455 thoughts on “MACII Business Meeting August 21

  1. @Andrew M: I think we need to bear in mind that any “spoiler” candidates – the stuff we want to remove with 3SV – will almost certainly be there as the result of a slate.

    If some random person decides to spoil or “protest” the Hugo awards by writing “Bum Biters vol. XVI” on the nominations ballot, it will just get eliminated in the early phases along with all the other stories with one nomination each. It’s only if they persuade a couple of hundred other people also to nominate “Bum Biters vol. XVI” that it might become a finalist… in other words, if it’s part of a slate. So there’s an inevitable overlap between “spoiler material” and “slated material”.

  2. Steve Wright:

    I think we need to bear in mind that any “spoiler” candidates – the stuff we want to remove with 3SV – will almost certainly be there as the result of a slate.

    Of course, but the reverse isn’t true; there are lots of slate nominees, which only got there because of the slate, which are not spoilers in that sense.

    Look, I’m not being random here. I’m not inventing a puzzle. Various people – most persistently Greg Hullender, but also Hampus, I think – have said that the purpose of this provision is not to deal with the general problems caused by slates, but specifically with griefing. There are – they think, and I agree – two problems, one broader and one more specific. What Kevin says here suggest to me that he sees it differently. So I want to get clear about that.

    (And yes, of course individual voters will decide how they want to use it, and won’t all use it in the same way. But the proposers must have had some sort of of idea of what benefit it would confer, which must imply some judgement about how people generally are likely to use it, and that’s what I want to get clear on.)

  3. “WSFS Members” = “The members of the current World Science Fiction Convention who have a membership class that has voting rights.”

    Voting on the Final Ballot for the Hugo Awards already says that “only WSFS members may vote.”

    The wording for 3SV uses exactly the same wording as what defines the group that can vote on the Final Ballot.

    The group that can vote on 3SV is the same group that can vote on the Final Ballot: those members of the current Worldcon who have memberships that include WSFS voting rights. It does not include members of any previous or subsequent Worldcon. Members of previous or subsequent Worldcons are not members of WSFS.

    Here it is as clearly as I can try to work it out. (I use the phrase “voting class” below because Worldcons have applied different names to classes of membership that include WSFS voting rights, so it’s not possible to just say “supporting and attending members.”)

    Nominating: Voting-class members of the previous, current, and subsequent Worldcons.

    Qualifying (added under 3SV): Voting-class members of the current Worldcon.

    Final: Voting-class members of the current Worldcon.

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