The Scholarship Vote
Dave · November 20, 2008 at 10:03 am · Filed Under Mariners
I’m thrilled that this thing finally ends tonight, so we just don’t have to talk about it anymore after tomorrow.
Anyway, I’m down by about 800 votes. Voting closes at midnight PST, so to win, I’d have to close that gap in 14 hours, or about 60 votes every hour from here on out. So, if there’s a few thousand of you out there that haven’t voted yet, now would be the time.
Win or lose, I still have a baseball team I can have hope in, though. I can’t imagine being any happier about how things have gone since Zduriencik got hired.
SpikeKC, I didn’t say the idea wasn’t posted here…but honestly, don’t you think those LARGE Red State blogs were more likely to get that ID to do what they POSTED they wanted to do “PISS OFF DK” from the amount of coverage it was getting at DK, rather than reading it on USSM or LL.
Also, you posting it doesn’t make it anymore true. Truth is, NEITHER of us know where they got the idea or who’s idea it was that spurred them into action.
As far as you using the term “whining” in regards to DK, using the term in your own manner to somehow justify ANYTHING that’s happened is juvenile at best. There was no FATAL mistake here, no one died. It’s a scholarship. Thank you for your contribution and please take YOUR “whining” elsewhere.
The idea wasn’t posted here.
Also, disputing that Mauro got his votes from Kos is entirely unsupported by the reality of what happened, and Dave’s whining as you call it was an entirely accurate description — people voting because of political affiliation.
I second SpikeKC on that. There’s been a lot of whining on both sides (including whining by Dave himself). This is a stupid voting system that measures absolutely nothing important. Maybe it has value as a social experiment. But, really, isn’t it obvious that when you combine (a) a $10,000 prize, with (b) internet voting, and (c) internet blogging and commenting, you’re going to get a mess. Any broad negative generalization about any group of people in this context is silly on its face. (P.S., anyone who voted more than once should probably refrain from complaining about the “other” side getting votes unfairly).
Dave said this:
Characterize it as whining, or whatever you want, but it’s a ridiculous attack.
I saw a lot of positive comments about Cameron at DK and many people who did support him. Can’t say I saw any of that here.
DK has tons and tons of readers. Of course you’re going to find people there who have read and enjoyed Dave’s work. On the other hand, you’re not going to find many — if any — people here who have read Mauro’s work. I’m only speaking for myself here, but I’m pretty familiar with a lot of liberal bloggers, and I had never heard of Mauro before this whole thing started.
The lack of supportive comments for Mauro over here has nothing to do with any sort of character flaw you’re trying to find, and everything to do with the simple fact that no one knows who he is. I don’t mean that to insult him at all, but it’s true. You can’t hold it against us that we don’t blindly support someone whose work we’ve never seen. Progressive blogging is a pretty dense market, and Mauro’s stuff doesn’t appear to stand out. Cameron’s does. Hence the broader appeal you’re seeing for Cameron.
Cameron’s mistake was giving them a pretext to justify their mentality. Does anyone want to seriously argue that Kos and others wouldn’t be posting front page topics about “vote for one of our own”, if only Cameron and some random LL commenters hadn’t said what they did?
Hi Dave,
I just gave $10 through Paypal as my way of replacing the scholarship money with direct funds from those who have greatly benefited from your writing.
I think if you guys were able to make it easy for others to give directly to you as our way of making up for the scholarship many would do so. It would be fun for all of us to see you get over 10K and you are definetly worth it!
I like the previous idea of having a countdown to $10K.
Thanks!
Henri
I went to the Burnt Orange blog and couldn’t even find an entry written by David Mauro. There’s no mention of him in the Who We Are section either. Tried to give it a shot and couldn’t figure it out.
Yep and McCain’s negative ad campaign was done because Obama wouldn’t approve townhall meetings.
There’s always an excuse for bad behavior, but it doesn’t excuse it.
Where did I dispute the votes came from Daily Kos? David Mauro also blogs on Daily Kos. Why wouldn’t he solicit help from that community? All David Mauro did was campaign. He tapped a bigger network. When you realized he was catching up (after a huge lead out of the gate,) suddenly self-promotion (which is what the contest intended) and community promotion was unfair.
I really didn’t come to be antagonistic and I truly wish you all well. Congratulations to CollegeScholarships.org for supplying all the elements for a traffic battle and a grudge match.
I’m moving on. (Really….I mean it this time.)
The people at CollegeScholarships intended this to be a “who can do the best self-promotion” contest? Really? It isn’t a scholarship for excellence in blogging? News to me.
That is NOT all he did. You don’t have to admit it, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
This is not an excuse.
there was–
yes 🙂
Me? What?
