Sasquan, the 2015 Worldcon, reports it had 10,036 members on July 15.
The con added 260 members in the first two weeks of July — 60% of them buying supporting memberships. A $40 supporting membership is the minimum requirement to become eligible as a voter in 2017 site selection or to vote on the winners of the Hugo Awards.
Sasquan’s 10,036 member figure includes 4,047 attending and 5,539 supporting members.
LonCon 3, last year’s Worldcon still holds the record of 11,125 total members. But its tally of 2,882 supporting members, then a record, has been surpassed by Sasquan.
Sasquan has sold 3,774 supporting memberships since January 31.
Here is how the new totals compare with the figures on June 30:
| Sasquan Total Members | |
| 6/30/2015 | 9,776 |
| 7/15/2015 | 10,036 |
| Increase | 260 |
| Adult Attending Members | |
| 6/30/2015 | 3,945 |
| 7/15/2015 | 4,047 |
| Increase | 102 |
| Supporting Members | |
| 6/30/2015 | 5,410 |
| 7/15/2015 | 5,539 |
| Increase | 129 |
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Holy moly, that’s a lot of supporting members.
This is good news. Now if only a majority of those people will NOMINATE for next year. Also, I doubt very much if these people, or even most of them, are Canines. What’s the old adage about awakening sleeping giants?
I make that 3591 supporting members since nominations were announced, and I’d agree that a very high proportion of those are probably signing up in reaction to the noms. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what opinion of the slates they hold….
I’m one of the supporting members–just filled out my Hugo ballot today (online), and voted for the site selection (will snailmail on Tuesday when I’m in town next)–and I joined entirely because of the puppies. I am one of the “No Award” instead of slate nominations–of course I don’t know how representative I am. Am also keeping a list of nominations for next year, though there are some areas I just don’t follow (luckily, this area is not one I tend to be completist about!).
Mark: My first inclination was to assume everybody was joining to vote on the Hugos, then I did some research and found site selection with Eastern US cities involved (like DC17 this time) pull big numbers of votes — historically, a multiple of the Hugo vote. So it’s still up in the air what these people joined to do.
In general, I’ve been using a January 31 benchmark because if you weren’t a Sasquan supporting member by then, you weren’t eligible to nominate for the Hugos so presumably were joining to vote on the Hugo final ballot or in site selection.
Mike: I hadn’t considered site selection, so that’s quite interesting. If course, they could be joining for both.
I joined as a supporting member with the notion that I would nominate next year, not vote this year. Then I went insane and voted this year anyway. I also voted in the site selection.
I didn’t intend to simply “no award” all the puppy-dominated categories, but after reading them, that’s pretty much what happened. If they’d nominated good stuff… well, if wishes were horses we’d be knee-deep in manure, so just as well they didn’t.
To nominate for next year only, would it not make more sense to buy a supporting membership for the Worldcon that would be taking place in 2016? That’s how it works, right? I am thinking I might want to do that, you see, since I have a better-paying job now and there are some very hype books coming out later this year that I might want to nominate. (Not to mention all the short fiction, of course. Actually I was very disappointed that this slate foolishness prevented a lot of genuinely brilliant short SFF from last year from having a fair shot at noms.)
Tangenting from the short-fiction thing, I really do appreciate when authors put up eligibility posts, on account of how the hell else do you expect me to remember what was published when and at what wordcounts? Was genuinely surprised to discover a while back that this was apparently controversial.
Zil: I really do appreciate when authors put up eligibility posts, on account of how the hell else do you expect me to remember what was published when and at what wordcounts? Was genuinely surprised to discover a while back that this was apparently controversial.
For the most part, it mainly seems to be “controversial” with Puppies who use it to (falsely) claim that they did nothing different.
Although I have seen a few non-Puppies who’ve said that they don’t like it, I have seen many, many people who (like you and me) say that they really appreciate it — both for the memory jog on what was published in which year, and the clarity on word length for category.
I didn’t intend to simply “no award” all the puppy-dominated categories, but after reading them, that’s pretty much what happened.
There is really no difference between “No Awarding” the slate nominees because they were slated and “No Awarding” the slate nominees based on quality.
