Jonova a finalist for the 2012 bloggies :-) see thinly disguised plug here!

Cheerio! Thanks to the dedicated souls who nominated it, this blog is a finalist in 2012 Web Bloggies Award. (Ta Pat, Val, Baa). 😀 ! That’s a success on its own (it’s already bringing in new readers).  Cheers!

With your help, we can reach a wider crowd. The different traffic, new links and other bloggie-spin-offs can help your favourite sites rank higher in searches and means the messages you want to share travel past new eyes. (Shameless hinting…) And all you need to do is vote and spread the word (so email, facebook, letter boxing, billboards  ;-)). Some excellent blogs have made the finals, it’s smorgasbord of skeptics, and Anthony Watts has helpfully listed my favourites, so below is his detailed guide to making your vote count. My one sentence version is: Click here to vote, put ticks in the grey circles next to your choices (one in each category you care about), do the “catcha” funny word to prove you are human, then wait for the email, AND verify the link to prove you are not a troll. You need to do all those steps to be counted. Thank you to all who take those few minutes.

It’s time to be savvy.  As Anthony essentially says, we know people who don’t like free-speech and independent thinkers are good at networking and make the effort to run campaigns to sabotage another site’s successes. We don’t need to stoop to that, but it sure helps if we vote for the sites we like.

It’s your chance to guide the internet crowd in the direction you think is best.

Merci, Jo

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Anthony spells out how to vote in details here:

(Copied but with some changes from WUWT. I edited, so blame me if anything is wrong.)

• For Best Australian Blog, we have two Australian climate blogs, JoNova and Australian Climate Madness [Damn shame you can’t vote for both eh? ]
• Climate Audit is in the running for the for Best Canadian blog
• Tallbloke’s Talkshop for Best European blog
• WUWT is up in two categories, Best science/technology blog, and Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Here’s how to vote:

1. Visit http://2012.bloggi.es/ for the main voting page,

2. Locate the category thumbnails for the categories you want to vote on (you need to vote at least three categories to submit a vote).

Here’s what the Sci-Tech Category looks like:

3. If you want to vote for WUWT (or any of the blog categories), click on the little grey circle in the lower right of the icon, and it turns into a checkbox and greys out the other thumbnails. Note the contest rotates the thumbnails for fairness in placement, so it may not look like the image order above.

4. Scroll up/down. Vote for any other blogs you like in any other categories the same way. You don’t have to vote for all other blog categories. But if you know a site is useful, that hard working blogger will appreciate the help.

5. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page: (note – don’t use cursor keys, it will change your vote!)

6. Type in the nonsense Captcha word (whatever it happens to be), put in a VALID email address. Click SUBMIT.

7. Look for an email in your inbox. You need to verify your vote. If the email doesn’t come, your vote doesn’t count. (Check your spam filter).  Click on the link in your email!

9. Spread the word! Twitter, Facebook, mailing lists, friends, comments on other blogs, and most importantly, if you run a blog … 🙂 Thanks for your help.

You know that some others who dislike what we do here will try to create anti-vote campaigns as they have done in the past. Success depends on whether there are more people who view WUWT as a science resource versus those that simply want to haul out the hate, and slap on the “denier” label.

10. Remember, while winning is fun, the way you play the game is just as important. Don’t cheat. Don’t encourage cheating, and simply let the chips fall where they may.

Also, there are a couple of other blogs worth noting.

In the Political category, American Thinker is up against the propaganda blog Think Progress (Joe Romm’s Center for American Progress outfit) and the Huffington Post. Another David-Goliath battle.