272 thoughts on “Hugo Rules and Other WSFS Minutiae

  1. Kendall: I’d be very surprised if Beale just dropped this right now.

    I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t move on to something else next year. After all, he only got a small percentage of his followers who paid to join last year to pay again this year to vote. And he utterly miscalculated in his belief that “SJWs” wouldn’t be willing to vote for quality works simply because they were on his slate. This year’s Puppy fizzle was really quite embarrassing for him.

    Next year is likely to be even more embarrassing for him. Granted, he’s not exactly the brightest guy — but I would be very surprised if he was not at least bright enough to see next year’s embarrassment coming and head it off at the pass, by coming up with another, more vulnerable place, to direct his campaign of mindless followers… like, say, the Dragon Awards, where they don’t have to spend any money.

  2. Soon Lee on August 28, 2016 at 2:44 pm said:

    Kevin Standlee,

    It was you(!) who made the suggestion for a semi-final stage at Making Light in a comment from April 18, last year. At that time, we weren’t ready to consider it as a serious proposition. What a difference a year makes!

    Had I not been chairing last year’s Business Meeting, I would have brought what is currently called 3SV to Spokane and would have pushed on it hard. Whether it would have passed or not, I don’t know. I couldn’t do so last year because I had to try and stay objective to chair the meeting and I already had one item pending from the previous year over which I had to recuse myself.

    Bill on August 28, 2016 at 4:01 pm said:

    …so the Constitution now is not internally consistent.

    Does this suggest a need to amend Sec 3.7.1 in coming Business Meetings?

    The WSFS Business Meeting has a Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee (I’m on it) that tries to work out when things like this happen. If they are sufficiently minor, like cross-references and the like, the WSFS Business Meeting Secretary (often consulting with the NPFSC) just changes the material to make it consistent. When it’s more serious, the NPFSC proposes constitutional amendments to fix things. I expect that once we have the 2016-17 Constitution in a publishable form (which I don’t expect to happen until sometime in late September), we’ll start working on whether we have to propose technical amendments.

    Other people have pointed out how to deal with potential contradictions in interpretation, including the principle of “ignore absurd conclusions with a non-absurd conclusion is possible” and “most-recent change prevails.”

  3. JJ on August 28, 2016 at 10:04 pm said:

    Kendall: I’d be very surprised if Beale just dropped this right now.

    I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t move on to something else next year.

    I agree:
    1. we’ve become boring and annoying to him
    2. his strategy needed a cloud of ‘Sad’ voters who have drifted away
    3. his target market commercially is the Sads, not everybody else. He is trawling for potential recruits/customers/marks. Advertising the latest Castalia House books to people who aren’t going to buy anything is a waste of his time.
    4. likewise politically – his aim is to radicalise people on the right of the GOP who aren’t currently alt-right. If the Sad Puppies have marched off to the Dragon Awards then the struggle for the Hugos isn’t a radicalising struggle.

    However,
    1. causing mischief against designated targets is something he does
    2. he can still produce a slate consisting primarily of ‘hostages’, have zero Rabid Puppies actually nominate and still claim victory when something gets nominated.
    3. When whatever does win wins, he’ll claim that somehow he made us all vote for us by either being so scary that we voted something appallingly SJW (thus destroying the Hugos again) or that is was due to his invisible cadre of ilks who voted for it because he said so. As nominating Castalia house works is simply a handy way for the rest of us to count how many Rabid voters there are, he’ll not bother.
    4. He knows that what we fear most is beer and pizza and so will inundate us with both.*

    *[worth a try if he is reading the comments…]

  4. As long as there’s a chance to convince himself he’s annoying John Scalzi, and to a lesser degree the Nielsen Haydens, I think Beale will remain well and truly hooked.

    The fact that it’s a hook of his own making doesn’t materially change that.

  5. @Camestros/JJ

    (As you know, Bob) One of VDs little hobby horses is declaring that orgs that have been SJW-converged need to be first detected and then replaced with new versions (e.g. how he spun his summary ejection from goodreads as detecting their corruption)
    His available “out” is to declare he’s forced the Hugo corruption into the open etc etc and now the Dragons are the available replacement.
    I’m a little doubtful he’ll be taking that route this year, but if he gets a nice juicy distraction to pursue instead then maybe he will.

