We’re finished judging the entrants for the Carnival of Real Estate. I’m going to roll things out in four posts over four days. I have three reasons for doing this.
- I want to draw your particular attention to the posts that were particularly good, and I want for the entrants in the second tier — good but not quite great — to have their own day in the sun.
- I want to address in the first and last posts some issues that I think will make the Carnival of Real Estate better and more relevant going forward.
- I was accused today of having organized my own weblog posts in a logical sequence, an organizational feat I have never yet achieved.
My post tomorrow will highlight one entry of unsurpassed excellence and six more of surpassing quality. Tuesday morning, we will exhibit a dozen more entries that were very, very good. By Wednesday, I want to talk seriously about laying down some rules for this contest.
Here’s why: We had a total of 43 unique entries. Out of that number, 24 did not make the cut. We had multiple entries from the same weblog, in some cases from the same person. One entry consisted almost entirely of plagiarized text. Another offered advice on how to use constructive mortgage fraud to deceive new-home builders. Many, many, many entries were too short to warrant any sort of consideration. There is nothing at all wrong with writing a very short weblog post — I do it all the time. But a short riff on an undeveloped idea is not a contest entry, it’s a painful reminder to revisit the topic later — conclusively, in greater detail, in fuller mind.
I know the practice until lately has been to make note of every entry, but the number of entries is growing week-by-week, and I don’t think it is any favor to conflate serious attempts to push back the darkness with phoning-it-in cat-blog posts. It’s certainly a disservice to the people striving to do the most and best they can with their weblogs, and it strikes me as being unjust, also, to the people doing substandard work. How can anyone learn to identify true excellence, learn to value it, learn to reach for it, if absolutely everything becomes just another episode of socialist mud-pie theater, where everything is perfect just the way it is?
Something The Scarlet Pimpernil said a while ago has nagged at me ever since: A weblog Carnival is too much like a high school popularity contest. The contrary argument is that a Carnival can and should be a celebration of weblogging excellence. But there is still a third argument: A Carnival is a way for marginal efforts from weblogs, relevant to the topic or not, to garner prized in-bound links from the hosting weblog. If the Carnival of Real Estate doesn’t establish some rigorous judging standards, it becomes the first, and it may already be the third, but it will not be the second.
What annoyed me, as I was reading, is that I routinely link to posts as good or better than the best I saw today — and never ever to the worst. If my own link posts, and Dustin Luther’s, and those put together by other real estate webloggers are so much better than the Carnival of Real Estate, why have it at all?
I should be wearing Birkenstocks, I’m so civic-minded. I normally don’t care about collective efforts, but BloodhoundBlog has participated in the Carnival of Real Estate from the very beginning, and I would hate to see it drown in its own popularity. If would-be entrants know that there are hard and fast hurdles they must leap to be considered at all, it seems reasonable to hope that the quality of entries will go up — as the quantity goes down.
Here’s what we did: We used a scoring matrix, and, if anything, Cathleen was even more strict that I was. We judged first on matters of moment: If an entry had nothing of importance to do with the real estate business, broadly defined, it was eliminated. Of the entries that scored a one for relevance, we looked also for clarity and for style. Exceptionally fine posts could earn a plus-sign, which is what distinguishes our top seven from the twelve on the second tier.
Certainly there are other ways of scoring, but there should be some way of distinguishing great from good from adequate from inadequate. I have other ideas for pertinent rules — even though I pretty much hate all rules. I’ll discuss those Wednesday. If you have ideas of your own, speak up. If there were 43 entries this week, there will be 60 next week, and very soon 100. This is a manageable crisis, for now, but it wants attention…
More: Carnival of Real Estate: The read meat…, Carnival of Real Estate: Creams and cheeses…, Candles, incense, bells and ashes: Redeeming The Carnival of Real Estate…
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate marketing
Jay Thompson says:
About all I can say is this:
Thank you.
October 9, 2006 — 12:09 am
Jim Cronin says:
YES – This was due. And in fact, will have all of us working harder to earn the link back. We can all do better, if just once a week.
October 9, 2006 — 12:31 am
Jeff Brown says:
If the bar isn’t highly set, the effort required will match it. Well said Greg.
October 9, 2006 — 7:38 am
Kris Berg says:
GREAT post, Greg. I have only submitted once, though I post every day. I have had my curser poised over “submit” many, many times, but rarely feel I have accomplished anything on my own blog that is worthy of a best-of-the-best contest. Succumbing to my evil, insecure twin, I often curse myself upon reading the “winning” entries or, at the very least, seeing the bloggers who have received the coveted inbound links for what is often a pedestrian attempt at best. Best of luck in your one-blog crusade to improve the Carnival standards.
October 9, 2006 — 7:48 am