EDIT:

Due to “differences of opinion” regarding the final comment count, the second place winner has decided to remove herself from the running. As such, the new prize winners are as follows:

Diana – 1st place
Kathleen – 2nd place
Mariella – 3rd place

And just for the record, here’s how the comments were counted up:

1. WordPress has a lovely little feature on the back-end, that lists all of the comments posted to my blog in chronological order. That’s not something you have the luxury of seeing from the front-end, and it’s not available elsewhere (I believe the RSS for comments only shows 10 for example).

2. I went through that list 5 times for the top two commenting on the blog, because I knew it was likely close. That’s how I came up with the total post counts mentioned for them.

3. This morning I went through the entire list, pulling all posts made from December 1st – December 31st. I wrote down the name of every commenter for the month, and went back through the list another time ticking each name for every total comment (again verifying my initial counts on the top two posters as well).

4. I then went through the individual comments (YET AGAIN) for the top 5 people, writing down all questionable comments (according to the rules set forth in the beginning), including what post each comment in question was on.

5. I made my judgment call on which comments to eliminate from each person (following the same guidelines for all – I was far more lenient than I had to be). If I’d followed things more strictly, the winner would have lost 2 more posts, the (original) second place person would have lost several more than that, and everyone else in the running would have been the same. Either way, it didn’t have any effect over who the final three were, or in what order they were placed.

I’m only clarifying the process, because I’ve been accused of either lying or not being able to count (and hey… I studied enough advanced mathematics while studying engineering before my current line of work to be able to handle basic counting, especially when I check my work in more than triplicate, compared to people counting from the front end where you’re not able to easily pull up comments made on old posts – and there were several during this contest). I also had claims that comments simply weren’t showing up (quite a few from one person). I verified the poster’s IP address against my server stats, and they didn’t support the claim – on top of that, you would know immediately after posting if a comment didn’t go live, because you’re taken to it after posting. It’s the poster’s responsibility to contact me as soon as there’s a problem – not after the fact when the final numbers are in. Anyone who was concerned about things saying they were in “moderation” – that’s only the case when you first post under a different name (which several people have done here at different times). Everything had been approved as soon as I next logged in. No legitimate comments that followed the rules of the contest were unaccounted for. End of story. I hope that at least most of you will agree that altering results in a contest isn’t a “fair” option just on someone’s word that things didn’t appear, while others invested just as much (if not more) time participating according to the terms of the contest, especially when the evidence (lovely things called “facts”) don’t back it up.

I will say that after the drama of this count, there will under no circumstances be more contests related to commenting. I’ll still find ways to give things away to loyal readers and participants in the blog though. I’m not going to completely hold one person’s actions against everyone else. We’ll just figure out another way to do it.