  6. “So I’d suggest a test: if the 5 nominees represent less than X% of the people who voted in the category then extra nominees are added. [Note that it is X% of people not X% of votes]”

    To be honest, I think this could replace EPH if we still have 3SV. Just add that the longlist also should have extra nominees added if representing too few (up to a maximum of say 20). This would make an understandable system, no talking of blackboxing, less overhead for administrators and give the necessary diversity.

  7. “I’d be very surprised if Beale just dropped this right now.”

    Exactly. I would be very surprised if a stalker just gives up like that.

  8. On the question of being able to “verify” EPH, presumably whatever software is produced will be able to output a step-by-step report. Could the final stages of this, equivalent to the “longlist”, be published under the current constitution?

  9. Hampus Eckerman on August 29, 2016 at 2:50 am said:

    “I’d be very surprised if Beale just dropped this right now.”

    Exactly. I would be very surprised if a stalker just gives up like that.

    I think he’ll still make a lot of noise but I’m not sure he’ll actually do much. I think if he can persuade his ilk to part with $50 he’d rather the money went to him than Worldcon.

  10. @Mark:

    It’d by definition would mean a release of individual ballot data, since EPH always ties together the works remaining on a specific ballot (just like Australian voting does, as used among the finalists).

    At some point, it boils down to “who do you trust?”. The same was true for FPTP as well, really.

    But take a look at Grokking E Pluribus Hugo for my take on what such a report would entail.

  11. Steve Davidson:

    All of the “problems” related to 3SV (paraphrasing multiples) not eliminating works that maybe oughta have been kicked to the curb indicates that less than 60% of the electorate were insufficiently affronted by a work’s presence to vote it down.

    We are not affronted by the work, but we are affronted by VD’s continuing to control the ballot. There are (we hope) more than five worthy works each year, so a ballot can consist of worthy works, while still being skewed in a way that makes it unrepresentative of the voters’ unconstrained choice. We are, in all likelihood, going to go on voting for the worthy works, because we want to Hugos to continue to exist, and to be associated with things that deserve it. Taht doesn’t make the situation satisfactory.

  12. rcade:

    True, but at least some nominees put on the ballot because of the puppies won.

    Just one, I think (Abigail Larson), though it’s true that in the case of ‘Folding Beijing’ we couldn’t have known it wasn’t there because of the slate.

    In any case, the ‘would have been there anyway’ nominees are still ones that the slaters favoured over other things that might have been shortlisted, so if we see the main problem of the slates as a negative one – the power to shut things out – which I think is in the long term their most dangerous power, these wins are still victories for them.

    I also have a suggestion for how they could avoid their list being piggy-backed (puppy-backed?) by Beale: Don’t publish the final Sad Puppies list until after Beale reveals his slate.

    But the SP list (if done fairly, as it was this year) is just a digest of what has been recommended at the site, so Beale can anticipate what will be on it.

  13. I’d prefer that the puppies compiled their list in time for it to be of any actual use. You know, so people had time to read anything on it. That was not done this year which made it useless. Might as well have recommendation threads without compiling any list.

    Or even better, just compile a list without any reference to awards and what not. Or just have the recommendation threads.

  14. lauowolf:

    There is a lot of confusion as to what the various awards are for, you know, the work, not the person.
    Not lifetime awards.
    And like that.

    That does make the proposal to eliminate editors more attractive (just because it would reduce confusion).

    It would be good if we could eliminate artists as well, but that would be harder, because individual artworks get less recognition.

  15. Camestros: Thanks for that. The key thing seems to be this:

    4. So I’d suggest a test: if the 5 nominees represent less than X% of the people who voted in the category then extra nominees are added. [Note that it is X% of people not X% of votes]

    Might that not be quite easy to satisfy just by including one very popular work on the slate, or a few reasonably popular works? That would depend on the value of X., of course, but is there are figure for X that would be both useful and hard to get round?

  16. Kevin Standlee on August 28, 2016 at 10:41 pm said:

    Bill on August 28, 2016 at 4:01 pm said:

    …so the Constitution now is not internally consistent.

    Does this suggest a need to amend Sec 3.7.1 in coming Business Meetings?

    The WSFS Business Meeting has a Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee (I’m on it) that tries to work out when things like this happen. If they are sufficiently minor, like cross-references and the like, the WSFS Business Meeting Secretary (often consulting with the NPFSC) just changes the material to make it consistent. When it’s more serious, the NPFSC proposes constitutional amendments to fix things. I expect that once we have the 2016-17 Constitution in a publishable form (which I don’t expect to happen until sometime in late September), we’ll start working on whether we have to propose technical amendments.

