Another DisCon III Hugo Administration Team Resigns

DisCon III’s WSFS Division head Nicholas Whyte today announced on Twitter and Facebook that the Hugo Administration team of the 2021 Worldcon has resigned en masse:

Departing WSFS Division Head Nicholas Whyte was also in charge of the 2023 Site Selection voting.

The committee has not yet addressed the staff resignations.

This is the second team of Hugo administrators to quit DisCon III this year. The con’s original WSFS Division Head Jared Dashoff explained here in January why he and the Hugo Administrator resigned. It had to do with efforts to manage policies created by the committee “to deal with a) space constraints at receptions and award ceremonies, b) budget constraints of the receptions and trophies, c) constraints relating to font size on both ballots and in-ceremony visuals, and d) in response to multiple requests to list long lists of contributors to Hugo Finalists over the last few years….”

Dashoff made his comment in response to Colette Fozard’s guest post about why she resigned as DisCon III co-chair in the same timeframe.

The protested restrictions, which DisCon III announced January 11, were repudiated the next day by DisCon III chair Bill Lawhorn (see “DisCon III Abandons Previously Announced Hugo Policy”). Lawhorn said:

…All publications and visuals linked to the Hugo Awards will include all Hugo Finalist creators named to DisCon III with no restrictions to the number of names. This includes, and is not limited to, the Hugo Awards ballot, the visuals used during the Hugo Awards Ceremony, the plaques on the Hugo Awards trophies, the Hugo Awards Ceremony program guide, the DisCon III souvenir guide, and the DisCon III and Hugo Awards websites.

We will address concerns about the size of events such as the Hugo Pre-Reception, the number of Hugo Awards trophies, and any other cost considerations individually with the finalists….

However, it seems that when the time recently arrived to address these concerns, some controversial limitations were still on the table – see the message documented in Pixel Scroll 6/19/21 item #6.

When Nicholas Whyte announced on Facebook last January 17 that he had signed on as DisCon III’s new WSFS Division Head, he commented: .

…The Hugos have had some reputational issues to deal with. Having fought off direct assault by ill-wishers in 2015 and 2016, some pretty significant mistakes were made more recently. Many of those were outside the immediate responsibility of the Hugo Administrators, including most notably the awful botching of last year’s Hugo ceremony and the Hugo Losers Party in 2019, and the hostile response from some in the community to the winners of the award for Best Related Work in both of those years (cases where I very much stand by the eligibility decisions that were made by teams that I was a part of).

I have made mistakes as well, and I hope that I have learned from them. In particular, it’s clear, not least from the problems that arose in the last few days, that the Hugos as a whole need to be less siloed and need to improve communication in both directions with the rest of the Worldcon and with the wider stakeholder community (as my work colleagues would put it). DisCon III had already started putting structures in place that would improve this side of things, and I look forward to working with those and building on them.

What led to today’s round of resignations Whyte doesn’t explicitly say. He simply quotes Lawhorn’s aspirational statement about last January’s policy reversal, and says “It is clear that we have taken the process as far as we can, and that our input is no longer needed by the convention leadership.”

 [Thanks to James Davis Nicoll for the story.]

248 thoughts on “Another DisCon III Hugo Administration Team Resigns

  1. Adrienne Foster says No, it isn’t just about who is actually present at DisCon III. That link is Maureen Speller’s side of the story. The criticism Strange Horizons is receiving is coming from outsiders of the concom for its hutzpah of handing them 89 people to acknowledge on the ballot. While everyone admires they appreciate their staff’s support, I don’t recall any finalist making that request before. It’s too excessive. The award is about the people who are responsible for its content and I find it hard to believe all 89 are.

    I don’t see why not. Collective undertakings can often be very sprawling in nature. So it’s entirely possible that close to ninety people over the course of a year could be involved in some meaningful fashion.

  2. Adrienne Foster: outsiders of the concom

    A better word choice might be “Worldcon members who are not on the concom”. Worldcon members aren’t outsiders here, they’re stakeholders.

  3. JJ on June 26, 2021 at 7:04 pm said:

    Adrienne Foster: outsiders of the concom

    A better word choice might be “Worldcon members who are not on the concom”. Worldcon members aren’t outsiders here, they’re stakeholders.

    Members who are not on the concom—aka staff—might have a little influence, but no power over how that convention is administered. I would say they are outsiders to its policies. But at this stage, I think we’re nitpicking semantics.

