As Doctor Science Suggested.
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Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom
As Doctor Science Suggested.
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@Andrew M
OK, it’s a fair point that the voting was after everyone had read everything, and 3SV is before.
If “lesser quality” and “wouldn’t have made it without the slate” are broadly equivalent, because quality should drive people’s votes, isn’t the latter formulation an acceptable reason to downvote?
@Mark
That was just for position 1. Overall, The Builders ranked above No Award.
@Bartimaus
Yup, you’re right, my bad*. Andrew M’s point that the two noms that required slate voting didn’t get NAed is correct.
*Even worse, I’d pointed out the same issue in reading the results to someone earlier this evening! I blame my lack of caffeine.
Well for one thing, ‘lesser quality’ is a comparative term. I can rank A lower than B because it is of lesser quality than B, but that doesn’t tell when a thing is of such low quality that it needed help from the slate.
But I agree that you can’t actually separate ‘needed help from the slate’ from aesthetic criteria: I’m sure there were many people murmuring ‘Seveneves is such a horrible book I can’t believe anyone voted for it except because of the slate’. This does create problems for Jameson’s proposal that we should be urged not to vote on aesthetic grounds.
In any case, I still think that in terms of likely voter behaviour, people would not downvote anything that they did not no-award, and so all the Novella finalists would survive. There is in any case a difference between ‘No one would even have considered this without the slate’, which is true of most of the Castalia House nominees, and ‘this is the sort of thing that might have been shortlisted, but as it happens, it needed slate votes to push it over the edge’.
I still wish that my lengthen-the-list proposal for 3SV had met with more acceptance. Allowing supermajorities to vote nominees off the island still seems like a bad thing to me because it can be turned to evil, keeping works well-liked by a minority but disliked by a majority off the final ballot. There’s no guarantee that 3SV will be used to bounce only slate nominees. That’s relying on good intentions, and we already know that doesn’t work.
Jameson,
I don’t think there is any wording you can put in 3SV that will really help the issue. Particularly wording that says “we intend X, but aren’t enforcing it.” I know we probably talked you to death on 3SV at the con, and G. and I continued that discussion on the 5 hour drive before parting ways after the con.
I continue to not disagree with you that 3SV is a solution to slate voting, but it isn’t just a solution. Even if you find better words, you’re still changing something essential in the voting culture. Even No Award is something we vote for. 3SV adds a mechanic to explicitly vote against works, and I think that will interact with con culture in a way that will be far more insidious than the slate voting/culture war crap we’re currently dealing with. It’s a setup for an ever increasing fracturing of fandom as each fan gets to see not just that other people liked different books better, but also actively disliked their own favorites enough to vote against them.
How much effectiveness does 3SV lose if it only allows upvoting?
I disagree. If I put No Award on my ballot, it’s not because I think No Award was one of the best novels of the year. No Award is obviously not a novel at all.* I do it because I think everything below it is not good enough to qualify for the award. It is nothing but a negative vote for a set of works. Even if the mechanism I use is equivalent to a positive vote for an actual work, it’s still a vote against one or more works.
* It would be interesting if someone wrote a story called “No Award” and it got nominated. That would lead to some amusing confusion! 😉
DMS, Um, maybe I’m misunderstanding something (wouldn’t be the first time!) but I thought 3SV was binary; you downvote, or you don’t. If I’m right, doesn’t that mean that, effectively, every not-a-down-vote is an upvote? Or is there an upvote choice, too, and each upvote cancels one downvote? Or something else?
I join the cabal!
Hope you get better soon, o newly re-minted Hugo winner Mr. Glyer 🙂
Mike, glad to see you’re at least up to adding new threads for us!
Dragon Awards never got back to me. Pfui, as Wolfe always said. They are so badly conceived and run that they seem a perfect match for Puppies. Although if they get their act together and publicize it next year, the high percentage of cosplaying, fanfic’ing, young queer-friendly women at the con may change that. If they aren’t too busy having fun with all that other stuff.