    Other people have pointed out how to deal with potential contradictions in interpretation, including the principle of “ignore absurd conclusions with a non-absurd conclusion is possible” and “most-recent change prevails.”

    Kevin is, per usual, correct. And this actually came up in the meeting when Ms. Paulk asked about it. The head table staff, myself included, said it didn’t matter. Perhaps we were a little overzealous in that, because, as Jameson points out, EPH didn’t strike that part out and I think some of us may have thought it did (we are only human). However, parliamentary interpretation and at least one grammatical interpretation say it is moot.

    Also, since I personally made a note of it when reviewing the videos and updating documents to send along to Worldcon 75, and I am also a member of the NPFSC, the NPFSC will surely take a look at this and determine if we can clean it up on the back-end or if we need to propose an amendment. There is already discussion about what we need to be looking at for next year.

  17. When the constitution says “five equally-weighted works,” I think it clearly means “not ordered by preference,” so there isn’t really a contradiction. It just contrasts the nominating process (in which the voters don’t weight their nominations) to the final vote (in which they give greater weight to the earlier ones in their lists).

  18. I think the “extend the list further in certain cases” ideas would work well for the shorter categories – ‘llette, SS, BDPS.

  19. It just contrasts the nominating process (in which the voters don’t weight their nominations) to the final vote (in which they give greater weight to the earlier ones in their lists).

    ????
    This is not computing.

  20. Do Hugo nominating ballots for this year and last still exist? In consideration of an idea floated here earlier about voter happiness, it would be interesting to know what percentage of nominators had at least one of their choices in each category.

    Note: I’m not proposing the data be shared with me — just asking if it is even around.

  21. P J Evans on August 29, 2016 at 8:47 am said:
    It just contrasts the nominating process (in which the voters don’t weight their nominations) to the final vote (in which they give greater weight to the earlier ones in their lists).

    ????
    This is not computing.

    When nominating, under all the systems, it does not matter in what order you list your nominees.
    They all start with 1/5 of a point.
    When a work is dropped in the elimination rounds, all your remaining items are awarded the same new value (what it is depends on EPH or EPH+).
    You do not get to pick and choose among the items you nominate in order to assign them different values relative to one another.
    I.e., it makes no difference what in order you list your nominations, so on the nominating ballot, your own votes always have an equal value.

    When voting your final ballot, you place the nominated works in an order that reflects your opinion of their worthiness, first, second, etc.
    You are ranking them, and how you list them makes a difference in how your votes are tallied.
    So on the voting ballot you are not assigning them an equal value.

  22. PJ Evans, I think what Greg’s saying is, in the nomination process, the works you nominate are not given or ranked in any particular order. None of them are weighted higher or lower than any other. “These are five things I loved.” They can be presented in any order; it doesn’t matter. (In fact, every time I saved a nominee with MidAmericon, they changed the order…) They’re all equal to each other in the eyes of the Hugo Committee.

    In the voting process, you have to judge between them, and rank some higher and some lower. The works are weighted unequally; you have a first place and a last place.

    So the “equally weighted works” refers to each ballot’s nominations, as I read it. Each ballot’s nominees are equal to each other in that category.

    Hope this helps.

  23. rcade, as a data point of one, I can tell you that my nominee won in all but (I think, without checking) three categories. One of those categories I didn’t vote in because I don’t follow it; in the other two I thought the winner was worthy (it was my second or third place choice, if memory serves. I think second both times, but I won’t swear to it without checking).

  24. I know how the nominating process works, as well as the final ballot. What he said about the final ballot isn’t what is actually done. (Ranking doesn’t actually give greater weight to the higher-ranked works. All of them get one vote.)

  25. rcade, as a data point of one, I can tell you that my nominee won in all but (I think, without checking) three categories.

    Do you mean you got a nominee in a category on the ballot, or are you talking about award wins?

    I’m interested in how representative the ballot was in each category, where representation means the widest number of nominators saw at least one of their choices on the ballot. Call the percentage the category’s happiness.

    In Best Related Work for 2016, all 5 nominees were on the rabid slate. If there are 430 rabids (wild guess) out of 2,080 nominators in that category and nobody else nominated any of them, the category’s happiness is 20.67%.

