LG15 loses to Ask A Ninja?

[milowent]

So, the winners of the YouTube awards were announced today, and Ask A Ninja won for best series. This is absolute baloney. When you voted, "Ask A Ninja" was automatically ordered in the top slot of the 10 videos at issue. People had to move the videos around as they wanted, but I am sure this pre-ordering affected a lot of the categories and, in the case, seriously helped "Ask A Ninja." (Anybody with polling experience care to comment? - I've never seen this method of voting before.)

link to winner list: www.youtube.com/ytawards

[hyemew]

I can't believe youtube was so idiotic. I personally did NOT feel like watching all 80 at once and ordering them like that. I was tempted to skip through some, but ended up just reordering them all based on how good they looked and adding in the few I had seen.
Now this is going to go to the winners heads. I wonder if all first place pre-ordered people won, I wouldn't be surprised. How utterly unprofessional and wreckless.
I mean if it only matters who wins first place, why not have the ability to vote first place?!

[elixir]

I know a couple of people who are really into 'Ask a Ninja', but I just can't get into it myself. I really thought Lonelygirl would have won here... Go figure. I find that a lot of the winning videos are fairly weird choices. That's not to say that they are bad or anything, but I can think of more deserving winners. However, I must say that I am happy that Juan Mann/Sick Puppies won for most inspiring. Go Aussies!

[flwright]

Hi Everyone,

I do have experience (a lot) in voting systems. In addition, I am a poll worker down at Anchor Cove Town Hall on election days.

YouTube's voting machine was totally rigged. And rigged in more ways than one. They seem to be expert at designing bad polling methods (most views, most subscibers, etc.)

Vote Early, Vote Often,

FLWright

[hyemew]

It's amazing, those stupid Anchor Cove people ALWAYS manage to find something to complain about! Do they ever stop?

(This really makes me wonder if it's us- or EVERYONE ELSE. And after seeing this stunt from youtube I really think it's everyone else.)

[milowent]

hyemew said:

It's amazing, those stupid Anchor Cove people ALWAYS manage to find something to complain about! Do they ever stop?

(This really makes me wonder if it's us- or EVERYONE ELSE. And after seeing this stunt from youtube I really think it's everyone else.)

on this youtube thing, i'm sure we are not alone.

krisabel.ctv.ca/blog/_archives/2007/3/26/2835696.html

"At Midnight last night, the winners of the first YouTube Awards were announced. It was a celebration of pseudonyms, of clips that spanned the gamut from crass to creative, comedic to clichéd, but thankfully neither works that infringed copyright nor clips created for humiliation. Among the seven webcam stars to receive a trophy is Toronto resident “TheWineKone” (real name Tony) who’s clip of himself sitting shirtless and sweating on a hot day took the prize for “Best Commentary”. His story is a perfect example of why, in a world already crowded by awards ceremonies, the YouTubes could become one of the most important as its winners include every day, ordinary people.

Assembled almost as at the last minute, the awards were full of confusion and controversy. One YouTube banner declared the winners would be announced on Friday, a spokesperson told the Associated Press they would be announced on Sunday night at 6pm PST, while another YouTube banner declared sometime Monday the day of ceremony.

The 70 nominees for the awards were arbitrarily chosen by YouTube staff leading to complaints by fans and especially nominees who felt that they were not being represented by their best clips. For a website that prides itself on being run by its community, it seemed like an odd policy to take.

The process began last Monday with ten nominees chosen for seven different categories – Most Creative, Most Inspirational, Best Series, Best Comedy, Best Commentary, and Most Adorable. YouTube users were allowed to rank the nominees for each category and submit their choice every hour on the hour for five days. The point being that the YouTube community could see at the top of each hour who was leading in votes and then change or recruit others to add votes to try to alter the outcome. By the end of last Friday the process was halted.

Winners will receive only a trophy and bragging rights, plus the opportunity as always to create an acceptance video. ....