  4. @Cat Eldridge

    Collective undertakings can often be very sprawling in nature. So it’s entirely possible that close to ninety people over the course of a year could be involved in some meaningful fashion.

    But it’s not possible for each of 90 people to have as meaningful a contribution as, say, the top six or so (since 2000, the average number of names submitted for Semiprozine is less than 3).

  5. Adrienne Foster: I think we’re nitpicking semantics.

    Given that right now there are a number of extremely self-interested parties making a concerted attempt to take Worldcon members’ Hugo Awards away from Worldcon members, I don’t think it’s nitpicking to expect that Worldcon members not be referred to as “outsiders”.

  6. Bill: It’s not possible to tell how many names were submitted by looking at how many were finally listed. We know for sure the Journey Planet and Strange Horizons teams have wrestled with committees because they wanted more team members listed. Others who haven’t gone public may have as well.

  7. @JJ

    To be… not fair exactly: There are a handful of people who resent the fact that the path to the shiny rocket winds its way through Worldcon and the WSFS and they spend a bit of time every year talking wistfully about how great it would be if that wasn’t the case. They have no power to nor reasonable chance to achieve taking anything away from Worldcon, nor are they taking any particular steps to do so beyond the aforementioned wistful chatter, and so calling it a concerted attempt exaggerates their influence and ability. They’d really like it if things magically rearranged themselves to their satisfaction, presumably, which is annoying when they’re beating that hobby horse, but they’re no threat whatsoever, nor are their actions, and shouldn’t be given the credit of being so.

  8. Mike: You are correct; submitted may not be correct. “Listed” would have been a better choice of words.

    Regardless, though, a list of 87 names has to include someone whose contributions are no more than 1.2% of the total creative effort.

  9. Meredith: There are a handful of people who resent the fact that the path to the shiny rocket winds its way through Worldcon and the WSFS and they spend a bit of time every year talking wistfully about how great it would be if that wasn’t the case. They have no power to nor reasonable chance to achieve taking anything away from Worldcon

    It’s a lot more than that. I think you’re probably not seeing everything I’m seeing.

  10. @JJ

    Unless or until it gets close to “we’re actively seeking, and have a reasonable expectation of, a majority at the business meeting two years running” then it’s just talk and talk is annoying but not a threat.

    If we can’t even expect to pass a rule about guidelines for Hugo Award finalist numbers I find it deeply unlikely that anyone’s got a chance of getting a pass for divesting them entirely, let alone a group with such disdain for Worldcon culture and politicking.

    I believe they want it to happen and would like to work towards it happening. I don’t believe they stand a snowball’s of succeeding. They achieve things by applying pressure from outside the system, not working within it, and that won’t work for taking the Hugos.

  11. JJ on June 26, 2021 at 9:32 pm said:

    Adrienne Foster: I think we’re nitpicking semantics.

    Given that right now there are a number of extremely self-interested parties making a concerted attempt to take Worldcon members’ Hugo Awards away from Worldcon members, I don’t think it’s nitpicking to expect that Worldcon members not be referred to as “outsiders”.

    I don’t know what blogs you’re reading, but no one is taking away Hugos that have already been awarded. No one is taking the Hugos away from WSFS, either. The Mark Protection Committee will see to that. Other organizations can create their own awards to compete against the Hugos, but at present it’s the Hugos that are considered the most prestigious in the genre. According to the late Mike Resnick, a writer’s advances would increase after winning one.

    OTOH, a concom can withdraw their GoH invites, as we have seen earlier this year.

  12. Adrienne Foster: no one is taking away Hugos that have already been awarded

    What a bizarre thing to say.

    I’m well aware how WSFS and the Hugo Awards work, thanks, I’ve been deeply involved in both for years, and I understand where the possibilities lie – so much so, that I’m not going to be specific about it, because I’m certainly not going to give any tips to the ones who don’t.

  13. Bill on June 26, 2021 at 10:10 pm said:
    Regardless, though, a list of 87 names has to include someone whose contributions are no more than 1.2% of the total creative effort.

    I don’t have any inside information on Strange Horizons. But from what I’ve heard, their various departments run quite autonomously. So I imagine that there are a lot more people with much more input than you might find in other organizations. And the ones who have done a lot aren’t necessarily those near the top of the masthead.

    I don’t blame SH at all for saying everyone who wanted to be listed could be since DisCon gave them no limit. Instead of trying to come up with some arbitrary way to draw the line. Notice that list still includes “staff members who prefer not to be named”.