  26. @P J Evans

    I know how the nominating process works, as well as the final ballot. What he said about the final ballot isn’t what is actually done. (Ranking doesn’t actually give greater weight to the higher-ranked works. All of them get one vote.)

    It’s quite clear that when the constitution speaks of “unweighted choices” is means “with no preference assigned by the voter.” In the colloquial sense, the final ballot does indeed give greater weight to higher ranked choices. It’s picking nits to argue that the actual algorithm doesn’t use mathematical weights to accomplish this.

  27. @rcade, if I understand the question correctly, 18 of my nominees in 10 categories were on the final ballot. I vacillated over two nominees in one category and possibly my first choice won a Hugo, but none of my other first place rankings did.

  28. (Perhaps not WSFS related enough, but this is a bit too much data-based to throw into the conversation thread I feel)

    Back when nominations closed we ran a “Post your ballots” thread. Nicholas Whyte collated the results, and so I thought it would be interesting to see to what extent you could have used Filer opinions to predict the actual results. Comparing them to Vasha’s slate-free nomination list gives the following:

    In Novel we got the top 3 correct and in order, but Seveneves and Aurora were well down the pack by comparison. Filers preferred Radiance, plus Bryony And Roses by a certain T. Kingfisher.
    In Novella we predicted 3 out of 5, with Binti, Penric’s Demon and The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Djinn in the top 5, but Penric took top spot instead of Binti. We put Witches of Lychford and The New Mother a few places higher than the rest of the voters – both got a fair amount of discussion during the year.
    In novelette, we have a top 7 due to ties, and get the real top 5 in it. A noticeable rogue is that Botanica Veneris did better among filers than in reality, which might point to the problems with anthology shorts getting enough exposure – Old Venus was heavily recced on here, and I suspect proportionally more people picked it up than in the main field.
    Short Story is where the variability of the field, plus what we might call the Wombat effect, let us down – Ursula Vernon took the top 2 spots, presumably due to the greater local exposure of being a Filer (ditto placing 5th in Novel), so we only predicted 2 of 5. If you correct for the likely local bias then we’re at 4 of the top 5, only promoting Damage higher than it actually ended (probably because it was being recced on here since publication in January). Noticeably we ranked Alyssa Wong lower than reality, which also occurred in the Campbell.
    Best Related sees 3 of 5, Graphic Story technically 0 of 5, BDP short 3 of 5, BDP long 4 of 5 (Jessica Jones clearly not getting quite enough love from the wider Hugo voters, and we got The Martian and Mad Max the “wrong” way round).
    Both Editor types 4 of 5 (and short could have been 5 of 5 depending on how the admins would have handled the noms for the Thomases), semi-prozine an impressive 5 of 5 and close to the right order, Fanzine 4 out of 5 – if you correct for Black Gate’s withdrawal – with Rocket Stack Rank getting a slightly higher rank from filers than in reality, Fancast 4 of 5, Fan writer 4 of 5, with James Nicoll doing better among filers, and Fan Artist had very few votes declared with a massive tie for 2nd, but only 1 person in our longlist came in the real top 5 so I’m scoring that zero.
    Finally, in the Campbell, 3 out of 5 and correctly placing Andy Weir top, and rating Alyssa Wong 2 places lower than reality. I’m not sure whether there’s any significance in that, but it also happened to her in shot story. Possibly we have slightly less horror fans than in the general population?

    In pure numbers I think that’s slightly better than 3 out of 5 spots predicted correctly, and the missing ones are generally bubbling somewhere under the line. The benefit of exposure is seen with Filers like Red Wombat, James Nicoll and Rocket Stack Rank clearly getting some boosts from being well-known on here. I’m sure this could be spun as Cabal influence, but I think it’s a lot more likely that we’re a pretty good cross-section of the electorate, except in categories with drawings in!

  29. Mark,

    You’re very kind, but in fact my numbers were superseded by later entries and other analysis, in particular Vasha at the end of the thread in a number of the categories (and I number-crunched updated figures for the others on my blog.) If you have time, you’re very welcome to update your analysis from those figures.

  30. @rcade, Sorry; I misunderstood your question. Ok, here follows more detail than you probably want. In almost all categories where I nominated, I nominated five selections.

    These are my nominees that made the ballot:

    One novel nominee: The Fifth Season

    One novella nominee made the ballot: Penric’s Demon (Note: I actually voted for Binti for first place for the Hugo; I’d not encountered it before I got the Hugo packet.)