There is really no difference between “No Awarding” the slate nominees because they were slated and “No Awarding” the slate nominees based on quality.
I strongly disagree with this statement. I read all the damned nominees and judged on quality. Simply “no awarding” them because they were on the slate would have meant I didn’t read the things. There’s a huge difference.
I read all the damned nominees and judged on quality.
I did too. It meant “No Awarding” all of the slated works because they were all that bad. After two years worth of reading the Puppy picks, I’m thinking I could save time next year by simply leaving them off my ballot without bothering to read them. They’ve put crap that ranges from mediocre to nigh-unreadable onto the ballot two years running now. That’s enough benefit of the doubt.
Someone affiliated with Sasquan needs to tell them the robots.txt file on the convention’s website is making search engines index nothing on the site:
http://sasquan.org/robots.txt
If they take the “/” out of the “Disallow: /” line, that will tell Google and other search engines to fully index the site.
rcade, it doesn’t need to be someone affiliated with Sasquan. They have contact information on the website, and from personal experience, I can tell you that it’s easy to find the contact information for the webmaster.
I.e., you should be able to do it yourself, especially since you appear to understand the problem and care about it.
Hmmm, I don’t recall voting for the site selection so I better check that out before the deadline. Helsinki is just a stone throw away (for a giant).
Hakan, I think the site selection vote has to be sent by actual physical mail, if I’m understanding what others have said correctly.
Site selection deadline is later (can’t remember when off the top of my head. 10th-ish?) and you can email a scan of your printed paper ballot.
It has to be on paper, but it doesn’t have to be posted.
Site selection is due August 10. I’d e-mail if you haven’t sent it snailmail already.
Morris Keesan: Using the site contact form was step 2 of my plan. I figured that posting my note here and on Kevin Standlee’s blog would likely reach a Sasquan muckety muck who understood the issue (and the urgency of getting into Google). I see somebody fixed the robots.txt problem.
Kevin Standlee hasn’t much more connection to the Web folk at Sasquan than any of the rest of us do. He’s in charge of the Business Meeting. Just as easy (easier probably) for you to do it since you understand the issue.
I’m not a Sasquan web site volunteer, so I can’t fix it myself. But if they need help in that area, I’d be happy to pitch in.
Site Selection voting by mail: The deadline for receipt of mail-in ballots, whether by postal mail or email, is 24:00 PDT on Monday, August 10, 2015.
Site Selection voting at Sasquan: Payments for voting fees may also be paid at Sasquan either by check, U.S. cash, or credit card, and voting will remain open during Sasquan through 6 p.m. PDT on Friday, August 21, 2015.
rcade on July 25, 2015 at 6:20 am said:
I passed on your comment to the convention’s webmasters. I still don’t understand why you didn’t simply write to them yourself, instead of posting about it in at least two places that were not likely to be seen by the Sasquan webmasters.
ULTRAGOTHA on July 25, 2015 at 1:02 pm said:
Indeed, and somehow it was easier for rcade to post both here and on my LJ, but it was impossibly difficult to e-mail [email protected], which is what I did. Frankly, I didn’t pull any “insider strings.” I wrote to the same e-mail that any other person could have used for reporting an issue. After that, it was out of my hands, and in the hands of the multiple people working to maintain the Sasquan web site.
Maybe some people are mistaking the title “Chairman of the Business Meeting” with “Chairman of the Worldcon Committee.” The two are rarely synonymous. The last time the same person held both simultaneously was me, back in 2002 when I co-chaired the convention and also chaired that year’s Business Meeting.
Rarely happens, but did afford everyone a jolly moment when L.A.con (1972) co-chair Bruce Pelz was chairing the business meeting, therefore Norman Spinrad knew where to find him to storm about the last-minute notice given for cancelling his kaffeeklatsch. For at the very moment hurricane Norman arrived, Harlan Ellison had the floor and interrupted him in the middle of courting the fans about a motion he wanted passed.
Mike: I may be wrong, but I think the 1972 case is the last time it happened until thirty years later when I held both roles. I didn’t have anyone gunning for me in one hat while wearing the other, though.
I don’t understand why you’re making a big deal out of this.
