Hiya!

It's been a while. Firstly, I haven't forgotten about the galleries that I proposed about a month ago. I've been having some motherboard issues, and I've just won the battle against Newegg in getting them to hurry up with my replacement. There was also a death in my family that I had to drive home for.

Home is in Connecticut. I currently live in Pittsburgh. It's a pretty rough drive, especially if you're there for less than 24 hours.

Now, I've been hearing some mumblings about the proposed "Blog Wars". While many think that the idea is rather...... erm......... idiotic, when you gather enough people in the competition, it's pretty amazing to see the creativity in the contest. It's also HILARIOUS reading the entries that blow, and the author wondering why Jesus hates them.

How do I know all this? Is it because I'm fucking magical? Nay. My mind contains a plethora of useless knowledge, and blogging contests is something I've actually participated in on a large scale. Another website that I write for holds this contest every year, and it has been refined to the point where it's become something of a phenomenon....... that not many people have heard of.

Here's how it works:

1) Users who wish to moderate the contest will provide the organizer with their emails. Keep in mind, on a larger scale, contests like these can be quite the undertaking. A panel of moderators will be chosen. Moderators may NOT participate in the contest. Moderators will be responsible for organizing the seeding, assigning titles, watching for cheating, etc. Moderators will also be responsible for deciding the tie-breakers.

2) The organizer will create a post drumming up the interest in being a contestant. All users need to do is express interest. Only the users who have been active for a certain amount of time as determined by the moderators are eligible, as this prevents cheating. In later contests, if too many users express interest to the point where the contest will take 6 months to complete, then there will be tryouts. Once again, moderators will determine how users will be picked for the contest.

3) The organizer of the contest will create a post for title creation. It is likely that there will be a lot of contestants in later competitions, so therefore there will be a fuckton of titles to create. Any and all users can submit a comment with what they think would be a good title for a matchup. Moderators will go through the titles and choose which ones will make an interesting matchup.

4) Moderators will set up a ladder. All users will know who is matched up against who, but that's it. No users will know which titles have been assigned to who. It is considered cheating, or just plain stupid to tell everybody which title you've been assigned. Anonymity is paramount. Moderators will also determine how long a user must be active before their vote can count towards an entry. Once again, this is a deterrant against alters.

5) After each round, the organizer will sum up the results of the contest, update the ladder, and create a post with all results.

Now, here is the trick. The best case scenario will be one that enlists the help of one of the website coders. This will allow entrants to simply write their post and enter it into the competition. Eligible voters will be given to vote for "Entry 1" or "Entry 2". Clicking a button and having the whole thing done and over with is the easiest way to go.

Worst case scenario is that the moderators of the competition will be bombarded with emails of all entries. Doing everything through email and then using the website as an outlet is a poor way to handle everything, but possible.

So, I propose to the moderators and the eBaumsWorld employees..... I will be more than willing to help organize a large scale blogging competition. The winner of said competition will be rewarded as determined by the employees and moderators of eBaumsWorld. Something like a whole bunch of eRep points, having your profile featured on the front page for 3 months, etc.

If we're going to do something like this, we've gotta do it right.

Who's with me?