    One novelette nominee made it: And You Shall Know Her By The Trail of Dead. (I thought Folding Beijing was a worthy candidate when I encountered it in the Hugo packet, and voted it second. Not disappointed in it winning at all.)

    No short story nominee made it, although under EPH I would have had one: “Wooden Feather”. In the voting, I voted “Cat Pictures Please” first.

    No best related work nominee made it; under EPH I’d’ve had two (Letters to Tiptree and You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). Voted No Award.

    No graphic novel nominee made it. (I didn’t read Sandman: Overture until I got the packet; it got my whole-hearted vote).

    Three BDP Long nominees: The Martian, Star Wars, and Fury Road. Not surprising; there was a small pool of very good movies to pick from. I’m sure a lot of people had multiple nominees make the ballot. I voted The Martian first.

    No BDP Short nominees made it (I nominated several Welcome to Night Vale episodes). Voted for the only thing I’d seen, which was the Dr. Who episode. I understand the winner was worthy.

    I did not nominate in Best Professional Editor Short Form. Ellen Datlow got second place on my ballot after Sheila Williams, based on the contents of the Hugo packet.

    The only person I nominated in Editor Long Form was Sheila Gilbert (I read several very good books that acknowledged her last year).

    One made it through to the ballot in Best Pro Artist: Abigail Larson

    I did not nominate for Best SemiProZine; relied on the Hugo packet for that one. I voted for Uncanny Magazine first, based on the packet.

    One nomination made it through to the ballot in Best Fanzine. I think you can guess what… <big grin>

    I did not nominate or vote in Best Fancast; I don’t have time to listen to them.

    None of my nominees made it to Best Fan Writer (although with EPH Alexandra Erin would have made it). I think you can guess which nominee I voted for in first place… <bigger grin>

    None of my nominees made to to Best Fan Artist. I voted first for Stiles based on the contents of the packet.

    One of my nominees made it to the Campbell (Andy Weir); with EPH it would have been two (Becky Chambers).

    So it’s about 50/50 for me whether I got a nominee onto the ballot or not. I will say I was quite pleased that the final awards was very close to matching my voting ballot (and the few exceptions were ranked high on my ballot, just not first. Other than BDP-short which I just didn’t see.).

  31. @Nicholas Whyte

    Oh well, it serves me right for not checking the date of your post! I’ve had a quick look at the updates and although the numbers in some categories will be different I think the basic conclusion that filers aren’t a bad cross section is still valid.

  32. Jameson Quinn on August 29, 2016 at 12:14 pm said:

    Do Hugo finalists get free WordCon / WSFS memberships?

    I don’t think so. AFAIK, only special guests get free memberships–even the committee members buy their memberships.

    But they might get invitations to the Hugo Awards and pre- and post- Hugo parties. Someone who has worked Events at a WorldCon would know better than I.

  33. Andrew M on August 29, 2016 at 4:28 am said:

    Camestros: Thanks for that. The key thing seems to be this:

    4. So I’d suggest a test: if the 5 nominees represent less than X% of the people who voted in the category then extra nominees are added. [Note that it is X% of people not X% of votes]

    Might that not be quite easy to satisfy just by including one very popular work on the slate, or a few reasonably popular works? That would depend on the value of X., of course, but is there are figure for X that would be both useful and hard to get round?

    Yes, for example, if everybody nominates The Martian, then even if the rest of the nominees collectively don’t represent many people, the full set does. But in that case you have one really popular work dominating and you’ve got your likely winner right there.

    A few reasonably popular works may still not reach X% *unless* they are popular with a variety of people. So for example works that can get 30% of nominees voting for them, collectively might represent only 30% of nominees if they are only popular with the same 30% of people.

    To some extent this is how EPH is also functioning.

    But you are right about X. Is there a sweet spot for X% which makes a difference? I don’t know and it is hard to tell from the nomination data we have. I think it would be an interesting figure to publish i.e. what percentage of the total number of nominees is represented by the set of finalists per category.

    A different way of automating +2 would be to think about ties. The principle and way to count is quite different but the effect might be similar. However, I’d see this more as an answer to the ‘EPH changes things!’ concern that arises when it is run on old data – EPH will change close results for last place.

