34 thoughts on “Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions — #16”

1. The special/lifetime achievement award is a particularly good suggestion that is a good fit for the Dragons.

2. “I am willing to bet that this year’s Dragon Awards ceremony was barely over before the fannish naysayers and provocateurs began to bray that the Dragon Awards went to dismal writers and creators, and thank maker our own awards aren’t tainted like theirs…”

   Why bet on something that could easily have been proven to be false by a simple check in old comment sections? AFAIK, most people thought there were some dreck among the nominees, but that the winners was a whole different matter.

   You know, if you call something a load of BS, you should not do it about something you haven’t even bothered to verify.

   But I absolutely agree with splitting movies into different categories for SF and Horror and a lifetime award would be great. But the absolute important thing is for members only and to really promote the award for members.

3. Don’t care about the Dragon awards, but on the Hugos, most of the things you think are bugs are not just features, they are the reasons the award is so prestigious.

4. Restrict voting to Members Only!

   And make it really easy for members to vote. Hand out paper ballots at the con. / Send out links to ballots with the registration information and con newsletters.

   Using identification by registration number and name rather than email address should solve the multiple-vote problem (if it exists).

5. Lifetime achievement award in the Dragons is an excellent idea.

6. @Niall McAuley: No, I’d say the reason the Hugos are prestigious are a gestalt of the following:

   (1) Hugo nominee/finalist/winner is listed on covers of books
   (2) The list of prior nominees and winners
   (3) Nominees regularly turns up to receive the award
   (4) The award is widely publicised, both finalists and winners

   How the award is determined has very little bearing on its status, really. Now, there is a reason why sf-fandom cares deeply about the Hugos, and the way they are determined certainly helps with that, but it has zero bearings for why Tor or DAW writes “Hugo winner” on the cover of the book.

7. Karl-Johan Norén: the reason the Hugos are prestigious are a gestalt of the following: (1) Hugo nominee/finalist/winner is listed on covers of books… there is a reason why sf-fandom cares deeply about the Hugos, and the way they are determined certainly helps with that, but it has zero bearings for why Tor or DAW writes “Hugo winner” on the cover of the book.

   The reason it gets put on books is because it’s prestigious. While seeing it on books may now help increase the idea of the Hugos being prestigious, that didn’t start until around 15 years after the award was established — and publishers started putting it on book covers because the award was considered prestigious.

8. First of all, KEEP THE SINGLE VOTE SYSTEM!

   Because nothing makes an award seem credible like having nominees with the support of 18% of the voters win.

   The single vote system in a five or six way race ensures that on a regular basis, you will have a winner that most people didn’t vote for, and there is a strong possibility that you will have winners that the majority of voters actively dislike.

9. it took the World Science Fiction Convention’s Business Meeting cabal SEVERAL YEARS of contentious debate before they could effectively block various miscreants from interfering with or gaming the Hugo Awards

   This is the first time I have heard two described as “SEVERAL”.

10. Thoughts:

    Artwork award: Are artworks widely enough recognised to be included in an award which aims at mass participation?

    Dividing films and TV: Yeah, why not? It wouldn’t work in the Hugos because of the problem of deciding on which side many things lie (though this probably isn’t as intense with films and TV as it is with books), but in a system with more authoritarian administrators that needn’t be a problem.

    Members only: I think almost everyone here agrees it would be a more effective awards process if they did that, but I fear that ‘everyone can participate’ is the distinctive selling point of the Dragons, so they are unlikely to give it up.

    Single vote: Yes, this makes perfect sense in the kind of award this is. It isn’t an election, in which we are trying to choose a representative (in which case a winner supported by only 18% of the voters would be a bad idea): it’s a contest, to find who is most popular. If I get 1848 votes and you get 1846 votes, I have won the popularity contest, just as the person who reaches the finishing tape first has won a race, even if the runner-up is just half a second behind them. The Dragons are based on a model of fandom in which one is a fan of a particular author, series etc., the aim is not to find the work with the widest acceptability, but the work with the most fans.

11. I have other suggestions for the success of the Dragon Awards:

    1. shorten that nomination period…why burden your voters with having to make so may choices?

    2. Don’t open up the process or ever share the data – people don’t like getting confirmation of their beliefs

    3. Reduce the number of categories – make it easier on your administrators. One category – “The Best” – once the winner is announced, everyone can figure out what the best means

    4. don’t publicize it

    5. If you really want to improve that award, don’t offer it anymore.

12. Following on from which: Yes, the Hugos are prestigious because of the list of past nominees and winners. But where does that list come from? I take it that it exists at east in part because there is a process which encourages people to consider and compare the whole field, rather than just vote for the thing they are a fan of, and which favours the things with the broadest appeal. A process which just counts fans is perfectly reasonable in itself, and there’s nothing wrong with having an award which works like that, but I don’t think it will ever have the same prestige.

