SIVACRACY.NET

One day during the 2007 Weblog Awards voting period (over now), I visited the site from three very different IP addresses (two from different states and once from a different country altogether), but using the same computer. I agree with August Pollack about the worthlessness of the Weblog Awards, especially when he says:

...They're a bunch of pointless, arbitrary annual exercises in who can get the most traffic to click a link as many times as possible. If that's the arbiter of quality on the internet I remain ecstatic I am not involved with them in any way. I have no intention to vote in them, could care less who wins, feel sorry for anyone who actually celebrates "winning" one as if it's an actual accomplishment, and continue to hope that none of my readers ever thinks I would consider it some kind of honor to be nominated for one. That several progressive blogs actually consider casting legitimacy on this project founded by some conservative bloggers by endorsing it both amazes and saddens me. ...

See also Brian Leiter's comments. Nevertheless, I have friends who had blogs nominated, so I dutifully supported them when they asked me to. The rules allow you to vote once per category per day. Since voting in the Weblog Awards was never the most important thing in my life, some days I forgot to vote, and other days I'd stupidly attempt to vote a second time. Because I use a Firefox browser with options that are supposed to clear all cookies and the cache file whenever I close it, I assumed the Weblog Awards made sure I only voted once per day per category by tracking my IP address. So one day whilst traveling I was surprised to see that the Weblog Awards effectively prevented me from multiple voting from second and third IP addresses, despite my browser privacy settings. Somehow my laptop itself was being tracked, either with a cookie placed somewhere other than the cookie file that Firefox is supposed to empty for me, or some other way I haven't thought of. After I noticed this was happening, I put a fair amount of effort into trying to figure out how they were accomplishing this, but was unsuccessful. I can understand that the Weblog Awards people want to bring as much integrity to the voting process as is feasible, but just as they don't trust me to vote only once per category per day, I don't trust them generally. I'd like to know where that cookie (or whatever) is, whether they or their advertisers are still using it to track my computer, and how to get rid of it. Anyone have any input?