    Currently, when there is an exact tie for fifth, the number of nominees increases. However, a difference of one vote (which arguably isn’t meaningful) doesn’t count as a tie AND I suspect EPH will make ties very unlikely.

    For example, look at 2013 and pick a threshold of less than 1%-point difference as a criteria for a ‘virtual’ tie.
    The first one you’d get is Best Novellette:
    “The Rat Catcher” by Seanan McGuire came fifth but Ken Liu’s “The Waves” wasn’t far behind (38 votes to 37).
    Actually I’d bet if EPH was run on 2013 data this is a category where a change in finalists was likely as the next two works after Ken Liu’s are also close in numbers.

    Best Fanwriter in 2013 also has a virtual tie as does Fan Artist.

    The Campbell Award is also interesting in 2013:
    Max Gladstone was fifth on 34 votes, but Brooke Bolander and Rachel Hartman were close behind on 31, then Brit Mandelo and Jeff Salyards on 30. Very, very easy for those totals to have been slightly different.

    Of course that also reveals a flaw in the ‘virtual tie’ idea. For a category like the Campbell you could end up with a LOT of finalists.

  34. @Camestros Felapton:

    I think he’ll still make a lot of noise but I’m not sure he’ll actually do much. I think if he can persuade his ilk to part with $50 he’d rather the money went to him than Worldcon.

    Very minor point: MACII’s supporting memberships (which of course can no longer be bought) were US $50. Worldcon 75’s are US $40 or €35.

  35. ULTRAGOTHA on August 29, 2016 at 12:27 pm said:

    Jameson Quinn on August 29, 2016 at 12:14 pm said:

    Do Hugo finalists get free [Worldcon] / WSFS memberships?

    I don’t think so. AFAIK, only special guests get free memberships–even the committee members buy their memberships.

    That is correct.

    But they might get invitations to the Hugo Awards and pre- and post- Hugo parties. Someone who has worked Events at a WorldCon would know better than I.

    In my own experience running the Events division at the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow, that is correct. There were certain dignitaries to which we extended passes, and I would be surprised at a Worldcon not being willing to give passes to finalists so that they can be at the ceremony. But those aren’t memberships and don’t include WSFS membership rights.

  36. I dug out my nominations list and checked: I filled out a full set of five nominees in every category, and a total of 13 of them made it onto the final ballot. Under EPH, I’d have had 17, or exactly 20%.

    Am I bothered by this? Well, no, not really. The simple fact is, there are only so many hours in the day, and there’s a lot of stuff out there to read; I can’t read it all, and it is entirely possible – even highly likely! – that some of the stuff I haven’t read is better than the stuff I have. (Obvious example in Graphic Story, where I hadn’t read Overture and therefore didn’t nominate it.) So even 13 of my nominees making it to the final ballot is, well, better than I should expect, really! (Particularly as two of them were in the editing categories, where I’m clueless.)

    It seems to me that there are only two situations where I should expect a high correlation between my nominating ballot and the final list. One is if I’m a slave to popular taste and am nominating only the obviously popular stuff that everyone else is nominating; the other is if I’m running a slate myself. Neither situation strikes me as desirable. (I suppose I’d also get a high correlation if I was an omniscient and infallible judge of quality in SF/F – a possibility which does strike me as desirable, but not, alas, remotely plausible.)

  37. @Mark: How are you counting 0 of 5 for Graphic Story? I’d think that The Sandman: Overture would take us to 1?

  38. Jameson Quinn: Do Hugo finalists get free WordCon / WSFS memberships?

    ULTRAGOTHA: I don’t think so. AFAIK, only special guests get free memberships – even the committee members buy their memberships.

    I’m pretty sure this is true. One of the sources of outrage amongst Puppy nominees last year was the fact that they actually had to pay for their con membership, despite being a “VIP” nominee. 🙄

    Of course, another source of outrage among at least some of those nominees was that they didn’t get a red carpet rolled out for them, and the sort of deluxe treatment that only the Big Names like GRRM would get.

  39. @Soon Lee
    A number of suggestions were made on the extensive Making Light discussions and it would not surprise me if something like 3SV was suggested

    I remember at least one similar proposal very clearly from those discussions. The difference from 3SV was that it would have been a first voting ballot to create the finalist list, members would either just mark their top 5 picks or rank their top five like in the final vote. It was scuttled, iirc, because of not wanting to make that big of a change and that reading 15 works x all the categories was prohibitive.

