Nominees and paper magazines
Odd. SF Book.com posted a list of Hugo nominees, and editorialized about the Best Web Site category that the nominees "are usually the web version of a paper magazine or similar," adding that they're "'just' some banner infested web site geared towards selling the paper version of a magazine." Which is just bizarre, given that only one of the sites in question (Locus Online) is even affiliated with a paper magazine. I suppose the person who posted (apparently the site's owner) is probably referring to the paper-magazines' sites that are hosted at SF Site. At any rate, it's also odd that he claims that the sites "don't have . . . the option for visitor participation that SFBook.com has"; at least three of the nominated sites have prominent discussions by readers posted. Apparently what he means is that SFBook.com is a blog, which the nominated sites are not, and thus dependent on visitor participation for quality.
All of which wouldn't really be worth mentioning except that it makes me wonder how many other people think similar things. I haven't seen much discussion of the nominees as such by people who aren't directly involved with (or dedicated readers of) one or more of the sites; I wonder if there's a general perception that these sites are all about selling paper magazines.