It was not, because you’re cutting the rest of the context: this is about claiming that people are attacking, that there’s an us/them divide, that Dave’s been placing his name everywhere, and generally fanning the fires of blog war.
I really have to agree that the use of IP Filtering to control the voting is absurd. Someone with the knowledge to use proxies and macros could easily sway voting so tremendously in the final stages.
Like picking up 7,500 votes in a day?
What it most disturbing about this whole “us vs. them” mentality on Kos is how many genuine baseball fans there are on all sides of the political spectrum. Additionally, if you use any of the links on Dailykos, it automatically lets you vote again and again and again.
Keith Olbermann and Nate Silver have horsehide and hickory in common with George Will and the President. It is our national pastime and pretending that M’s fans are all reactionary noodleheads is beyond the pale.
This is my first post. I have enjoyed this blog for quite some time and I happily donated a sawbuck to the cause. If you do not win it outright, I hope other folks are moved to help you with your college debt.
is this about right?
David C. posts on his blog that he has been told he is a finalist for the scholarship and would appreciate votes from his readers. He gets off to a very comfortable lead thanks to his readers. These readers mention his scholarship chance on their own blogs. These include Geoff Baker of the Times and Rob Neyer of ESPN, who post brief comments about his opportunity on their respective blog pages–- Baker makes a point to encourage readers to look at all the nominated blogs, and vote for the one they think best. These are only posted once.
Nov 10th David M. posts on his blog that he has been told he is a finalist for the scholarship and would appreciate votes from his readers, and invites them to a facebook event. Regular readers of David M’s blog mention his scholarship chance on their own blogs. David M. puts up a dKos diary, and emails Kos about the scholarship, which results in an open thread mention, telling readers to go vote for ‘the only progressive’. He also puts up a second diary which asks the readers of Kos to ’smurf’ the vote for him. His numbers begin to spike upwards, moving him up to 2nd place in 2 days.
Nov. 15th David C. puts up a reminder, which includes the comment that the highly-read dKos has weighed in, and that they know how to get out the vote.
Nov. 15th a diarists puts up the fabled ‘he called us a mob’ diary, and David M. moves into 1st place overnight.
Things generally fly all to hell after that.
Dave puts up a post wishing the whole thing was over.
David M. continues to put up diaries and others on the site also donate diaries, urging readers to vote for ‘one of us’. By the final day of the vote, about 36 different diaries and mentions in the open threads are put up for David M., on a site that generally gets about a million hits per day.
I can’t find any actual rules to this on the contest web site. Who knows? It might backfire.
As a longtime USSM and DailyKos reader I have to say I’ve very dissapointed by the actions over at DailyKos. I really think both Kos and Mauro owe Dave an apology. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration for my Colorado Rapids blog (View From the Couch) from what USSM has done. Soccer doesn’t have nearly as many stats as baseball (Though Beane is going to try to create Moneyball for the Earthquakes like he did for the A’s) but I’ve tried to take an analytical approach to the Rapids like Dave and company have done for the M’s and if I had been thinking about it I should have put a link to to urge people to vote to repay Dave for some of that. I’m just sorry Kos had to make this a political fight.
Personally, I’m just ready for this to go away.
I’ll happily donate to Dave’s scholarship fund. Everything I did at sonicscentral was inspired by what this blog is … when we were kicking ideas around for a site a USS Mariner for Sonics fans was always what I wanted … this has always been one of the finest blogs on the net for any topic.
Kos posters are no different than the ranting righties they claim to despise, proving once again that idiocy knows no political allegiance.
I try to donate to USSM once or twice a year, even if it’s just a few bucks, so what better time than right now?
Dave and Derek, thank you. You guys do awesome work, and all you’ve ever asked in return is that we cast a vote, consider donating to a cancer fundraiser, and buy Derek’s book — and maybe throw in a few bucks for a beer.
I imagine Dave doesn’t want this to turn into some sort of fundraiser for him, but let me just say: I’d like to see how many of the people who voted for Mr. Mauro respect his work enough to pay him for it. 🙂
Yeah, time to move on, people.
Dave, FWIW, we appreciate that you didn’t try to turn this into something it’s not. The quality of your work definitely deserved first place in this contest – we did what we could.
That being said, I came here to post that we should really set up our own “scholarship” for Dave, and I’m not surprised to see I’m not the only one with that idea…
My thoughts exactly…I know Dave would never ask for this and take this on, but I’m more than ready to throw my $5 or so in. I’ll do it with the general paypal button – but I would love to see someone track this so we can do it right. No comments, no blog wars, just a progress bar and some extra dough for Dave’s college.
Delete this comment. Thanks.