I helped Sasquan with a major website problem. The proper response to what I did is “thanks.”
Perhaps someone there would thank you if you’d communicated the issue to them rather than gone through an intermediary.
Instead, what you did was assume Kevin would help you help them, and now you’re annoyed that instead of him thanking you for going through him, he’s pointing out that you could have done it more directly.
The proper response to him helping you is also “thank you.” As is the proper response to him pointing out how, if need be in the future, you can easily get your suggestions to the right people.
No, I’m annoyed by the “impossibly difficult” crack, which was unnecessarily rude to someone who just found a major issue with the con’s website.
Besides, his snarky advice was dumb. Nobody blindly emails webmaster@[domain] expecting it to work, because most sites turn that address off. It gets flooded with spam all day long.
I could’ve used the contact form, but I thought the matter was urgent and tried other means first. I had no email addresses that I knew Sasquan people checked.
I hope this explanation is sufficient for my offense of helping Sasquan through improper channels. As much as I appreciate a File 770 colonic, I believe I am rehabilitated.
I spoke too soon. I am not rehabilitated. I have another major issue to report with the Sasquan website, and I’m going to post about it here instead of using proper channels.
A lot of the links to Sasquan.org now on Google have a URL that begins with “https:”, indicating the link is a secure connection, such as https://sasquan.org.
When you follow that particular link in Google Chrome, the browser displays an ominous warning message:
There’s more information from Chrome on why this is happening:
The only way to visit this page in Chrome is to disregard the warning and click a link with the text “Proceed to sasquan.org (unsafe).”
This error is happening because for some reason a request for the URL https://sasquan.org is loading https://swoc.us/ instead, which is the pre-2013 home page of the Seattle Westcon Organizing Committee. One domain’s security certificate can’t be used on another domain.
I’m not sure why this is occurring, but I bet the problem is in the Apache server configuration files for Sasquan’s webserver.
I would be happy to take a look, as long as I am contacted through the proper channels.
And yet, that’s just what he did, and it was apparently the right thing to do.
So now, rather than thanking him for helping you make what you wanted to happen happen, at a time that’s probably pretty busy for him, and for info on how to proceed in the future, you’re insulting him for suggesting that you could have done something that would have worked, on the grounds that it wouldn’t have worked.
I’m not sure that’s the “offense” here — me, I was struck that you wanted to be thanked by the guy who helped you and were annoyed to be told how you could have accomplished your goal even more directly. You seem to think Kevin Standee is Worldcon Man, and it’s not only his job to pass on your message (and thus deserving of no thanks) but his responsibility to speak for Worldcon by thanking you for helping them out.
You may know best. When your latest comment on the subject is to insult the guy who helped you out by saying it was dumb for him to tell you how you could have better proceeded, and you’re apparently still annoyed that he didn’t thank you for recruiting him to help out, I have my doubts. But it ain’t up to me nohow.
At least now you know a better way to go in the future, however enematic you may think the experience was and however annoyed you are at being given useful and workable information.
You’re really bad at speaking for me. You keep telling me what my thoughts are and getting it wrong.
I’m insulting him for being a dick to somebody who just helped Sasquan. If I get an error report that tells me I messed up and de-indexed MY ENTIRE SITE from Google, and explains exactly how I can fix it, I am nice to that person. They did me a huge favor.
The other stuff he did — tell me [email protected] is the email address to contact in the future instead of him — is great. Thank you so much, Kevin! You’re the best!
At no point there was I speaking for you or telling you what your thoughts were. You used words, whether thought was behind them or not, to say that his “snarky advice was dumb” and that nobody would expect it to work.
You are still equating Kevin and Sasquan here. You didn’t send Sasquan an e-mail; they got that e-mail from Kevin. Kevin did not mess up and de-index HIS ENTIRE SITE from Google. It’s not his entire website, nor is it even partially his website. You think he should be nice to you because you did him a huge favor. [Please note here that I’m directly restating your own statements, not trying to read your mind.] But you didn’t do him a favor. You roped him into helping you do Sasquan a favor.
Who is it you expect to thank you? You didn’t communicate with the people you did a favor for.