  14. Bill says
    Mike: You are correct; submitted may not be correct. “Listed” would have been a better choice of words.

    Regardless, though, a list of 87 names has to include someone whose contributions are no more than 1.2% of the total creative effort.

    Collectives tend not to quantify the contributions of their members. That’s not how they think. I doubt SH ever broke down the contributions of its member into a spread sheet and said “Ahhh, that’s how much you contributed overall to our enterprise”. So your logic doesn’t apply. And that’s A Very Good Thing.

  15. Laura: I don’t blame SH at all for saying everyone who wanted to be listed could be since DisCon gave them no limit.

    Let’s not pretend this was something DisCon III just decided to do. This was after a bunch of the finalists had repeatedly shouted and browbeaten DisCon III on social media into rescinding their limit.

  16. Shouldn’t it be easy to check for a worldcon which fanalists are attending? They have the membershiplist.
    Neither Strange Horizon nor Journey Planet are the problem in my opinion. They want to honour their contributers but weren’t activly acting at the centre of the conflict.
    We have 3 isues, 2 resolved and one only theoretical.
    The one that is theoretical, is the isue of the number of people on the stage. There never was a danger that the number was reached.
    Resolved is in my opinion the mumber of members and Pins. General speaking, the rule you can get X free, if you need more, you have to pay for it, seems to me a fair deal.
    Than there is the number of finalist in the reception. And here in my opinion the Con screwed up, but I still think, that (if my info is correct) some people (allready named in the tread) reacted quite harsh and used Strange Horizon exspecially for their goals. In my opinion that could have been resolved with less drama.

    I have to admite if you talk about taking the Hugos away from Worldcon I have trouble with that. I also have some trouble with some other thinks that have happened, but I haven’t looked everywhere JJ has looked because I don’t want to look, so I am not sure how seriously I should take the danger.

  17. JJ
    I hear you. As I said earlier, I don’t think DisCon’s flip from limit of 4 to no limit was a good plan. I think they should have returned to discussing things with each finalist as previous Worldcons have done.

    As far as I’m aware, the SH folks weren’t among those really pressuring DisCon for no limit. Although they have usually listed more than 4.

  18. I don’t know what to make of talk about separating the Hugos from Worldcon. The Hugos are the awards given out by WSFS at Worldcon. Anything else would not be the Hugos.

  19. Quoted from elsewhere: Imagine if the States had its own national convention and Worldcon no longer had to be the de facto Americon.

    Yes, just imagine! Imagine if the people who have been trying to bring SFF conventions to various locations around the world stopped trying to do so, and just ran conventions in their home countries.

    I’m sure that would result in a truly global fan-run convention magically springing up to take its place.

    Because, of course, if that were going to happen, it would already have happened. Instead, people will just start bitching that the Americans and the Brits aren’t trying to support having conventions in other countries any more. 🙄

  20. I have this image in my mind of the Hugos being clipped off from Worldcon, and Worldcon budding new awards in a spontaneous regrowth. Not that I’m recommending trying it.

  21. Andrew (not Werdna): I have this image in my mind of the Hugos being clipped off from Worldcon, and Worldcon budding new awards in a spontaneous regrowth. Not that I’m recommending trying it.

    The self-interested people who are wanting to create their own little award gravy train are welcome to do so – just like the Dragon Awards! – but they don’t get to take Worldcon’s awards for that purpose. They can “bud” their own new award.

  22. JJ says The self-interested people who are wanting to create their own little award gravy train are welcome to do so – just like the Dragon Awards! – but they don’t get to take Worldcon’s awards for that purpose. They can “bud” their own new award.

    I wholeheartedly agree. If they want to create their Awards, they’re most welcome to do so. So are the Puppies. I know they’ll never happen as they lack the ability to actually get them going.

  23. Worldcon Americon is not supported by facts.
    It is often in the USA, but this is more to do with the part that there are more members from the USA than any other nation normally and the fact that we have a strong conculture there.
    I am not so much into the big national con. In my opinion putting the world in worldcon is a good think. And there is a desire in other parts of the world to host a worldcon. So making Worldcon the American con, should I read this as non-Americans not welcome?
    This stuff makes me angry, but I am not sure that whoever is talking (please don’t tell me) knows what he or she or (insert other pronom that the person uses) knows enough about it, to be a tread. I don’t know if there is a plan or not.