So… the Hugos needed to be saved because of the girl cooties, and now they need to be abandoned because of the girl cooties? Whatever lets you sleep at night and get off before that, Teddy. We do not judge what makes any soft devilman hard. You and Larry go have fun with the Dragons. We’ll be over here laughing that no matter how much you quote Aristotle, we know the ancient Greek that best describes you is Aesop (the one about the fox and the grapes). XandaD’OH!
It’s a real shame Marc Aramini didn’t have an actual editor on his book. It was obviously a labor of love, deeply researched, and might have been good enough to get on the ballot honestly if he’d had professional talent helping him. At least it would have been respected instead of dismissed.
@Jameson: I like the idea of Shields Up. Seems to combine all the good ideas of other proposals. But as Standback said, it’s complicated and do we need it? The voters saw through slates and hostages this year just fine.
@Camestros: Everyone will be still tuning in for Timothy’s reviews, plots against the squirrels, great anthologies (which Timothy is going to have to campaign for!), and the computer art.
@RedWombat: Oh, please illustrate PoC Queer Girl Cooties In Spaaaace! Probably attacking the mighty rocketships stuffed with manly white guys, as seen in Adam-Troy Castro’s story about Capt. Christian White. And chanting the magic words “scalzi” “nielsenhayden” “jemisin” and “sevenseventy”.
@Andrew M
I guess I’m a bit more optimistic that voters will act more decisively when presented with an explicit slate-detection stage, but I can’t deny that your point about novellas indicates that there’s a mountain to climb.
In other words, the four years of Puppy shenanigans have been a Cunning Plan to manouevre people into doing exactly what the Puppies were complaining about in the first place? That’s a bit too subtle for me this time of night.
I gotta get through these hamster illos first! I am only four from the end of the book, and then I can illustrate anything I want, but the hamsters are under contract…!
@Hyman Rosen
I understand your argument. I think you are mistaken about how this is going to be used, but I might be wrong about that. If I am, the sunset clause and the “suspend this rule for subsequent WorldCon” provisions take care of that. But “voting” griefing and harassing “nominees off the island” was half of the point of 3SV and your proposal gutted that ability.
The people being harassed by these “nominees” deserve to have them gone from the ballot. The Hugo Awards deserve to not be tainted by this crud.
Awards honor the things nominated and chosen. But the things nominated and chosen also honor the awards. It’s a cycle that way. This gives us a way to keep Beale from using that cycle to smear the awards so many other people worked hard to make prestigious.
Xtifr
I do it because I think everything below it is not good enough to qualify for the award.
Yes. I do not dispute this. And the mechanic by which you express this intention is to vote for no award.
Cassie B., here is an excerpt from the amendment text as it appeared in the agenda:
That said, I am also not talking about what a final ballot looks like under this process. I’m talking about how the data in the Hugo report will be interpreted. We’ll get a final ballot that doesn’t have the issue of the day out of this process. It’s just not the only thing we’ll get.
But I’m still voting against one or more works. The mechanic doesn’t matter. I know what I’m doing when I vote. It’s not a positive vote, even if the mechanic is one used for positive voting.
I have never once wanted No Award to win in any category. Ever. I have preferred it to any of the other available options, but I have never, ever wanted it to win. I have always wanted something to win, even if none of the things on the ballot were a thing I was willing to see win.
I don’t know. Maybe some people are misled by the mechanic. For me, though, it’s always been extremely clear that voting No Award is a negative thing. The word “No” is right there in the name!
I wrote something about this year’s outcomes: better-democracy-is-not-science-fiction.
I’d be interested to hear what others think. It’s hard to decide exactly what audience to write for…
As to the various comments about my various proposals above:
-Majority Judgment does allow equal ratings, like the Debian system.
-I think that the extra nuance provided by Shields Up would help people come to a stronger consensus. For “human shield” works, there will be some fans who want them gone as illegitimate, some fans who want them to stay around; extending the finalists is a compromise that can reduce the rancor between those two positions.