13. It’s good to see more constructive criticism of the process for the Dragon Awards. I believe that the above list should be in the opposite order because procedural suggestions only can be effected if the process becomes more transparent. Members only voting would make the Awards truly representative of the Dragon Con itself.

    As for the results of the Dragon Awards this year, I thought that increased participation gave results that more or less reflected the choices of a large group of fans rather than any small segment, which is moving towards the STATED goal of the Dragon Awards in their section on The Process:
    “Have you ever wanted to tell fellow fans when you’ve read a great new book or comic, play an awesome new game, or see an exhilarating movie? The Dragon Awards are your chance to share your opinions with, and see the recommendations of, tens of thousands of other fans everywhere!”
    If the Dragon Awards end up with winners based on the voting of “tens of thousands” of fans, then like this year, I’d be content with most winners. If the nomination voting also had those kind of numbers of fans participating, then I’d expect we’d see results more like the end of year awards on Goodreads.

    I’ve also argued for more awards to more accurately reflect the Track system at Dragon Con such as an Urban Fantasy and Anime/Manga Awards, and a special/lifetime achievement award would be a welcome addition. I also argued for some other changes in my post after Dragon Con about what kind of feedback to give on the post-Con survey.

14. Because nothing makes an award seem credible like having nominees with the support of 18% of the voters win.

    Coincidentally, Obelisk Gate got 18.2% of the first place votes in the first round. Meanwhile, All The Birds In The Sky got 18.3% in the first round and received more votes in each successive round right up until there was a two-way run-off in the sixth pass.

    So Obelisk Gate could be seen as the winner of the “not really my first choice” award. (In my case I changed my ballot two days before voting closed and switched Obelisk Gate with ATBITS to put ATBITS in the first position. I found the sub-text of making more of an effort to listen to those with whom one disagrees to be a more worthy message in an equally well-told story. FWIW)

    Every voting system has its advantages and disadvantages. The Dragon Awards use what they see as most fitting with their award objectives. WorldCon uses a one that they see most fitting for their award objectives. I’m not going to criticize either choice.

    Regards,
    Dann

15. I’d certainly like to see a much longer period between the final ballot and voting being closed. There’s no way to really read through all the things on the final ballot that you’re not familiar with.

16. Dann: So Obelisk Gate could be seen as the winner of the “not really my first choice” award.

    No, that’s not what the Hugo results mean. What they mean is that Obelisk Gate was the one out of the 5 novels which had the highest positive consensus amongst the Hugo voters.

17. Every voting system has its advantages and disadvantages.

    The advantage of a simple system like the Dragon Awards one vote per voter (ignoring the ballot stuffing issue of identifying voters) is that a simpleton can understand it.

18. Single vote and first-past-the-post is such an awful voting system; especially for any attempt to reach agreement among a diverse voting population in a diverse field. (But then I’m a mathematician and voting systems are something I’ve studied. I took to “Australian” ballot (as used in the Hugos) instantly when I was in college and wrote one of the first computer programs to count such ballots (not used for the Hugos ever), and helped introduce “approval” and other voting systems at my local SF club, and helped develop and test EPH.) So we’re going to end up disagreeing on that.

    Briefly — what’s wrong with single vote is it makes the voter guess what other people will do (in practice it makes them rely on polls that report what other people say they will do) and vote tactically rather than simply voting for what they think is best. Ranked-choice / STV / IRV / Australian (all close enough to be lumped together in my brain) allow you to vote quickly, simply, and independently, without having to guess what other people are doing.

19. @JJ: Exactly – prestige feeds into more prestige. And remember that when the Hugos started out, there were hardly any awards within the science fiction field, and the publishers were generally much smaller too. Generally, it takes at least ten years before anyone outside the most involved people even start to take notice of an award.

    Right now, the only award that can overtake the Hugos in prestige are the Nebulas, because it is the only one which is put onto the covers of books as well.

    That doesn’t say one shouldn’t do the Dragon Awards, but if the idea is to replace the Hugos, then one has entirely the wrong goal.

20. @David Weingart

    I’d certainly like to see a much longer period between the final ballot and voting being closed. There’s no way to really read through all the things on the final ballot that you’re not familiar with.

