Popular Indian blog gracious runners up
By Bala Shah

The Weblog Awards are the world's largest blog competition with over 545,000 votes cast in the 2007 edition, and nearly two million votes cast in all editions since 2003.  This year record votes were cast for the 48 categories.  A popular Indian blog ‘India Uncut’ which feared vote rigging in the ‘Best Asian Blog’ category has now graciously conceded to the winner.

Only 10 thousand Asians bothered to vote for what they considered their best blog.

On Jan 12, techgoss had reported on how ‘India Uncut’ had feared that supporters of Buddhist Blogger Ashin Mettacara (whose blog is named after him) from Burma had blatantly vote rigged to ensure his win.

The votes are in and the gods have blessed the Buddhist blogger from Burma.  He is now the winner of ‘The Best Asian Blogger’.  India Uncut is the runners up.

While both the winning and runners up blogs are of a very high quality and very readable, the voting itself leaves much to be desired.  Asia, which houses half of humanity, could muster up only 10 thousand votes for all the finalists.

India Uncut’s Amit Varma has been gracious in defeat and has congratulated Ashin: “India Uncut finished second in the Best Asian Blog category in the 2008 Weblog Awards. We lost by just under 300 votes, and got more than 3000. I’m very touched that so many votes were cast on this blog’s behalf, so thank you for that. While I shall continue to blog regularly, so as to be in your good books, I am relieved that I do not have to honour any of my pre-poll promises now. So no, I will not post a video of my sensuous belly dance anytime soon.  Also, my congratulations to the winner Ashin Mettacara, a Buddhist monk from Burma who has been speaking out for free speech for a while. On his blog, he says, “Today we show the world our unity, and we get the power to restore democracy and human rights in Burma.” I wish him all the best in this cause. My getting the award would not have benefited India in any way—though you would have gotten that belly dance—so it’s best that Ashin won.”

(Techgoss had run the following article on Jan 12, 2009)

Popular Indian blog victim of vote fraud
By Bala Shah

The Weblog Awards are the world's largest blog competition with over 545,000 votes cast in the 2007 edition, and nearly two million votes cast in all editions since 2003.  This year, voting has been popular with record votes cast so far, and frenzied last minute participation as the deadline of Jan 13, 2009 approaches. Now an Indian finalist is claiming vote rigging.

For The 2008 Weblog Awards open and public nominations in 48 categories began on November 3, 2008.  Voting for selected finalists began in early December 2008. So far more than 620 thousand votes have been cast and some may be declared invalid as they have violated the rules of the contest.

The voting system has a quirky rule which says that anyone can vote more than once after 24 hours.  (Hard to fathom the logic of such rules. But that is for another post)

The best Asian Blog for 2008 has 10 finalists but essentially it seems to be a two horse race between Indian superblogger Amit Varma (India Uncut) and super Buddhist blogger Ashin Mettacara whose blog is named after him.

Amit Varma is one of the most respected names in Indian journalism and blogosphere.  Amit was Managing Editor of Cricinfo and has also contributed to a number of prestigious media organizations like WSJ.  He is a consultant and has also written a book. His blog ‘India Uncut’ makes for pleasurable reading.

Ashin Mettacara is a 27-year-old Buddhist monk from Burma who is blogging and contributing with the aim of spreading news to the whole world about the crisis in Burma. Ashin says he is not part of any political group, association or organization. He is helping all the groups who are working for freedom of belief and expression. Ashin’s motto is: “Working for equality is human values".

But it seems there may be friends and forces behind this popular Buddhist blogger from Burma who subscribe to the view that they will go to any unholy lengths to ensure their preferred blogger wins.

Now India-based Amit Varma is telling his readers about a Message Board entry which alleges vote rigging by someone who wants Ashin Mettacara to win.  The Message Board entry says: “This is to tip you off about a huge number of votes that were fraudulently cast (using a technique spoken about earlier in Pharyngula that I won't repeat here, but you know what I'm talking about) in the best Asian blog category by someone voting for Ashin Mettacara. This began at 1530 Eastern Time, and is still going on as I type these words. Check the votes that took Mettacara's vote count up from 1615 votes past 1750. This explains why Mettacara's blog is getting so many votes as compared to all the other better-known blogs in the category -- check its Alexa ranking as compared to India Uncut or Tokyo Mango, the two big blogs in that category. If you study the logs at the time I mentioned, you will find that all the votes originate from the same IP, and the same computer. I hope you will scrutinize Mettacara's votes in that category carefully before releasing final results.”

Both Amit and Ashin have been lobbying their readers to vote for them if they like what they read.  Currently, Ashin is leading at 41 percent of the votes as compared to Amit who has 36 percent.  6700 votes have been cast for far for the ‘Best Asian Blog’.

Supporters of a Buddhist blogger dedicated to equality in human values indulging in fraudulent voting.   Something seems so wrong about it.