  24. StefanB: So making Worldcon the American con, should I read this as non-Americans not welcome?

    What they’re saying is that they regard the Worldcon as the American con, even when it’s not in the US. And they seem to think that if Worldcon stopped calling itself “Worldcon”, that if it called itself “Americon” and was only held in the US, that some magical “Globalcon”, which would be truly global, would arise to take its place.

    The problem with that is that there have been enough complaints that if it were going to happen, it would have already happened. Because when Worldcons take place in other countries, it’s with a substantial amount of support from US and UK volunteers (with the exception of one recent con, which had a lot of US/UK volunteers but ended up being a substantial clusterfuck in numerous ways because the concom wasn’t willing to listen to conrunners from other countries with more experience, and I’m not talking about CoNZealand, which had a different set of problems).

  25. I have definitely seen calls to separate the Hugos from Worldcon and not just from the terminally clueless, but also from people who should know better.

    Whether this is just the usual griping by a permanently dissatisfied minority who want to give themselves Hugos or whether these folks will try to launch a proposal remains to be seen. We definitely should remain vigilant.

    As for doing their own thing, as far as I recall Fiyahcon and the Ignyte Awards were born out of dissatisfaction with the Hugos and Worldcon, which is the constructive way of going about this. Just as the Nebulas, the World Fantasy Awards and the Prometheus Awards were born out of a dissatisfaction with the Hugos and eventually became respected in their own right.

  26. Cora Buhlert: FIYAHCon and the Ignyte Awards

    I have a huge amount of respect for them, for giving the time and effort to create what they wanted, instead of demanding that someone else create it for them.

  27. I noticed this week that one of the creators of ConZealand Fringe is on the programming team for DisCon. That was nice to see.

    While it’s fine that people dissatisfied with something about Worldcon or the Hugos are doing their own thing, it’s also possible to improve them from within.

  28. FIYAHCon and the Ignyte Awards:

    I echo JJ, huge respect to them. I still ask myself how to messure a whole con in voting, but I will say that this was a good think.

  29. rcade on June 27, 2021 at 7:19 am said:
    I noticed this week that one of the creators of ConZealand Fringe is on the programming team for DisCon. That was nice to see.

    I agree. Thanks for mentioning that!

  30. StefanB on June 27, 2021 at 6:23 am said:

    Worldcon Americon is not supported by facts.
    It is often in the USA, but this is more to do with the part that there are more members from the USA than any other nation normally and the fact that we have a strong conculture there.
    I am not so much into the big national con. In my opinion putting the world in worldcon is a good think. And there is a desire in other parts of the world to host a worldcon. So making Worldcon the American con, should I read this as non-Americans not welcome?
    This stuff makes me angry, but I am not sure that whoever is talking (please don’t tell me) knows what he or she or (insert other pronom that the person uses) knows enough about it, to be a tread. I don’t know if there is a plan or not.

    As an American fan, I used to feel possessive about Worldcon. It was founded in the USA, most of the people working and attending it were American and it was Americans who maintained it throughout the decades. When it takes place in the USA, it acts as our national convention.

    However, I changed my mind. Now that the most heavily attended Worldcons have shifted from California to Europe, it’s clear that there is bigger enthusiasm for it overseas. During the past decade or so, it was more difficult to find bidding committees who want to host in American cities and it’s been ages since I’ve seen members as thrilled as everyone was in Helsinki.

    Like JJ, though, the biggest worry are the overseas bids with no to little previous experience working on Worldcon. Although concoms have the liberty to bring the fannish traditions of their locale into their Worldcons, their mistake is when they treat like a bigger version of their local conventions (this can also be true of American concoms). It is a convention with different expectations by its members, so any local practices have to be measured and considered for appropriateness if they are used. One infamously found itself $35K in the red afterward and this leaves a big stain on the whole community, not just that particular concom. It makes an impact when future concoms negotiate with other facilities or suppliers. For this reason, it’s highly unlikely I would vote for an overseas—or American, for that matter—bid if I haven’t seen the bidcom previously active in Worldcon organizing.

    But alas, we’re digressing from the original topic.

  31. Mike Glyer:

    “I’m reflecting on how glad I was that Jo Van Ekeren was able to name some of you who make this place work when she accepted 770s Hugo in 2018. These things are community efforts whether on the masthead or not.”