-I think that +1 against trolls would improve quality, because it would let more of the people participating have an impact on what wins. That is, fewer ineffective long tail ballots.
@RedWombat: Your hamsters are a Good Thing for the world, so nothing should slow them down. Squeak on.
@Peter J: Exactly! (in Maxwell Smart voice)
@lurkertype @RedWombat: Oh, please illustrate PoC Queer Girl Cooties In Spaaaace
Oh sure write me out of my own comic to make it even better. For a few minutes I was gonna be popular a Sunday Morning cartoon Tasha’s Girl-Cooties in Space. 😉
ETA: #ErasureOfWomen
That was a good summary. The simplest way of drawing a line between Trump and the Rabid Puppies (and Gamergate for that matter) is Brietbart. It is the highest common factor of the lot.
VD has drawn the parallels himself. He doesn’t say that puppies and GG are the same people or that they work together, but he does frame them both as parts of the same overall movement with common tactical proclivities.
@Camestros Felapton:
I was a bit irritated to see John Scalzi arguing as well that Pournelle “deserved better”, if not for his association with the RP slate. He seemed unwilling to engage with my argument that, on the merits of Pournelle’s work as a short form editor in 2015, no-awarding him was fully justified.
I understand, and, to some extent, respect Scalzi’s reluctance to speak ill of his fellow authors, but I still think that one could avoid speaking ill of an author without giving them undue praise.
I see we’re revisiting the discussion about voting for vs. voting against in 3SV. I will say again, respectfully, what people are asking for is a mechanism by which the act of voting for does the work of voting against. Because voting against is what’s needed. If someone stations himself by the mini crabcakes at the party and scarfs them all down – actually, that’s probably me. But my point: you could address that situation by going around and thanking everyone for not hogging the mini crabcakes with the idea that
Ithe malefactor will get the message. You could give everyone who doesn’t scarf the crabcakes a pin. But the effective thing to do is to directly approach…this hypothetical person about the crabcake-hogging and, if necessary, flat out tell him to move.The quest to avoid coming out and saying, in re people who mean you harm, “We don’t want you around in that case,” has the First Geek Social Fallacy written all over it.
Everything else I have to say was already put wonderfully by Standback: Our system will not be perfect, and Trust the voters. The last two WorldCons have revealed the Hugo electorate to be well-informed of shenanigans and capable of dealing with them with as much thoroughness and discretion as the tools available to them allow.
@Jameson
Read your post and liked it fairly well. It was a bit contradictory wrt calling the “alt right” racists, misogynists, etc, then later saying voting reform was good for everyone including the far right, but I’m not complaining. I’m a progressive lefty, too! :^]
I noticed one error…Binti is a novella, not a short story.
I really like the idea of the Extend option, although I do see that it has downsides.
@Mike Glyer
I’m sorry to hear you’re not well. Hospital stays are no fun at all, and I hope you recover enough to safely escape soon.
@Tasha: I was trying to be MORE INCLUSIVE. You can still be in it, I’m sure you have plenty of girl cooties. #whitesplaining
@Camestros
Hey, we’ll always have Timothy, and the alt-right!
On the latter note, from Salon:The alt-right attacks sci-fi: How the Hugo Awards got hijacked by Trumpian-style culture warriors
Jim Henley
I will say again, respectfully, what people are asking for is a mechanism by which the act of voting for does the work of voting against.
That is a valid interpretation of what I’ve said.
Because voting against is what’s needed.
100% agree for the last 2 years.
The quest to avoid coming out and saying, in re people who mean you harm, “We don’t want you around in that case,” has the First Geek Social Fallacy written all over it.
I also agree with this. My concern is not that we shouldn’t tell trolls to get lost. We should. We absolutely should.
I am not convinced that 3SV with downvoting is the way I want to convey that message. I’m still thinking through it. Out loud. I apologize for having missed the previous discussion. I fully acknowledge that I have not followed every conversation. Probably not even most given some of the other things going on in my life.
The question I asked was about effectiveness. Was the answer to my question already part of a conversation I missed?
