you make a effort to reach out to them to engage in constructive dialogue.
As I have said many times before you are doing a wonderful job. Keep up the great work!!
Natasha,
We like your blog , keep up the good work. I feel closer to home, express opinion, have some fun , vent some frustrations and learn new things when I come to this blog. Accusations hurt especially when integrity is targeted, but that should not deter you from moving forward.
Wait one moment here. If you set it to only accept one vote per IP with cookies turned on, there’s almost no way to stuff the ballot box. Yes, it won’t be dead on accurate, but enough for an online poll. On the other hand, if someone controls a range of IPs and votes with all of the, the website admins wouldn’t be able to complain of fraud. IP address is what that matters in an online poll. Now I’m curious what has really happened and why they are not transparent about the technical aspects of this issue. I suspect the blame lies with BABA and they know that themselves.
And don’t be upset Natasha. People say hurtful things, don’t take offence, have pity.
All I can say is that it’s “mish mistahleh”. You have a pretty cool blog, the amount of traffic you get and the distribution of your readership (as can be seen from the hitmaps thingy) should by itself serve as a strong vote of confidence in what you’re doing. So keep up the good work…
A fan
Well, it’s sad really. We were worried and voiced our concern when we saw Subzero Blue comment on it. We were more or less given the back of the hand by an administrator. It was for that reason that Natasha chose not to post on it directly until yesterday, instead leaving the sidebar GIF link in case those that nominated her or others were interested.
I think an attempt at transparency might help this situation. So here’s a brief timeline of events from this side.
I must tell you at this point that the whole debacle really upset Natasha. She puts a great deal of time, effort and, yes, even money into this site. To have someone come here and anonymously accuse her of something without any shred of evidence is an outrage. It upset her to the point she just wanted to shut the whole thing down, meaning close this site. I encouraged her not to do so. But I understand her feelings. She puts all this effort in to create a wonderful site and someone just waltzes in and lays this turd on her doorstep.
I encouraged her to delete the whole entry or this comment but she wanted it to stand as history and testament to what a debacle this award became and why our concerns, expressed in the early days to Haitham, were justified.
Addressing some logic flaws in the argument put forth that somehow Natasha had something to do with this I ask: Why on earth would she go out and make a criticism of the polls, questioning their legitimacy? Wouldn’t this be opposite the behavior of someone intending to stuff the ballot box? Right out of the gate you say: "I don’t think the outcome of this event will be legitimate." But then proceed to de-legitimize them with voter fraud. It doesn’t make sense. Why express the concern in the first place if that’s your plan?
As for comments put on the BABA site about "how is it possible these sites got so much traffic when they aren’t much of a site to begin with" I take real exception to that. Natasha’s site receives a great deal of traffic, over 30,000 hits since she moved to TypePad in June of 2004 — that’s 30,000 hits in about six months. She has about 100 loyal daily readers and the site sees about 300-500 page impressions per day. And that’s just the Mental Mayhem portion, excluding the photo albums, the gallery and newswire. A great deal of time and effort do go into this blog. Anyone impugning it from the shadows without proof, from what could only be surmised to be jealousy, can put it where the sun don’t shine.
I feel badly that I encouraged Natasha yesterday to pursue the award at all. Had she not she wouldn’t have gotten this rude bedtime comment and she wouldn’t have gotten all wound up over it. I really hoped to see this award have some legitimacy. It’s why I suggested a "one vote, per category, per day and perhaps implement an anti-robot big of code" to Haitham nearly two weeks ago. I think, speaking for myself alone, that Subzero Blue, Natasha and I all wanted to see the awards be developed fully to the level they deserve. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t have said a thing.
I have a pretty good idea what Haitham’s take on all this is from his replies on Subzero’s blog. But I’d still like to see both he and Mahmood address this issue on the BABA site and discuss what their future plans are. If they have evidence of voting irregularites they should present them openly so that all those involved know fully what transpired. The kind of rumor-mongering evidenced here is sickening. If they plan to continue the award, I’d like to know how they intend to combat this in the future. I knew from the other award Natasha was nominated for that these things happen. I watched them address them, with a robot and a user-graphic.
I also wonder why this is so difficult. The simple little polls on this site are quite effective at preventing multiple visits by a single voter. I’m not sure how they work but when we tell the admin portion of the code "don’t let anyone vote twice with the same IP" and "place a cookie" it seems quite effective. I’m not sure what system BABA employed.
I doubt there’ll be much interest by this site in participating in any web awards again. I hope Natasha will receive some words of encouragement from those of you who read and enjoy the site. She really felt shut down by this asshole’s remarks. It’s even possible they’ll be less Mayhem in the future because of it. I, for one, would hate to see that. This blog was a birthday present for my wife, meant to be fun and stimulating. It’s proven to be that and so much more. It’s really disappointing to see someone try to slime it like this.
I also hope all those who got involved, got their hopes up and participated in BABA don’t run away from it. Haitham was right in that this was it’s first year. Some bumps in the road are to be expected. Let’s see if things can’t move forward, allowing improvements to be made — transparently — so it can continue next year.
Dear Mr/Ms disqualifications (who is too scared to post his/her name),
I did not cheat and I never asked anyone to cheat for me. I wouldn’t stoop that low for an award that was a mess from the beginning. I expressed my concern about it on Subzero Blue’s blog. Check it for yourself. And that is one reason I haven’t pushed that hard on it: its legitimacy has always been a source of concern.
And just for your info, I did advertise for this horrible, poorly managed award by posting its logo on the sidebar [Gone now though]. Go get yourself some eyeglasses.
To you Mr/MS disqualification [It’s too bad you don’t have the balls to reveal yourself], please don’t die of jealousy. I have a large readership base. We are happy here. I’m sorry if that bothers you.
As for the weblog award you mention, I was nominated for the Weblog Award 2004, something you obviously wanted badly. When you get your eyeglasses you will notice that I mentioned that I was a nominee for the weblog award — an honor in itself.
Ok enough wasting my time replying to you or discussing this mediocre award. I have better things to do!
To late I can say!
Check it out:
====================
Posted by: Admin on Sat, 29 Jan 2005 19:42:47
Due to rampant forgeries in some polls, we have had not alternative but to close and disqualify all those participants in the following polls:
. Best Arab Blog (Arabic)
. Best Arab Blog (English)
. 2004 Best Syrian Blog
. 2004 Best Saudi Blog
. 2004 Best Jordanian Blog
. 2004 Best Technology Blog
. 2004 Best Photography Blog
. 2004 Best Personal Blog
. 2004 Best Everyday Life Blog
. 2004 Best Essayist Blog
. 2004 Best Culture Blog
. 2004 Best Blog Design
. 2004 Best Art Blog
. 2004 Best Arab Student Blog
As usual, because of the actions of an inconsiderate few, the whole is affected.
================
Finally the admins decided to kick your blog out, same for nader and that Syrian one, few more I can’t remember. You guys or those who did it for you made it look so obvious cheat! I send the guys emails asking them if they are monitoring, and they said they are and will take action at the right time. i.e you never posted anything to ask the visitors to vote for you in these polls, yet u scored very high. Your post of today assured my big doubts that you or some one playing for you!!! In all cases these blogs looks very bad now.
Good for you, bad for the guys who deserved to be awarded in these polls… After all you looked to be so desperate you even have a misleading award logo that you never got (weblog 2004 award)!