    I remember when that happened. It was an enormous surprise to me ane it gave me goose bumps to be mentioned in such a context. I will always cherish that memory.

    rcade:

    “I noticed this week that one of the creators of ConZealand Fringe is on the programming team for DisCon. That was nice to see.”

    Wonderful! They have shown themselves to be exactly what Worldcon needs and I hope there will be a memorable program.

  32. @Cat Eldridge

    Collectives tend not to quantify the contributions of their members.

    Earlier in the conversation, someone pointed out that the award is for the work, not the people who did it, and OGH responded that the Hugos have always honored the creators. But left out of that, I think, is the understanding that when the creators were honored, they were responsible at a primary level for the excellence of the work being honored. Everyone is okay with Andy Porter and David Pringle being named for awards for SF Chronicle and Interzone, because the quality of those zines reflects their personal contributions, without which SF Chronicle and Interzone would not have rockets. And it doesn’t have to be a single individual — the same arguments apply to (for example) Lynne Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas of Uncanny.

    But no one is arguing, and I don’t think one can do so with a straight face, that personal contributions down to the level of individual copyeditors or first readers are why Strange Horizons is excellent. Replace or withdraw one of them, and you haven’t substantially changed what Strange Horizons is doing.

    SH may think of itself as a collective, but it is in competition for an award which historically has honored individuals for individual efforts in service of collaborative work. If it is important to SH to be recognized collectively, it should have submitted “the Strange Horizons staff”, as it has in the past. OTOH, if they want to be recognized individually, they should limit themselve to the individuals whose individual contributions are critical to SH’s excellence.

    Regarding Nominee Pins: The idea of SH paying for and giving all named people a pin reminds me of playing Little League baseball, when every player on every team got a trophy. A Hugo nomination is not a participation award.

  33. The idea of SH paying for and giving all named people a pin reminds me of playing Little League baseball, when every player on every team got a trophy. A Hugo nomination is not a participation award.

    Yes, it is. They participated in the creation of a Hugo-nominated work. If Strange Horizons appreciates its contributors enough to credit them all and pay for some of their Hugo pins, that’s a good thing. No wonder it has so many contributors with an attitude like that.

    You’re going to pull a muscle if you keep straining so hard to dismiss the contributions of the Strange Horizons staff. Keep that in mind. Nobody here is getting any younger.

  34. Bill, you’re just being insulting about Strange Horizons, and if that’s what you’re compelled to do, start your own blog. Stop doing it here.

  35. @Bill
    Yes, I’d agree that one person’s withdrawal might not make a substantial difference. Last year’s editor-in-chief has since moved on, and I don’t see a big change to what SH is doing. (To be clear: this is very tongue-in-cheek. I don’t mean to belittle their former editor-in-chief’s contributions.)

    Seriously though, I imagine that Strange Horizons would have settled on a number at least a little closer to 4 than 90 if DisCon had asked them to. As they have in the past. But this year they had a chance not to make a tough choice about where to draw the line. Because of the way they work, substantial contributors are still going to be a large group. And as I said before, that’s not necessarily going to completely coincide with those at or near the top of the masthead.

  36. Mike: Thank you. Bills last post made me unconfortable.
    Re Participationtrophy: A Hugopin is for the nomination to a Hugoaward, so isn’t every pin a trophy for the participation? I have a bit of a problem that respect for everyone seems to be a bad think.
    We are outside, we can’t tell how much every person named contributes to the Semipro. I am sure it is a lot of work to make it.
    What I want to say is that it doesn’t seem as any of the other finalists seem to have a problem with the number of people that SH named. I think it is a good think that SH has respect towards the people who work there.

  37. Laura on June 27, 2021 at 4:59 am said:

    As far as I’m aware, the SH folks weren’t among those really pressuring DisCon for no limit.

    That is correct. According to this article by Cheryl Morgan in Salon Futura 29 about the 2021 Finalists:

    I had a long chat to Ness a couple of weeks back, and it seems to me that Strange Horizons has a consistent and potentially useful position on this…. As far as they are concerned, the Hugo Finalist is Strange Horizons magazine. The name on the base, should they win, will be Strange Horizons. They have asked for two trophies, which is a lot less than many other finalists. I’m disappointed that DisCon III did not makes this clear, and instead allowed people to jump to incorrect conclusions.

    StefanB on June 27, 2021 at 4:43 am said:

    Shouldn’t it be easy to check for a Worldcon which [finalists] are attending? They have the membership list.

