PinoyMoneyTalk.com

Buzz: PinoyMoneyTalk (PMT) — that’s us! — won the People’s Choice Award for the Blogs category in the recently concluded 10th Philippine Web Awards (PWA). Woot! We thank all PMT members and supporters who voted for us.

Yeah we know, the People’s Choice Award is not necessarily the people’s choice but nevertheless it says something about the people of PMT. (By the way, we didn’t pay anyone to vote for us. LOL.)

We wholeheartedly share this trophy to all who supported and continue to support PinoyMoneyTalk.

Bust: Apparently, the names of the winners were not engraved in the trophies yet so all winners have to return the awards so that the PWA organizers can have the website names and URLs etched on the trophies. They promised, however, to return the trophies in less than a month.

Buzz: We also want to congratulate the rest of the winners of the 10th PWA. Whether we (including us, that is) deserve the award or not, still.. congrats!

Bust: It seems one group of winners took the web awards very seriously to the point that they paid for full-page ads to appear in major newspapers to announce that their sites won. I’m pretty sure the cost of those ads were more expensive than the annual hosting costs of all their sites. Alien? Alien!

More Bust: For the nth time, the Philippine Web Awards is again besieged by problems. Just a few days ago, the winner of Best Website and People’s Choice Awards for the Arts & Portfolio Category (www.einsteinarts.com) was disqualified and the award revoked after the owner was accused of plagiarism.

Apparently, the design of the winning site was based on a website template being sold online.  The webmaster insists, however, that the similarity was not “intentional.” He explains that he got hold of the template as part of a CD archive of design templates given to him and he merely adapted and modified the template for his site. He voluntarily returned the trophies.

Here is PWA’s official statement regarding the issue.

Several PWA entrants also pointed out concerns which, up to now, are not addressed by the organizers.

One finalist identified a few “irregularities” regarding contest judges and their supposed involvement in some participating websites.

Some of the final judges do have direct relationship with current website entries. I think this is very wrong with every competition.

Another finalist complained about the technical bugs of the SMS voting system:

One thing that discouraged me is the SMS voting, our site was assigned number xx for Sms voting but when we sent our vote, there’s no reply and our vote has not been counted. Very frustrating, why it had to be that way. We try to vote for other LGU’s and it did, our votes are accepted. Ano ba yan?

One entrant inquired about the status of the SMS voting promotion which will supposedly award weekly prizes to SMS voters:

I am still awaiting your response regarding the scores and sms tally of votes. Please be reminded that your txt voting and txt promotion falls under the jurisdiction of the DTI, may I suggest you read up on the rights of the consumer to know the results of any corporate promotion… unless of course you did this all illegally and DID NOT secure a DTI permit. To date, there has been no mention of winners of the so-called weekly draws in your website or any of the local papers.

A few also expressed disappointment and disillusionment in the Philippine Web Awards because of all these unresolved issues.

We have raised issues concerning credibility of the Philippine Web Awards, their judges and the rules itself that PWA set, voicing out our concerns EVEN BEFORE the Awards proper. We have joined this contest to take chances of our works merit their standards, I REITERATE, our colleagues’ STANDARDS.

Unfortunately, after issues have been raised and no clear resolutions from the PWA committee, we firmly believe that the Philippine web industry NEEDS a better award giving body to honor designers’ ingenuity, craftsmanship and hard work. But not to an organization based on profit.

Firm in my stand, that after I have found out discrepancies and irregularities, I make it clear that we will not join Philippine Web Awards again.

Will the Philippine Web Awards survive another awards year? We’ll find out next year.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 2:27 am and is filed under Philippine Internet Scene. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.