You’re angry at the guy who did communicate with them on your behalf. You said his advice on how you could have proceeded was dumb, even though it’s exactly what he did on your behalf.
Do you understand that Kevin is not Sasquan, that Sasquan is not Kevin, and your insistence that he should be nicer to you now that you’ve done him a favor is nonsense, because he’s the one who did you a favor? He helped you communicate with Sasquan, a group that, once again, is not him. A group you wanted to communicate with, and tried to do so by telling him (who is not Sasquan) stuff in the hopes he would pass it on.
You keep conflating Kevin and Sasquan, as if it’s his website — even saying that you’ve done him a “huge favor.”
You and Kevin have jointly done Sasquan a favor. That is not the same thing as doing Kevin a favor, huge or otherwise. It’s baffling that you keep conflating the two.
I think someone’s being a dick here, but perhaps in the light of reflection over the next few days, you’ll realize who it actually is. And it’s not about the entirely-laudable desire to help out Sasquan, but rather the behavior after someone who is not Sasquan both helped you out and told you how you could have reached them more directly and easily.
That’s exactly what you were doing.
First, you told me I was annoyed because of this reason: “instead of him thanking you for going through him, he’s pointing out that you could have done it more directly.” Wrong.
Next, you told me I insulted him because of this reason: “for suggesting that you could have done something that would have worked.” Wrong.
Finally, you said I think it’s Kevin’s job to pass along my message. Wrong.
Maybe there’s a better way to get your point across than to tell me what I think. I already know what I think.
You’re reading way too much into my personal statement about how I’d feel if someone found this error on my own website. It was not an attempt to suggest that Kevin Standlee and Sasquan are the same thing.
I do not believe a human being is a science-fiction convention.
Thank you for allowing me to clarify that, for the sake of anyone reading this who might be the world’s greatest imbecile.
Maybe. In that case, it’s a very poor analogy, because however grateful you might feel to the person who e-mailed you, in the case you were comparing it to, the person who e-mailed Sasquan was Kevin. Who not only is not a science fiction convention, but is not a representative of said convention.
But I think I’ve said what I had to say as clearly as it can be said. I’ll note that some of your claims here are incorrect, because you’re jumping right from me saying you seem to believe something (a statement about my own observation) to claiming I said you do believe that (nope; just how it appeared from outside).
However, rather than go deeper into the unpleasant whirlpools of “you didn’t accurately paraphrase me/no you,” I think I’ve communicated my point. Whether you’ve understood it or even want to, I have no idea and no control over.
So I’ll just leave it at that. Hope you have a good day, and I expect the folks at Sasquan are or will be pleased to have the information.
rcade, when you get in a hole, the best thing to do is stop digging instead of doubling-down.
From my point of view, as a person who doesn’t care a whole lot about the issue, you posted about this problem in forums technically unconnected to Sasquan. People suggested you contact Sasquan directly. Kevin did so for you, and was slightly snarky about the fact that you didn’t do it yourself. You then became insulted and demanded thanks for your help.
1) The fact that you apparently made no effort to contact Sasquan directly makes you seem lazy.
2) The fact that you are offended by people thinking you are lazy/being snarky about your apparent lack of effort makes you seem obnoxious.
3) The fact that you are doubling-down and arguing with Kurt Busiek about it makes you look foolish.
Right now, the best thing for you to do is get away from your keyboard for a few hours, think about how you are making yourself look to others, and consider your next posts very carefully. That’s all my opinion, by the way. Take it however you want.
rcade on July 26, 2015 at 3:21 pm said:
Here’s a bulletin for you: If you go to the Sasquan web site, then choose Convention Info, then Committee List, then Website and fill out the contact form, it goes to the exact same list of people to whom I e-mailed your original query. But rather than actually send your message to the people who actually do the work, you wanted me to copy it for you and send it to them on your behalf. Remarkably, you wanted to spend more effort to get someone else to do it for you. In fact, I did so, and after they had a technical discussion about it (there were potential reasons for not doing so that I will not discuss here; contact them if you are really that interested about it), they made a change. They weren’t required to do so. My sending it to them didn’t make it more likely that it would happen.
