Just a few changes here at VARbuzz we want make you aware of:

• For those of you who subscribe by e-mail, you may have noticed that the daily e-mail digest now contains the post author’s name. This took a little bit of blog magic on the part of VAR’s Editor & Information Manager, Andrew Kantor.
• In recognition of Andrew’s many contributions to VARbuzz over these past few months, he is taking over the reins as the VARbuzz Blogmaster. I’ll continue contributing to VARbuzz of course, but Andrew will now be the point man on the blog, including comment moderation (so let’s give him a nice welcome: everyone comment on this post two or seven times!). Unwilling to simply ride into the sunset, I’m taking the oh-so-venerable title of Blogmaster Emeritus.
• Under Andrew’s reign, 2009 will bring some exciting changes to VARbuzz.  For one thing, we’re going to redesign the site and add some new features. For another thing, we’ll host a nation-wide Blog Brawl in March with fabulous prizes. Still another thing, we’ll be doing more contests like the Blog Brawl, but less — shall we say — intense for the participants.

Okay, now show Andrew how much you love him. Start leaving those multiple comments.

Well, that post subject pretty much says it all.

VAR is stretching the longest-running series of peer-to-peer learning experiences specifically for real estate bloggers, but instead of holding Virginia Real Estate BloggerCon 4.0, we’re getting on board with the national REBarCamp movement. So mark your calendars for March 3, 2009 for a full day of bloggers teaching bloggers at the Fredericksburg Area Association of REALTORS®.

FAAR is offering up their state of the art classroom for our use, including (of course) free wifi. Several hotels with reasonable rates are available just a few blocks away from FAAR’s offices for those who may be traveling in from a distance. Exact details are still being ironed out, but here’s what we’ve got so far:

• Date: March 3, 200
• Time: 10 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. (tentative)
• Location: FAAR (map)

Remember, even if you weren’t chosen as the VARbuzz Blog Brawl winner, you can still attend Inman’s Real Estate Connect NY, and at a hefty discount! Just click over to www.VARealtor.com/ICNY09 for a special deal on registration. Use the discount code “VAR08″ to score your $150 price reduction!

*** CLICK HERE TO VOTE IN THE FINALS! ***
Update: Voting now ends MONDAY, December 8, 2008 at 8:00 a.m. EST!

All right, ladies and gents, let’s try this again. As promised, here’s the ‘re-do’ of the Blog Brawl semi-finals.

Here are the rules:

1. Behave ethically. Behave so that if everyone else found out what you did, you wouldn’t be embarrassed.

2. Feel free to beg or bribe for votes from others in the real-estate community (we know you will), but do not make wholesale offers or requests to the general public, other than through your blog. In other words, if you’re going to ask for votes, ask people you know or at least have a connection to.

3. Do not use any kind of tool, site, program, or whatever that casts votes on your behalf. This includes, but is not limited to, vote-automating scripts, messing with browser-refresh settings, and employing services that allow you to acquire votes.

If you do not understand these rules, or are trying to think of loophole-ish ways around them, please see rule #1 again.

That said…

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We’ve discovered the source of the voting irregularities we’ve seen in the last few rounds of the Blog Brawl.

In the first round, we found that someone had written a script to automate the voting process. We were able to weed out those votes, and let everyone know about it — and how we felt strongly that it violated the spirit of the blogging contest. (Hence, our little ‘cheater’ videos.)

After that, though, we continued to find irregularities, but nothing as large-scale and obvious as the scripting. We did notice, though, that there were a large number of votes being cast from outside the U.S.

It turned out that there was a completely separate, er, process at work. We were tipped off by a person in Italy (!) that someone was paying people to cast votes for one of our competitors using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. While this is not cheating — you can’t cheat in a competition that doesn’t really have rules — we (and everyone we’ve talked to about it) think, like the scripting, paying the worldwide public en masse to cast votes violates the spirit of the Brawl.

After speaking with this competitor, we know for a fact that the system was set up by an outside party, not the blogger. Still, this person has agreed to withdraw from the Blog Brawl, and we appreciate the spirit of fair play.

Which leaves us with the question of how to finish the Brawl in a way that balances fairness with expediency (our winners will need to make travel arrangements, after all).

We have decided to re-run the Blog Brawl semi-finals. The contestants are…

Zone 1: Hampton Roads Virginia Real Estate (“Tina in Virginia”) vs. Virginia Real Estate News (Brian Block)

Zone 2: LoCo Musings (Heather Elias) vs. NRV Living (Jeremy Hart) [who would have advanced in the second round if not for the Turk votes]

The voting form will be up later this afternoon, and will end on Wednesday at 11:59 p.m., EST.

Hey! Voting is open! Both of our contestants are getting a free registration to Inman’s Real Estate Connect NY. So, what’s at stake in the finals? How about one thousand dollars and the overall number one seed in the national Real Estate Blog Brawl (March 2009)?

Remember, don’t be a turkey: One vote per IP address. Get your friends, family, neighbors and complete strangers to vote for your favorite finalist and send them to the Big Apple with a big wad of cash.

Vote. NOW!

While I waited for Ben to get back, I was able to narrow down the, um, let’s call it a “statistical anomaly.” So I’m confident we have a clean result.

What is the result? Watch and see. (And this was edited in a rush — apologies for any weirdness.)

  …I can’t release them till Ben gets back later this afternoon.

Almost 1200 people voted votes were cast, which has to be some sort of record. I ran a couple of statistical analyses on them, and found that yeah, there was something funky going on. But there’s only so much time I’m willing to devote to figuring out whether and how anyone cheated.

Next time, though, we’ll have a different voting system to avoid any questions.

In the meantime, I’ve got my video editor fired up while I wait for Ben and Jovan (“the talent”) to arrive.

Stay tuned — I think at least a few people are going to be surprised by the results.

http://varbuzz.com/virginia-real-estate-blog-brawl-semi-finals-voting-is-open/