Hello good morning File 770! Sending more well wishes from here Mike – I hope that your health is continuing to improve and the end of the Olympics hasn’t caused too dramatic a drop-off in entertainment quality where you are.
I’m definitely echoing the request for a Tasha and the Filer adventure book! Perhaps a joint illustration effort so as not to overburden wombat?
On books that already exist, @Mark I had a very similar reaction to you with Central Station – enjoyable but not much in the way of structured payoff. I think it’s intentional but I can’t say
I also finished the Obelisk Gate (and am not sure whether discussion has happened in one of the many MAC threads I lost track of…) short answer is YES this is super worthy and anyone picking up 5th Season for the first time off the back of its Hugo win is going to have not one but two great books in their future. Rot’d additional thoughts:
Jbeyqohvyqvat pbagvahrf gb or vaperqvoyr cnegvphyneyl er. gur Fgbar Rngref naq Thneqvnaf, naq V nz FHCRE vagevthrq ol gur vagebqhpgvba bs “zntvp”. Rffha naq Anffha ner arire tbvat gb trg gur raqvat gurl qrfreir va guvf havirefr naq zl urneg jvyy sberire or oebxra ohg BZT vagebqhpgvba bs gur ynggre jnf n terng zbir gb ercynpr gur haercrngnoyr bar jbzna/guerr gvzrf qrivpr bs gur svefg obbx.
V qvq srry gung guvf obbx vf gb Svsgu Frnfba jung Napvyynel Fjbeq vf gb Napvyynel Whfgvpr – jvgubhg gur trbtencuvp zbirzrag naq gur rkgen grafvba yrag ol gur cnfg-naq-cerfrag cybgf (jurer lbh xabj gur cnfg fgenaq vf Abg Tbvat Gb Raq Jryy ohg whfg abg ubj), gur erfhyg vf fybjre naq zber qrrcyl sbphfrq ba n pbhcyr bs ybpngvbaf naq gur qvssvphygvrf bs ohvyqvat n pbzzhavgl haqre rkgerzr cerffher. Gur pbzcnevfba vf bayl fhcresvpvny, gurfr frevrf bgurejvfr unir abguvat va pbzzba rkprcg gurve dhnyvgl! Ohg vg qvq srry yvxr gurer jnf n qvssrerag gbar naq cnpr ng jbex urer, naq V’yy or vagrerfgrq gb frr jurgure, nf jvgu Napvyynel Fjbeq, gur rkcrevrapr orpbzrf rira orggre jvgu gur uvaqvftug bs obbx 3.
A scan of the Goodreads suggests my 2016 read count now stands at 16 novels and 7 novellas, with 5 of the former and 4 of the latter standing out for nomination purposes… guess I can chuck the Kindle out the window when I find that last worthy novella then!
Back when I lived in (The People’s Republic of) Cambridge, Massachusetts, I took a wee bit of pundit-nerd pride in the fact that my home town elected its city council using the Hare a.k.a. Single Transferable Vote method, which I consider one of the finest and fairest electoral algorithms yet devised by the human mind. But if you go up to the average person (even the average Cambridge resident) and try to explain to them how the STV algorithm works, you can go from zero to eyes-glazing-over in less than a hundred words. So as much as I wish that STV would sweep the nation, I can understand why it hasn’t caught on, and I haven’t found the time to knock on doors and gather petition signatures in order to bring the same algorithm to Boston.
And as good as STV is… can you really say that on account of STV, Cambridge is so much better-governed than comparable cities?
The current crop of Hugo voting reforms may be imperfect, but as long as the electorate considers them legitimate and the Puppies get bored and go back to their kennels, I will consider them a success.
[ticky]
[Tick]
Making 82nd Fifth again.
STV is good, but requires pretty highly-engaged voters to really shine. For mere mortals, some delegated and/or mixed-member system is better; one where you cast your vote for a single individual, and then if that individual doesn’t win, the system does its best to carry over the intent of that vote to other similar candidates. Some such systems are also easier to explain than STV.