    Which won’t include those people who haven’t yet gotten a membership, or those who will expect a complimentary day pass for the day of the Awards. (The latter is not uncommon to my knowledge.)

    Laura on June 27, 2021 at 5:10 am said:

    I don’t know what to make of talk about separating the Hugos from Worldcon. The Hugos are the awards given out by WSFS at Worldcon. Anything else would not be the Hugos.

    It would appear that there are a fair number of people, including past Hugo Award winners who have attended and worked on Worldcons, who really do think that the Hugo Awards are an entity separate from the World Science Fiction Society. Some of them know that the two are joined, but others think that the Hugo Awards are something that attached itself to Worldcon, as opposed to something that Worldcon invented and owns. To be charitable, there are other awards that are not administered or owned by WSFS that are commonly presented at Worldcon, so possibly people think the Hugo Awards are in that same category.

    As I’ve said before, suggesting that the Hugo Awards be chopped off of Worldcon so they can have a happy independent existence is tantamount to saying you should chop off your foot so they (you and your foot) can go off and have a happy independent existence. Both you (Worldcon) and your foot (the Hugo Awards) would be worse off for doing so, but I reckon only the former would survive, not the latter.

    Nevertheless, I have explained elsewhere (OGH saw it) what the actual mechanism for divorcing the Hugo Awards from Worldcon is. It’s not simple, and can’t be done overnight or even over one Worldcon. It’s not as though any one Worldcon actually owns the Hugo Awards, after all. Worldcon committees do not own Worldcon; they are licensees of the World Science Fiction Society, with a limited license to use the WSFS service marks. WSFS put the Mark Protection Committee (and by extension, Worldcon Intellectual Property, whose board of directors is the MPC) in charge of the service marks. Worldcon committees can’t sell or transfer the service marks to someone else. So the mechanism for separation goes through the Business Meeting, and good luck getting two consecutive Worldcons to vote to abandon/sell/transfer the Hugo Award service marks!

  38. bill whines The idea of SH paying for and giving all named people a pin reminds me of playing Little League baseball, when every player on every team got a trophy. A Hugo nomination is not a participation award.

    I’ve got a review site, currently called A Green Man Review, which has had upwards of fifty reviewers over the thirty years including some who’ve written books within the genre such as Deborah Grabien a friend who’ll get a Birthday note tomorrow and Jennifer Stevenson who’s another friend. Others that you’ve very much never heard of. Some have only contributed a review or two, some, well, I can’t say how many as they’ve been here the whole time and it’d take too long to add them up. But they all count as having contributed to that which is A Green Man Review. It couldn’t existed without what they did.

    Point is that SH decides who’s a contributor to their zine, not you or anyone else. If you don’t like it, tough. It’s not your concern.

  39. @Kevin
    Thank you for that information.

    @Cat
    In case you missed it, Mike has already asked Bill to back off on this.

  40. Laura says In case you missed it, Mike has already asked Bill to back off on this.

    No, I noticed, but since his comments were aimed at me, I responded. My point is that SH isn’t that uncommon. I suspect that there are myriad review zines that operates like they do, not all obviously genre in nature. Indeed Locus has (checks masthead of current issue) twenty four staffers listed. So if they were up for a currently non-existent Prozine Hugo, they could bring all of their staff. Or get pins for all of them.

    Now listening to Alasdair Reynold’s Absolution Gap while reading more of Neal Asher’s Jack Four Polity novel later tonight. Yes, I’m in a hard SF mood.

  41. Back from reading the article that Kevin linked above, and I wanted to share this about Strange Horizons’ reasoning for the long list of names:

    a) to make clear just how many hard-working volunteers it requires to keep a magazine of that quality going on volunteer labour; and b) because they are a non-hierarchical organisation and do not want particular individuals separated out as more important than the others.

  42. Laura says Laura on June 27, 2021 at 3:31 pm said:
    Back from reading the article that Kevin linked above, and I wanted to share this about Strange Horizons’ reasoning for the long list of names:

    a) to make clear just how many hard-working volunteers it requires to keep a magazine of that quality going on volunteer labour; and b) because they are a non-hierarchical organisation and do not want particular individuals separated out as more important than the others.

    Yeah, thank you for this. I’ve been of the belief that they’re more of a collective in their organisational model than anything else. FIYAH I think operates pretty much in the same manner. The present group of fanzines and semi-prozines that are geographically dispersed are radically different than the older, locally based ones such as Locus was.

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