[milowent]

there's an AP article out now which will be all over the place.

www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4662041.html

snippet:
"Ask a Ninja" triumphed over perhaps YouTube's biggest celebrity: Lonelygirl15. That bedroom production finished fourth, behind "Ask A Gay Man" and "Chad Vader."

OK, something is clearly wrong here. If that ranking is accurate, that is identical to default ordering that presented itself whenever you went to the voting page -- lg15 was always fourth when i visited the page.

[hyemew]

Haha it'd be truly interesting to know what each were ranked in other categories too and if the results matched.
There is no doubt that LG15 has had bigger press, more popularity, and a bigger following than all of those shows. Furthermore, Chad Vader far as I know is a one or two episode thing, and if it is an ongoing series then the fact that I don't know it is a sign it doesn't make any sort of visible flash. The other two are ongoing (though Ask a Ninja is stupid and predictable and while WilliamSledd has a lot of appeal to the fashion-minded, his campiness gets pretty old fast. Also I don't actively check his site but he went to LA a couple months back and disappeared for a good month at least. I think he's slowly returned but not sure what's going on now.)
I can't believe how shoddily this voting was, does youtube have a complaint line? I do remember seeing a video spoofing working for it so perhaps it does exist haha.

(Especially curious about the rankings of best commentator. While I like him the best, thewinekone winning can only be chalked up to him having a higher placement. Geriatric -at least used to- have a much larger following and attention whore renetto at least has bigger name recognition- mostly from his own engineering I'm sure. Winekone never gets any respect- everyone around him on the top 20 subscribed have deals of some sort while he has nothing- though argueable is one of the most entertaining. His stuff will always be better than smosh, though I do think he's running out of ideas as he's having big gaps in posting and his battleship one wasn't all that funny.)

[starlet]

I voted for the most creative winner and most inspirational. All of the other winners I have never seen before and watching them now really makes me wonder how they actually won.
The winner for best comedy? WTF was that? Is that comedy? I didn't find that funny.
Best series? No thank you.
Best Commentary? While it was kinda funny in a WTF way, WTF was the commentary about? randomness?
Best Music Video? Blah
Most Adorable? Kiwi? what? I just found that odd.

And no second and third place? What was the point of the ordering then? why not just vote for best?

Very odd...

[hyemew]

starlet said:

And no second and third place? What was the point of the ordering then? why not just vote for best?

This is the strangest part of it all. Perhaps they assigned a point value to every place, but still, why???

[milowent]

Heffernan article today about the YouTube awards.

www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/arts/27tube.html

I agree with her thesis that having awards is antithetical to youtube's soul: "Back in the day, say, six months ago, YouTube was still meant to be pure NoCal: no judgments, no hierarchies, big bandwidth and lots of freedom. YouTube videographers weren’t supposed to get stars on their doors from the powers that be."

She also notes:

"But now we have the 2006 YouTube Video Awards, a product — so the intro on the awards page says — of “the YouTube community.” But given that the rushed and almost certainly screwy voting commenced only once the nominees were published by YouTube, this community project doesn’t seem quite organic."

...

"The widespread animus toward “lonelygirl15,” the hit online series that got its start on YouTube but then seemed to grow too big for its britches, also seems to be alive and well at the YouTube Awards, where it was nominated for several awards but won nothing." [actually, i think there was just the one nomination, for best series.]

[hyemew]

The alleged animus (which I think youtube has for it thanks to the Revver Affair) would have been much better illustrated by noting it was only nominated for one category. I do think they wanted to be even and only nominate one account for one category, meaning that even if LG might have been able to qualify for nominations in other categories they wouldn't have.

The fact youtube picked the nominees though was pretty lame and I wish Virginia had gone on about the screwy voting- though I guess you can't throw out mere allegations in print. Thta said, I think our allegations are backed up by a pretty compelling coincidence, that in at least one category the results matched the original order and the fact that it was so easy to vote without changing around the order.