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In September of 2002, cockeyed.com was nominated for an award in the Northern California web awards, also known as the Dotties. A sub-contest was the People's Choice award, featuring online voting. Online voting is not an easy system to keep honest, so contests use codes and email response to ensure they only get one vote per person.
My father complained that the voting procedure was frustrating, mostly because of the long ID#s used in the email verification process, i.e. D43DDE2A-1971-4501-B38FG73FEIEIO. To help people with this problem (and to coerce people into voting) I captured a series of screenshots at the Dotties website and created the "How to Copy and Paste" instructional site.
This was hugely successful, Cockeyed.com got tons of votes, and I went on to win this great honor and trophy. Of course, even with the finest "how to vote" instructions in the world, winning required the support of many, many fans, which I greatly appreciate.
At the beginning of April, 2003, I found out that Cockeyed.com had been nominated for a Webby Award, in the Category of Personal Web Page. This contest also has a "People's voice" component, so I quickly set about setting up another "how to vote for Cockeyed.com in the Webby Awards" Page.
This was working great, and Cockeyed.com quickly took the lead as the number one vote-getter on the Webby Award Personal website voting results page. The comments section has also been filling up with great feedback, which I appreciate.
On April 25th, Tara called and asked if I could load www.wethepeoplemd.com, a website that was leading the write-ins for the people's voice voting for the Community category. The site wasn't coming up on her computer. She wanted to see wethepeoplemd.com because of a curious comment left about it in the comments section (all-caps image below).
I visited the wethepeoplemd.com site, and found an interesting page that bills itself as a Non-Profit, Non-Partisan community action organization established to give a voice to the citizens of Prince George's County regarding issues of importance to their families.
Prince George's County is in Maryland.
After the flash introduction I discovered something funny. The webmaster at wethepeoplemd.com had also posted a feature on "how to vote for wethepeoplemd.com". The page used the same format and some of the same images as the cockeyed.com version.
The text is nearly identical.
Where Cockeyed.com has:
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Second, type in some information about yourself, including your name and email address. Those are the only bits that are required. You may also include your Title, Company, Address, City, State, Zip, country, telephone, age, gender, income, education, number of years online, and how you heard about the people's voice awards. Be sure to uncheck the box for "I want tons of Norton Anti-virus spam sent to my email address". Click Submit. |
Wethepeoplemd has:
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Step Two: You may also include your title, company, address, city, state, zip, country, telephone, age, gender, income, education, number of years online, and how you heard about the people's voice awards. This information is optional and does not affect your eligibility to vote. Click the submit button.
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Where Cockeyed.com has:
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After you have voted, you will be able to view the current voting results for the people's voice awards. Hopefully the orange bar under cockeyed.com will be one of the longest. |
Wethepeoplemd.com has
| After you have voted, you will be
able to view the current voting results for the people's voice awards.
Its up to you and others like you to ensure that the orange bar under We The People is the longest. |
I was kind of angry, but also proud that my work had been imitated so closely. I poked around on their site, trying to ascertain who the webmaster was, who was responsible for the imitation.
I found the name of the webmaster, from Bowie Maryland, and thought he might be the culprit, then I realized that the location of wethepeoplemd sounded familiar... Prince George's Sound County...
Yes. It was the constituency of Jack Johnson. Subject of Jackjohnson2002.com, leading Webby awards write-in candidate in the in the category of personal websites. My competition.
I visited the site and found another duplicate "How to vote for
cockeyed.com JackJohnson2002.com in the Webby Awards"
at the top of the page. My amusement gelled into anger.
How could this politician from Maryland use my own how-to device to gather votes in direct competition against me? I guess the voting process is less-than-sacred in Prince George's County, even for JackJohnson2002.com, a site representing a man that calls himself a "a drum major for justice".
Please examine the two images below. On the left is my original, copyrighted version and on the right is the version that JackJohnson2002.com has posted. Note the cropping in the screen-shots, the removal of cockeyed.com comedy and the addition of patriotic colors and icons. Click on these small versions to see view the full-sized image if you wish.
| The Original
How to vote for Cockeyed.com in the Webby Awards |
The Copycat
How to vote for jackjohnson2002.com in the Webby Awards |
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I just need to dust the Jackjohnson2002.com site for fingerprints, and I'll have a case.
I'm upset by this, and I hope Jack Johnson 2002.com doesn't win. I also hope the other write-in candidates
that hijacked the cockeyed.com instructions do not win anything, including:
Wethepeoplemd.com, leading write-in
candidate in the Community category.
www.weblobbying.com, leading write-in candidate
in the Activism category.
On the other hand, maybe I should look beyond this vote, and consider the
bigger picture... How about a write-in campaign for Rob Cockerham - County
Executive of Prince George's County, Maryland?
Home | Register to vote in the Webby awards | Webby awards | Dottie awards | Contact Rob
Last updated April 28th, 2003.
