Make Sure Your Vote Counted

Apparently none of the votes for this blog were processed the last few days. If you did not receive and respond to an E-mail like the one below, please cast your ballot again – because your vote wasn’t counted.

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ScreenHunter_7593 Mar. 01 17.06

Fifteenth Annual Weblog Awards: The 2015 Bloggies

About Tony Heller

Just having fun
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54 Responses to Make Sure Your Vote Counted

  1. gator69 says:

    If I don’t hear back soon, I will vote a third time. (That doesn’t automatically make me a democrat does it? Or do I have to die first? Lose my citizenship? Their rules are so confusing…)

  2. omanuel says:

    Damn poor design for voting!

  3. Jimmy Haigh says:

    Took me a while to figure it out but I got there. I didn’t vote for all of the categories…

  4. Scott Allen says:

    i voted and sent email back.
    I think someone is collecting email addresses (it not being paranoid, if people are really trying to get you)

    • Neal S says:

      for a virtually unlimited supply of disposable email addresses (perfect for entering contests without worrying if the address gets abused) visit spamgourmet.com. It is totally free (although they won’t mind if you support in some way). From their web page

      “If you give your email address to everyone, you are bound to receive spam emails, and you won’t know where they came from. Wouldn’t it be convenient to give a different email address to every business or web site, while getting all your email as before? Wouldn’t it be easiest to assume the address will be given to spammers, and have it work as a spam blocker by shutting off automatically unless you decide otherwise?”

    • Ben Vorlich says:

      Just because you are paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

  5. NancyG says:

    Voted again because I never got the e-mail. I also didn’t vote in every category because I’ve never been to some of those sites. Does that invalidate my vote?

    • I don’t believe it invalidates your vote (and it wouldn’t make sense). The published rules specify at least 3 unique blogs in the nomination phase. There is no similar requirement in the winners’ voting phase.

  6. A C Osborn says:

    I had the email on the first try.

  7. Theyouk says:

    Done. Best of luck Tony!

  8. John B., M.D. says:

    Tony,
    You got my vote.

  9. Edmonton Al says:

    My vote is in and verified.

  10. Pathway says:

    My vote for Real Science was processed immediately.

  11. Disillusioned says:

    So, they collected my email address, but didn’t process my vote…

    Why am I not surprised.

  12. Theyouk says:

    Just a heads-up…If you vote and move to the next screen, then click ‘back’ (to return to the voting page), the boxes checked will be different. So please avoid any back/forth navigating–but if you do, double check the correct boxes are checked!

    • Disillusioned says:

      “the boxes checked will be different.”
      .
      Reminds me of a couple Congressional races.

    • Neal S says:

      But this behaviour would only make a difference if one were to vote more than once.

      I did notice that the order of choices does change with each refresh. I think this is deliberate to avoid any bias.

  13. My confirmation email with the vote verification URL came nearly immediately.

    When invoked it displayed the bloggies webpage with this text:

    Your ballot has been verified. Check back on Sunday, March 29 to see the winners!

  14. I’ll place my vote for Real Science later this morning, but will shamelessly ask for votes on whatever category my GelbspanFiles.com blog fits in. “Best blog investigating origin of smear against skeptic climate scientists”?

  15. lance says:

    voted yesterday morning and got an acknowledgement.

  16. Owen says:

    I voted again and made sure my vote counted this time. Thanks for the heads up Real Science.

  17. Llanero says:

    Voted and confirmed. I can’t remember if I voted for your blog or Al Gore’s though. 🙂

  18. mpalmer says:

    I tried.I’ll send you $50 instead.

  19. Truthseeker says:

    Out of the three email addresses I used to vote, two got the reply emails which I verified by clicking the link. The third one was a work email so the reply email probably got blocked as spam before I saw it.

    Two out of three ain’t bad …

  20. R. de Haan says:

    There confirmation mail landed in the spam box and all bell’s went off when I moused the link…..
    Opened the link anyhow. Best blog is best blog and this is the BEST BLOG. Period.

  21. Dan says:

    I voted for you blogg. You are doing a very important job and I hope that you will continue for many years to come. 🙂

  22. Greg says:

    I voted and the verification email came into my Junk E-Mail box. Tell your readers that they should check their spam and junk e-mail boxes to see if their voting verification is in there.

    Good luck Steve.

    Greg

  23. mpalmer says:

    did u get my $50

  24. mpalmer says:

    It’s not easy to give you money

  25. gofer says:

    I got a confirmation e-mail almost immediately.

  26. Climatism says:

    Have tried about 10 times over numerous days and still get this message (and no email):

    “Sorry, something went wrong with your submission. Try returning to the start and making a new ballot. If it still doesn’t work, contact me with your nominations.”

    ..shall keep trying!

    Good luck anyway Steve and well done for making to Weblog of the year!

    Cheers

  27. NancyG says:

    Okay then. I voted twice and never got a confirmation. I tried a different email address and got no confirmation. I checked spam, they are not there. I am not using a work computer with any type of filters. Nothing goes in my trash folder unless I put it there and it’s not there.

    Are you all using gmail accounts? I’m on AOL and it’s not working for me. I’ve never had this problem getting a confirmation.

    • Gail Combs says:

      I am using Opera and a gmail account.

    • Neal S says:

      I’ve had success with Google Chrome browser and a spamgourmet.com based disposable email account which does eventually wind up at my gmail. You could try setting up a spamgourmet account to go to your AOL email and/or try a different browser.