I live in Cambridge, and frankly, despite being an elections geek, I’d be hard put to name a single local politician. I know who my representative and senators are, but for local stuff, I just trust my neighbors to be progressive enough overall. When elections come, I try to cast my vote against the worst of the NIMBYs and then quickly forget who’s who. I think that I’m if anything more engaged than average, so I think that STV isn’t the best system for what it’s used for here, though yes, it remains way better than what most of the US has.
Also: FPTP countries have an average of around 15% women in their top legislative house, while non-FPTP (including STV) countries average around 39%. So it’s not just about good government, but also about diversity and representation.
On voting, I agree with the intuition that from a pure anti-griefing perspective, having some defined powers for admins to remove ballots from consideration when a very clear case can be made against them would be the most effective solution. However as someone who isn’t active in organised fandom, I respect the judgement of those who are when they say that for most fans, not having admins with controversial and divisive powers is a higher priority than keeping every single Castalia-touched work off the final ballot.
I share the hope that the disproportionate impact of elk in the nominating process will decline next year as V fails to convince his supporters to pay up again, meaning that any voting reform beyond next years is going to rely on there being interest from the fandom in tinkering with the system overall, rather than responding to particular threats. It’s good to know there’s more weapons in the arsenal if it does come to that though.
FINALLY @Lurkertype sorry to carry conversation topics between threads but you asked in a buried MAC post what my avatar was and I couldn’t find it again to respond – it’s a nudibranch, or sea slug! The beautiful toxic weirdos of the waves 🙂
And I’ve ticked. Good job self.
I also finished the Obelisk Gate (and am not sure whether discussion has happened in one of the many MAC threads I lost track of…) short answer is YES this is super worthy
My socks are still in orbit. They may yet deorbit, but it might take several months after we get the conclusion. (What did I think of The Obelisk Gate? I am disappoint that I can’t preorder the third volume yet.)
@DMS:
Oh I totally get you. I mentioned I was repeating myself because I was self-conscious about repeating myself; the topic came up before and, in the words of the Bard*, “It’s my only line.”
I think that 3SV is, given the limits of Worldcon culture, as effective a mechanism as we can hope for. The limit of Worldcon culture being an aversion to decision-making power by the admins – an aversion on the part of the mass base and the pool of admins both. Because of voting via internet, the Hugos have become, functionally, an online community, and online communities need strong moderation to survive bad actors driving out the good. Personally I favor a stronger admin hand for this very reason, but at this point proposals for a stronger admin hand won’t fly.
3SV works along the grain of the existing culture by assigning the mod role to the committee of the whole. It’s not a perfect solution, but I think Standback has it right that there are no perfect solutions, and that during the last year the voters have proven themselves trustworthy.
I have likened the situation to having a problem player in a roleplaying game group. The perennial way people try to address this is by adopting mechanical tweaks to constrain the problem player, which is trying to solve a social problem via procedure. Almost always, what needs to happen is address the social problem at the social level. Actually say, out loud, “What you are doing bothers me/us because reason, and for me/us to want to continue playing you need to do something else instead.” This is hard, because everyone, especially nerds, dislike confrontation.
Of all the proposals tossed around in the wake of the RP2 griefing campaign, 3SV is the one that comes closest to addressing a fundamentally social problem at a social level. Because, as someone said upthread, and I apologize for forgetting who said it, 3SV allows the eligible voters to address whatever the offense may be on those terms most directly. Right now the issue is that a claque of people who hate the rest of Hugo-voting fandom bought their way into the system with the aim of ruining everyone else’s enjoyment. Last year the problem was crass cronyism dressed up as a political/esthetic crusade. Next year the problem may be something else.
3SV short-circuits the problem of always rushing to fix the last problem by providing a flexible means of addressing the current problem. To that end, I think Jameson’s proposed resolution text – 3SV is for this and not that – is on balance a bad idea. 3SV’s best feature is that it is a tool that enables us to deal with attacks on the integrity of the award that haven’t arisen yet.