  40. I’m pretty sure this is true. One of the sources of outrage amongst Puppy nominees last year was the fact that they actually had to pay for their con membership, despite being a “VIP” nominee. 🙄

    I think one of the things that outrages the Puppy leaders is that Worldcon doesn’t treat them like they are special and important. Correai and Torgersen talk a lot about not wanting to “insult their fans”, but from the way they behave and the way they talk, it seems clear that they think they are better than the unwashed masses – especially the unwashed masses who have the temerity to refuse tofawn all over them. I think that part of Correia’s outrage over Pournelle finishing behind “No Award” is that he regards the people who voted for that result to be beneath him, and that the only appropriate response Hugo voters should have had was immediate genuflection and servility.

  41. @Bill
    Sec 3.7.1 of the WSFS Constitution says “[nominators] shall be allowed to make up to five (5) equally weighted nominations in every category.”

    I’m behind in comments, but wanted to get/give 2 cents on this topic.

    I don’t think this is actually in conflict with EPH. The “[nominators]” propose 5 nominations and do not weight or order those nominations. EPH happens after this step and is governed under the section regarding tallying nominations and is not influenced by the conscious action of the nominators. I think that would mean there isn’t a conflict.

  42. If it wasn’t clear before, it ought to be now: SP & RP actions have little to nothing to do with eliciting culture change at Worldcon, improving the quality of the awards or “saving” science fiction.
    They have everything to do with creating a false controversy, setting themselves up as the heroes and reaping the sales benefits thereof.

    How long is Worldcon going to continue to allow itself to be the unofficial whipping boy and promotional tool for a bunch of hacks?

    Solution? Vote to bar certain individuals and/or companies from participation.

  43. Because enshrining people’s names in the WSFS Constitution as people those evil SJWs hate would totally not be a publicity boost that other people would try to emulate, world without end, amen? “Look at me! I’ve been banned in Boston!”

  44. @steve davidson

    Time to amend WSFS constitution to put in new company name – two years
    Cost of above – many hours of people’s time
    Time to create new company – a few days to file a name change on a pre-set shell
    Cost of above – minimal

    It’s tempting, but totally unrealistic in practice.

  45. @Camestros: using your outline as a starting point:

    Beale’s objective was to elevate the footprint of Castalia House – now the publisher of multiple Hugo Finalist authors (forevermore and until the end of time)

    Secondarily, to either change the awards – or (more likely) to engender support for an alternative award that either is or can be made “more prestigious than the Hugos”. Not that I think it will happen, but, enter the Dragons>

    Thirdly, to establish using Worldcon, traditional fans, authors whose politics he disagrees with, etc., as a whipping boy/girl/thing that he can use as red meat for his audience whenever the news is slow.

    Sad Puppies, when it started, was probably supposed to be that same ploy for all of the disaffected, but Beale probably found that is fellow travelers didn’t have the stomach to run with the whole thing all the way and so they split along nasty-lite and nasty-nasty lines, but a split that has gained them benefits as they have more tools to play with and two seemingly different ideologies to offer their potential recruits.

    Side note: over on FB, some guy is trying to annoy me on a regular basis by suggesting that I don’t know the English language because, obviously, the Hugo Awards have ALWAYS been popular awards.
    It’s a perfect example of the kind of person/bs that is representative of the low-brow audience these folks appeal to.

  46. Camestros:

    Yes, for example, if everybody nominates The Martian, then even if the rest of the nominees collectively don’t represent many people, the full set does. But in that case you have one really popular work dominating and you’ve got your likely winner right there.

    Well, being really popular at the nomination stage doesn’t guarantee a thing will win, witness Penric’s Demon. I’m worried that any ballot with Penric’s Demon on it would satisfy this criterion, unless you set X so high it could never be reached. (Slaters are less vulnerable to EPH and 3SV if they nominate popular things – which is still bad because…. see my previous comments ad nauseam – and I fear that would be true of this plan as well.)

  47. I nominated The Martian, Star Wars Force Awakens, Penric’s Demon, Abigail Larson and Andy Weir. If five puppy picks identify a Puppy, does that mean I bark? (I submitted my ballot before I saw the Puppy picks, for what it’s worth.)

    I did end up voting for Binti above Penric’s Demon. That’s the advantage of the nominating process; ideally you find stuff on the ballot you never encountered before. And sometimes it’s really good. (Yes, that’s been subverted the last few years…)

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