Silver in the My Planet National Awards, or How Competitions Are Won

Silver in the My Planet National Awards, or How Competitions Are Won The fanfares are sounding, the timpani are singing, and a flute is quietly whimpering: “Hooray! Hooray!” We took second place in the “Best Journey on Wheels” category of the My Planet National Awards. That’s awesome, friends! And quite an honour. In certain circles ))). My conclusions: 1. To be perfectly honest, our travelogue made it into the lead only thanks to promotion on social media. No, I’m not saying the text isn’t good. The travelogue is very worthy indeed. What I mean is that its goodness would never have been appreciated without the enthusiasm of our supporters—the very same “one of us” crowd who were touched by my frankness about my reasons for entering the competition, those who like our blog, and those who simply love us. Quite unexpectedly, I found myself with tremendously strong support from several friends and even complete strangers, who actively rallied people to vote. Thank you, guys! Without you, we definitely wouldn’t have taken second place. 2. For now, I don’t feel like entering any more competitions where the winners are determined by a “Popular Vote.” Because at that stage, a contest between content turns into a contest between supporters. And sometimes it isn’t the best texts that take the lead, but the most active candidates and their teams. The details Andrey wasn’t interested in entering the Awards; he has no illusions about the fairness of competitions. But I wanted to take part honestly, and for the first five days of voting I didn’t even mention it to anyone. During those days, 10 club members voted for our travelogue. The winner got around 60 votes. Why such a huge gap? The next surprise was the batches of messages that began pouring into my private inbox on My Planet, asking: “I’m in another category—please vote for my travelogue.” “Same offer in return :)” I replied to the senders. And in a moment of weakness, I even wrote four such messages myself, though only to people who had rated and commented on my travelogue before voting began. Then, thank God, the admins put a stop to that little racket, threatening to reset everyone’s votes to zero, while my messages were simply deleted and never seen by their intended recipients (amen) :). As the whole affair drew to a close, we moved first into fourth place, then into second. Some friends wrote: “Marin, let’s register using different email accounts and rack up votes,” or “What scares you more—a ban or losing?” “A ban,” I replied. “We’re in favour of fair elections” (thank you, my selfless friends!). Third and fourth place battled it out doggedly, and by the final they had made a lot of ground, trailing us by about 60 votes. We were almost 80 behind the leader (despite the extremely active support from our friends and in the group). The result After reviewing the results, the jury reset the ratings of several nominees to zero for vote rigging, including those in third and fourth place (incidentally, they would have come third even without rigging the vote). Ours wasn’t reset because our rating had grown legitimately (Cross my heart, right?) 🙂—and so we ended up with a well-earned Silver in the My Planet National Awards. For me, it was an interesting experience ) I have no negative feelings either about taking part or about the result. I’m delighted to be a silver medallist in a nationwide competition, and with the waterproof jacket that comes with it (or whatever it is they have?), which, as it later turned out, you can use to hide from fish 🙂 I’m deeply grateful to everyone for your support, reposts, and kind words! I feel sorry for the nominees whose ratings were reset. I think only the rigged votes should have been removed. And... I suppose that, for now, I don’t want to enter competitions where the winner is determined by a popular vote. I’ve been there, done that :). The travelogue itself is here >>