    I agree. After going through the Hugo nominees, I just didn’t have enough time to make it through the Dragon nominees. This year was also complicated by the fact that I wanted to read the great conclusion to de Castelle’s Great Coats series. That auto downloaded in the closing days of the Hugo voting.

    [FWIW, the series is worthy of a series nom next year. But I wouldn’t put the final book in the novel category. It was very good, but not quite as good as the rest of the series.]

    @JJ

    No, that’s not what the Hugo results mean.

    Which makes sense only if my one comment is stripped of the context of the rest of that comment.

    Regards,
    Dann

21. Dann: Which makes sense only if my one comment is stripped of the context of the rest of that comment.

    Nope, even with the full context, your statement about Obelisk Gate is untrue.

22. @David Weingart
    Patrick Henry, in an email to Alison Littlewood after she decided to withdraw, said that the original purpose of the Dragon Awards was:
    “The original purpose of the Dragon Awards was not so much as awards but as a quality reading list. The cost of reading current material has been rising steadily for years. Library budgets are not adequate to have all, or even a decent collection of the type of materials that Dragon Con fans enjoy.”

    So there you have it.

23. -eye stalk-

24. I’m not fan of the Australian ballot, but my fave of late is Point-Allocation voting, where you simply give a 0-to-10 score to each nominee. You might find two books great and give each a 10, and the rest 0s, or you might find them all kinda meh and give them all 2s, or any other number of ways to allocate. I like the flexibility it gives voters.

25. Although contentious debate can be frustrating, and I’ve been through more than my fair share of it within organizations, it has the advantage of testing the strengths and weaknesses of those ideas, weeding out bad ideas and strengthening better ideas. I thought it made sense to take time to discuss the revisions to the voting process, despite the fact that some participating were not doing so in good faith, because it meant that the full implications of the changes could be understood and absorbed by the people participating. I suspect that the Dragon Awards could benefit from some of that process, even if it was a network of committees.

26. Single vote: Yes, this makes perfect sense in the kind of award this is. It isn’t an election, in which we are trying to choose a representative (in which case a winner supported by only 18% of the voters would be a bad idea): it’s a contest, to find who is most popular. If I get 1848 votes and you get 1846 votes, I have won the popularity contest, just as the person who reaches the finishing tape first has won a race, even if the runner-up is just half a second behind them.

    Sure, if you don’t care how the results are perceived, that seems fine. The problem is, with the system the Dragon Awards use, it is inevitable that there will frequently be winners that the majority of the voters hate, but that have just enough support to edge out their competition and eke out a “win”. How enthused do you think people will be to participate after that?

27. The original purpose of the Dragon Awards was not so much as awards but as a quality reading list.

    Sure, he said that, more than a year after the award was created. It was an attempt to revise history. The notion that it was created as some kind of “reading list” is a retcon, and a disingenuous one at that.

28. My biggest objection to first-past-the-post in a more-than-two-candidate election is that it is quite likely to return a “winner” that is disliked by a super-majority of the electorate.

29. You know, Chris, if you dislike the bother of ranking candidates in the Hugo voting system, you can always just vote for your first choice and leave the rest blank. That’s a perfectly valid and legitimate way to vote, if that’s what you want to do.

    And if reading the detailed voting results gives you a headache, don’t read them. Just look at the list of winners, if that’s all you want to see.

30. I’m not sure Average Jane Fan knows or cares how most of the sf/f awards get to their results, to be honest. I would be very surprised if that factored into an award’s overall reputation, since I’m pretty sure the main thing there is ‘consistently good results’ that make fans want to keep checking it out because the last thing they read that was associated the award was good. Now, arguably, FPTP isn’t the best way to achieve that, but if it did produce consistently good results (like, oh, say, the Hugo finalist list right up until EPH was a thing, and oh look there wasn’t a strong movement to change from FPTP until it produced bad finalists) I doubt a significant number of people are going to dismiss the award because of the voting system.

31. I had assumed while reading this that Chris wrote it with tongue firmly in cheek, but no one else seems to think so. Hmm!

32. Aaron:

    it took the World Science Fiction Convention’s Business Meeting cabal SEVERAL YEARS of contentious debate before they could effectively block various miscreants from interfering with or gaming the Hugo Awards

    This is the first time I have heard two described as “SEVERAL”.

    Also “the World Science Fiction Convention’s Business Meeting cabal…”

    For a small secret group, that cabal is clearly doing it wrong!

    @Lenore Jones,
    I think you’re on to something there!

33. There Is No Cabal…

34. Jamoche – actually, there is. They usually append “puppy” to their organizational names.

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