Bloggers Express Concerns Over PBA’s Judges Panel

by Ahmed Rayyan

Bloggers have expressed their concern over the Judges’ qualification of Pakistan Blog Awards (PBA) having no or little expertise of social media in the technical and content sides.

They believe that the judgment could never be reliable if panel members are mainly sponsors, members of civil society and media celebrities.

The judges do not know about search engine optimization, design, content development, analytics etc, only some of the key metrics for what the blogging industry is known for, a renowned blogger who won first blog awards and writes on technology said.

There were 23 judges included in the panel of second Pakistan Blog Awards contested by 310 bloggers on 31 different categories.

There was no transparency on how these judges were selected and what are the criteria? If the criteria were being a sponsor then the results are sponsor-biased. This is damaging for the industry.

The judgment of the blog awards disappointed bloggers because awards were given to bloggers having very mediocre work on the content, another blogger who won award in the first blog award said.

Particularly in Urdu category, the blog award jury’s decision was surprising and out of expectation of leading Urdu bloggers mostly compete each other throughout the year, he added.

Judges from Sponsors

Naveed Siraj, Intel Pakistan

Rabia Nizami, Nokia Pakistan

Nubla Iftikhar, Dell Pakistan

Aamir Ibrahim, Telenor

Obviously Sponsors must have given honour for nominated them as judges whether they are nothing to do with technical features or value of content 

Judges from Media

Fasih Ahmed, Newsweek Pakistan

Zeeshan Haider, BBC Urdu

Leila Safira,JakartaFashion Week/Cleo Magazine

Ali Haris, Disney

Wasi Shah, PTV

Anis Sheikh, Dunya Tv

Judges from the media are competent to assess the quality of contents on different blogs. These judges are not well names but one should understand a host of comedy show or business program is not best suitable judge for blog selection.

Judges

Amir Jehangir, Mishal

Farhan Ibrahim, OraclePakistan

Poppy Agha, Culinary Chef/ Dawn TV

Fredrick Noronha, Bytesforall.org

Kofi Hagan, UICL

Zafar Khan, Sofizar

Turi Munthe, Demotix

Dr.Wardah Jawdat, Medical Practioner/Writer

Monis Rehman, Naseeb Networks

Professor Hassan Abbas, Columbia University/National Defense University

Abbas Ali Khan, Musician

Mohtashim Ahmed, IT Tazee

Abbas Akhtar, Vidpk.com

There are strange judges also in the above list who might be knowing about blogshpere culture of the country.