Dr. Awab Alvi is a very well known man in the blogging industry and also the political world of today. He is the founder of TeethMaestro, a blog I’ve been following since 2007. He is also one of the most prominent orthodontists of Pakistan. Faisal Kapadia, no not the singer from Strings, is the author of the book “The Sands Of Time” and also a new media writer for a lot of big names including Dawn and many others.

Now why is a tech blog talking about political activists and journalists? Because Pakistan Blog Awards 2011 happened and left a slew of issues behind. And since we were a part of the Blog Awards, I feel like I should have a say in this debate.

The Issue: The News?

The problem began as soon as the “Best Current Affairs” category award was given to “The News”. The site is also called “ZaViews AKA The News” (goodness grief), hence a lot of people of this category were first shocked as to how a blog that wasn’t even nominated could win the entire category! Turned out, the blog was indeed nominated but with a different name, hence “ZaViews”.

Okay So ZaViews Won, What’s The Problem?

The problem is, Pakistan Blog Awards gave the award to someone who actually shouldn’t even be nominated according to PBA’s guidelines in point number 5, which reads:

Submitted blogs and posts should contain the necessary authorization to use the images, audio, text and other content.

Now when I first visited ZaViews, I thought “Ok this is an up and coming blog which could very well be big in the future, a change of theme here, a domain name there, and you have a winner”. But upon further inspection of the articles posted on the blog, I saw that every post is copied from someone else. Being a blogger for over 5 years now, I despise plagiarism and everything that relates to it. This is the ONE AND ONLY reason why I think this blog shouldn’t even be nominated, because it spreads plagiarized content. It is against the ethics of blogging and is an act that can’t be done shamelessly.

About Faisal’s Remark

Faisal Kapadia makes a point in the debate, he says the blog “ZaViews” has had a total of 19,000 views. I agree it is a very weak number. But it’s not about that, the Blog Awards was not merely based on views and ranking. Had it been based on that, I wouldn’t even have submitted TechDeville, we get around 4000 views per day, but compared to RedmondPie none of the blogs get more views or are ranked better than them. Had it been merely about numbers and ranks, a huge number of blogs wouldn’t even be interested in the event. This was about bringing out the new talent, people who deserved to be recognized. I pay immense attention to the content TechDeville has because I don’t want to be responsible of making another “copy paste blog”.

TechDeville Won Dude, Why Are You Even Talking Right Now?

Because I’m not talking about just one part of our community. Our blogging community is huge and is growing by the minute. But we definitely can not support any blog or website that solely promotes plagiarized material. CIO, PC World, Google, these are BIG names, and such names can not associate themselves with a “spam” blog. Speaking from experience, Google has an endless list of very strict rules against such blogs, which is a good thing. I side with Faisal Kapadia, but not because ZaViews has had 19000 views, but because it is a blog running on someone else’ work.

If you talk about ethics, content is king. PakTeaHouse has a plethora of original content which was unjustly ignored by the judges’ panel. Everyone makes mistakes, but they should at least answer to the questions and criticism, not from the sore losers but from the real genuine winners who never got the award they deserved. Yasser Latif, the co-editor of PTH, wrote an open letter to CIO and PC World, which is still unanswered. The letter poses straightforward questions towards the “ZaViews Incident”. You can read it here.

Is PBA Wrong For Doing This?

For giving the award to a copy paste blog when there are so many other good blogs, yes. For bringing something totally new and different for the youth, no. Everyone makes mistakes, I applaud CIO and PC World for arranging such an extravagant event and give us Pakistani Bloggers something to look forward to every year. I am sure there is a reasonable explanation as to why “ZaViews” won.

All of these people arguing and taking part in hating PBA don’t understand one fact, there was no such platform for bloggers before. No awards, no appreciation, none of it was brought forward by any of these so called “haters”. No one is putting a gun to their heads to nominate in the blog awards. PBA should grow, better and stronger. But they should answer the question regarding “ZaViews”.