If you think your latest issue is important, I suggest you send it to Sasquan’s webmaster, who might actually be able to do something about it, since you now know how to contact them yourself. Guess what? I’m not the convention’s webmaster. I’m an area head in a completely separate division of the convention. As a courtesy to you, I passed it on, but I continue to be puzzled at you apparently thinking that posting your observations on F770 and my LiveJournal is more effective than actually doing something constructive.
BTW, if you have issues regarding this year’s WSFS Business Meeting, where I am in fact the area head who can do something about it, I encourage you to write to [email protected], which includes me and the rest of the WSFS Business Meeting staff. Using the convention’s web form sends the message to that same e-mail.
Here’s another example: Let’s say you noticed a technical error on the Hugo Awards web site, like a typographical error in a finalist’s name or something like that. What do you think would be a better course of action:
1. Contact [email protected], the published address for contacting the Hugo Awards web site, pointing out the mistake.
2. Post a comment to a post on GRRM’s LiveJournal about the latest movie George is going to show at his movie theater pointing out the error with the Hugo web site.
Which of these do you think is more likely to get the error fixed?
If I sound harsh, it’s because I’ve grown increasingly less tolerant of foolish behavior. Ignorance can be fixed; foolishness is much more difficult.
And if anyone thinks I’m bad, I invoke the memory of Bruce Pelz, who had a Special Rule just for me when he was presiding over Westercon and Worldcon Business Meetings: “Shut up, Kevin.”
Tegan: I am reacting to the situation with my honest emotions. I tried to help, several people told me I was helping wrong and Kevin decided I needed more of that. He could have said “thanks for letting us know, but please contact [email protected] in the future instead of me.” That’s how to professionally handle someone telling your organization something important when they contact the wrong person.
So when Kevin makes me sound like a moron who found it “impossibly difficult” to email an address he knew was valid but I didn’t, I’m not thrilled. I post a short two-line response indicating this.
Kurt decides this would be a great time to elaborate on my wrongness.
As that’s winding down, you offer a numbered list of my wrongness. I’m lazy, obnoxious and foolish, says the person who believes we should choose our words with care lest we regret them later.
I’m OK with the flak I’m taking since I came right out and said Kevin was being a dick. Saying that makes me one too. We’re not supposed to be that blunt. The smart play is to disguise that sentiment in snark to maintain deniability.
But perhaps you and Kurt should ask yourselves whether your pile-on was necessary. I was trying to help and did not know my means of contact would upset Kevin. It was an honest mistake.
When I told him, “The proper response to what I did is ‘thanks,'” it was not a demand I be thanked. It was pointing out that he was being ungracious.
I’m out.
You’re doing exactly what you accused Kurt of doing and what you did to Kurt, claiming that my stating that your words were making you come across as lazy, obnoxious and foolish means I was calling you that. I was trying to let you know what your words are conveying, since you apparently didn’t realize the impression you are giving.
I do not believe any of those about you, although “obnoxious” is beginning to take a hold from the way you are determined to defend yourself from any possibility that your words might have been poorly chosen and more likely to irritate than educate.
I reached out to you in comments because you’ve been the only author posting on the Hugo Awards site for a while — making me think you are the webmaster — and we communicated here on File 770 when I made a previous error report. You let me know it was fixed.
I did not know this would upset you. Now I do. Won’t happen again.
Given that you communicate often with the public on behalf of Worldcon, you’re going to hear about problems from some people who are only casually acquainted with the org chart.
If you can’t handle that situation without letting a good-intentioned person know you think he’s being a fool, perhaps someone else would be better suited to being a public face of this convention.
Ha! I should concede that point.
I’m sorry I inflated your criticisms. I did understand your comment better than my response indicates.
C’mon Kevin. If anybody mentions the Hugo Awards anywhere on the internet you’re there to manage their input before Dorothy can say “There’s no place like home…” If anybody mentions the Worldcon business meeting you’re there evangelizing and teaching them. You don’t get to complain about the workload if people now find you easier to communicate with than the actual committee.
I’ve sent that error report through the website contact form.
It is important because it will scare some people into avoiding the entire sasquan.org domain. But it’s probably a quick fix for someone who understands HTTPS configuration on Apache.