I do not think 3SV is the best of all possible solutions, or without risks and flaws. At a high level, I don’t think committees of the whole make the best moderators. And I do worry about the math of the middle stage, which requires enough people to be engaged to outvote an attacking faction. And at some point, the Hugo process starts to feel like a job. But no matter what the SPs and RPs decide to do in the future, the exploits they’ve exposed are there for other bad actors to attack, unless we deal with them.
————————–
*Not actually the words of the Bard.
The “3SV is not for stuff you simply don’t like much” resolution is mostly for benefit of the people who fear it will lead to negativity. I don’t think it will, but I think that those people are fans too, and they’re more likely to be people who don’t make it to the business meeting, and they deserve to know their concerns are taken seriously.
How much effectiveness does 3SV lose if it only allows upvoting?
@DMS
An upvote-only version of 3SV, titled “Double Nominations” (DN), was discussed here before but was eventually dropped after people realized it had too many flaws. Section 4 of this post (“Why 3SV and not DN?”) summarizes the flaws.
RedWombat on August 23, 2016 at 4:55 pm said:
I gotta get through these hamster illos first! I am only four from the end of the book, and then I can illustrate anything I want, but the hamsters are under contract…!
Who the heck puts hamsters under contract?
That doesn’t sound like a reasonable business plan at all.
Like herding cats, but less productive.
@lauowolf
Depends. If you hired hamsters to eat their bodyweight in sunflower seeds and then run around on a wheel you’d probably get good results, but why you’d want to pay hamsters to do what they’d do for free… 😀
@arifel: I couldn’t have found it either. I was close!
Repeating from the August 21 thread: I made a table showing how EPH and 5 and 6 would have affected the 2015/2016 nominating results.
Looking at the table, I see I inadvertently misled the Business Meeting: I said the sixth finalist would be a non-slate work 75-80% of the time, based on the 2015/16 data, and it actually seems to only be about 66%. I must have misclassified something or miscounted while I was trying to read the report on my cell phone. I think the argument I presented to the Business Meeting is still sound, but less strongly supported by data than I claimed, for which I apologize.
@Steven desJardins: I’m still catching up on the other threads (lordy, Filers can talk! LOL), so I saw your note about your table, but hadn’t seen it yet. I was kinda unhappy with things adding a slated work at all, but of course, it’s bound to happen. Your table (thanks for that) made me realize two things:
1. If a non-slated work is added as well as a slated one, it’s still a net gain IMHO. More valid options is good! I dislike voting anything above No Award if there’s only one non-slate work that I wouldn’t otherwise have nominated or considered. If I get a second work, frankly that’s huge. (Yes, my standards have fallen.) 😉 I’m not saying “wow 2 organic works = awesome.” I’m saying “wow 2 organic works = I’ll probably vote something(s) above No Award.” I don’t actually like voting No Award 1st.
2. Related, if it’s an uber-slate item (e.g., Somewhither) versus a hostage/shield (e.g., City of Stairs), I realized that’s not really the end of the world, given people seem to recognize the difference. Really, I can live with this. (Despite hoping the RPs will go away, of course, heh.)
I’m going to try to remember these things and not let it bug me that (If This Goes On) we get a little bad with the very good. 🙂 So thanks for your work in making that table, as it’s helpful to just glance at that info like that (mostly clearly marked).
YMMV, etc.
“Hamsters under contract”
Now I want to see a hamster in a pinstripe suit, a fedora, and carrying a tiny Thompson submachine gun.
@John from GR
In case you’re not aware, Beale’s petty foolishness appears to have it’s roots here: http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/006122.html
What Tasha said(s). More cooties!
Late to the party, but let me join in wishing Mike Glyer a speedy recovery, and many congratulations on his two well-earned rockets!
I’d rather not change the voting method while we’re tinkering like crazy with the nominations. While IRV isn’t immediately comprehensible (compared to simple systems like FPTP), it does seem to be returning valid results based on what it’s given and too much change in a short period tends to produce dodgy results.