The two-week feedback period for providing suggestions to improve the Wine Blog Awards expired on March 15th. You can browse the comments on this website – both on the pages and the blog posts – to see the many suggestions provided by various people. Thank you to all who participated.
Because those of us behind the North American Wine Bloggers conference have just taken over management of the awards, our predilection was to implement change gradually. Following are changes we made to the Awards:
- Dropped the term American and opened the awards to all English-language wine blogs.
- Added a new award category for Best New Wine Blog.
- Clarified the “best graphics” award title, changing it to Best Wine Blog Graphics, Photography, & Presentation, to specifically include photography. Changed the description of this category to specifically take into account individual blog posts and not simply the overall blog outline.
- Changed the makeup of the judges panel to include international judges. (Yet to be selected.)
- Decreased the voting weight of the public from 70% to 50% to make it equal to the judge’s voting weight, ensuring the awards stay a community project but not a popularity contest.
There were other more substantial suggestions, including increasing the number of award categories; decreasing the requirement for the minimum number of posts; awarding a bronze, silver, and gold prize for each category; and changing the judging process itself. We elected to hold off on these changes for now. Be assured you will always have a say in what we eventually do.
Next up: The one-week nomination period begins April 1!
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