Rejected From the Carnivals

It's only Wednesday and this has already been a bad week for Interested-Participant. My submission for the Carnival of the Vanities was rejected because the host had already received enough entries to keep him busy. This week's host, Dr. Zen at yeah whatever, showed some consideration by notifying me via email with the caveat that if I'm "really ticked off," he would reconsider.

Well, I'm not really ticked off, but I am somewhat chafed, especially since my rejection from the CotV followed right on the heels of being rejected from the Carnival of the Capitalists. However, unlike Dr. Zen who notified me by email that he was swamped and, therefore, rejecting my entry, this week's CotC host, TJ at TJ's Weblog, wasn't as considerate. There was no email. Instead, after the CotC had been posted for the better part of a day, I looked for my entry only to find I'd been rejected because my post wasn't good enough. Since over 20 other bloggers also submitted unacceptable posts, I don't feel singled out, but I do feel insulted. I was scratched from a competition that I didn't enter and I don't even know why. The best I can figure is that my post was unacceptable because it wasn't what TJ liked this week. Frankly, I think it's a fairly turd-worthy way to treat fellow bloggers.

I suspect that my rejections from this week's carnivals have little to do with the content of my specific entries and everything to do with the actual work involved with putting the carnival together. Over the past two years, I've frequently seen comments and, occasionally, complaints about the time required to collect, format, insert links, check links, and publish the carnivals. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing difficult about hosting. In fact, it's relatively easy, but quite time consuming. The host has to track down the entry, read it, extract a portion or write something descriptive, place it on his blog, insert links, check links, and then go on to the next of possibly 50 or more entries. Doing all this stuff, my own experience was spending approximately 16 hours over the two to three days before publication. I don't know if that's representative, however, I do know that hosting the carnival consumes many hours. That said, I think that some hosts are not aware of the time required and they put things off until the last minute and get deluged. Dr. Zen said as much. TJ, on the other hand, seems to have an agenda to turn the CotC into a competition. That would be fine as long as the rules were announced beforehand.

Above all, the hosts of the carnivals deserve thanks and recognition for volunteering to do a laborious task from which many bloggers benefit. Nonetheless, it must be emphasized that hosts need to block out a significant number of hours from their schedules to complete the carnival on time. This is particularly important information for those with packed schedules already.