      • gator69 says:

        I used Google Chrome and an AOL account three times, and even contacted the administrator ‘Nikolai’, and still not one response in four days.

      • Disillusioned says:

        Thanks for mentioning spamgourmet.com. I don’t trust bloggies with my email address, and I regret having voted the first time, although I never got a confirmation email. They have my email address now, although they didn’t count my vote.

        So, I looked at spamgourmet.com after it was mentioned yesterday. (I assume spamgourmet.com is safe.) Since I am supposed to reply to the confirmation email, I assume it then gets forwarded to my ‘real’ email account. What I don’t understand is, then, how would I reply?

        I am also confused about long names for the fake email addresses, and exactly how it all works. It’s probably very simple, but without experiencing it, it was like reading Greek trying to understand what exactly happens. I got frustrated reading it and set it aside to work on other things. Any illumination would be appreciated.

        • I think I understand your question about the verification.

          You will not reply to the confirmation email you should receive if everything works right. The email will contain a unique URL that you click on. The URL will take you to the Bloggies website, automatically certify your ballot and display this text:

          Your ballot has been verified. Check back on Sunday, March 29 to see the winners!

          So it will not matter in which email account you receive and open the verification email. You just have to get it and within it the unique URL tied to your cast ballot.

        • Disillusioned says:

          Thank you CW. That clears that question up. Good.

          Now, I just need to make sure I get an email forwarded (if I desire, as in this case) if I sign up for spamgourmet.com. I want to know if there is a downside to spamgourmet. So far, I don’t see one, but I’m driving blind at this moment. 😉

      • Neal S says:

        About spamgourmet.com

        When you set up an account with Spamgourmet you have to give them your real email address. But you can trust them (as much as you can trust anything in this world) because those who run spamgourmet hate spam and would never help spammers.

        You need to select a username which is not yet in use at spamgourmet.com. For example lets say you wanted to be ‘flintstone’, you would put ‘flintstone’ into the newuser box under ‘create an account’ and your real email into the ’email’ box. Then click ‘go’.

        On the next screen is a ‘captcha’ where you type what you can read in the image and then supply a password and the same again to confirm no typos.

        Then a confirmation will be sent to the real email address you gave. When you open that email, there will be a link you click on, and this confirms that you really wanted spamgourmet account ‘flintstone’ to go to that real email address you specified.

        From that point on out, whenever a disposable email address is needed, you can just make one up. There are three parts to a disposable address. An example might be

        [email protected]

        The first part ‘contest’ is something you make up unique for each intended use. The next part ‘flintstone’ is your username which you selected when you registered for spamgourmet.com. The last part is one of the spamgourmet.com domains.

        I like to use xoxy.net, but you can use spamgourmet.com or antichef.net or wronghead.com or disposeableaddress.com or any one of about two dozen available. It doesn’t matter which one of these you pick for your disposable because they will all go to the same place.

        There is a FAQ at the site which goes into more details. The key is that the first 5 or so messages sent to a disposable address get sent to your real email and then after that point, the rest get discarded. You can change the default from 5 messages up to as much as 20. If you signed up for a newsletter, you can even set up ‘trusted’ senders, where email coming from those don’t count against the limit and will even get through if the limit has been reached. You can reset the limit for any of your existing disposable addresses at any time.

        • Neal S says:

          It turns out that the default number of messages that spamgourmet passes is ‘3’ but you can easily change that default from the ‘advanced mode’ screen where you just enter into the ‘default number’ field the value you want and click ‘save’.

        • Disillusioned says:

          Neal, thank you for taking the time. So, for this instance, it looks like the first part could be “vote”. I’m sure it’ll all get even clearer as I go through the process.

  28. Neal S says:

    For those who are having trouble, it may be helpful to let us know what browser and version you happen to be using. There may be a pattern, or maybe not, but without that info we cannot tell.

    Also for those having trouble, might I suggest you try a different browser or two. If you do have success with a different browser, then please share with the rest what you had been using and what you used when you had success.

    Thanks

    • Disillusioned says:

      I don’t understand why browsers would have anything to do with it, and I’ve read both AOL and Gmail users have had troubles. But some got it to work after repeat votes, and others haven’t. So, narrowing down why votes were rejected/ignored on the bloggies end seems a daunting task. But, FWIW, I used an AOL email address, and my browser is Iron. I will NOT use my own email address again if I vote again. Still kicking myself for having supplied it the first time, but I wanted to give Tony the support.

      • Neal S says:

        I don’t know if browser does or does not make a difference. But if we never share the info about what worked and what didn’t we will never be able to figure out if it does.

        I can easily imagine bugs in the implementation of voting web page where the browser would make a difference. And I can also imagine other sources of trouble that are completely browser independent.

  29. gator69 says:

    Nikolai just responded again, saying that if your ballots have not been confirmed, contact him now. Just look for this section above the nominee section.

    GET IN TOUCH

    Any questions not covered above? Send a message over and I’ll get them answered. Nominations are over for 2015, but you can return on January 1 to submit some for next year. Nominations are not accepted through this contact form.

    http://2015.bloggi.es/

  30. NancyG says:

    I had already written and got this reply:

    “The Bloggies are hosted on my personal Web host that can have issues if it tries to send a lot of e-mails at once. I’ve confirmed your ballot for you.”

    Odd, because I purposely sent one at around 3 a.m. EST to see if voting at an off hour would work, but it didn’t.

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