Why I'm not campaigning any more for a Shorty Award cc @shortyvotes @shortyawards

(Originally written Jan. 21, 2011)
I've decided that it's a waste of my time and my friends' time for me to campaign for the Shorty Awards.

I don't think it's a legitimate contest.

Here are my reasons.

1. Last year the award in politics went to an account which (a) had less votes than all the other candidates, and (b) was a basically noninteractive account, consisting primarily of tweets spit out from an RSS feed. What possible basis there can have been for granting the award to that account is a mystery.

2. Last year one of the accounts which did have a lot of "votes" received most of them from transparently fake dormant accounts, each of which had 10 or 15 tweets over the account's entire lifetime, and had clearly been kept on "the shelf" for the purpose of being used in just such a ruse some day. The Shorty Award's so called "audits" -- if they ever occurred -- never disallowed those fake votes.

3. This year, after a week of voting, the Shorty Awards began "suggesting" accounts to nominate. It is completely absurd and corrupt for an organization running a "vote" to "suggest" which names you should nominate. It would be like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences suggesting to its members who should be nominated for an academy award.

4. This past night, although I had 20 more votes than the person in 1st place, I was listed as being in 2nd place. While I know the Shorty Awards claims it discounts votes from illegitimate accounts, my votes were from legitimate accounts: I'd read all of the votes that came in, and all but 2 or 3 were from regular twitter accounts that were familiar to me. All, or almost all, of my votes deserved full credit. I can no longer continue asking my friends to take the time to vote for me, knowing that their votes are not being counted honestly.

5. This year, the account which is in 1st place, even though I have more votes, has acquired about half of its votes by a form of "vote buying". The account holder offered to give #followfriday recommendations in exchange for Shorty Award votes. So far he's bought and paid for approximately 200 votes that way. The Shorty Awards is doing nothing to stop the practice.

Bottom line, the Shorty Awards "election" and "selection process" are without credibility. An election with no integrity is not an election, it's a scam. I'm through campaigning, because in doing so, I'm just giving publicity to a dishonest event, and wasting my friends' time.

I apologize to my friends and followers for having wasted your time.

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