Sunday Business Meeting at Sasquan

Today the Sasquan Business Meeting will consider 4/6, E Pluribus Hugo plus other unfinished business and whatever shennanigans people have left in their deck at this point.

Livebloggers welcome.

1,619 thoughts on “Sunday Business Meeting at Sasquan

  1. Kate Secor speaking for, says this does not mandate a specific techhnical methodology for electronic signature, but gives a compromise to those who still wish to vote by paper. Worldcons still have the autonomy to decide what to do and how to do it.

    Judith Bemis speaking against, says more data is needed and better to send this back to committee to address site selection issues.

    Terry Neill speaking for, emphasizes that this is not a mandate but is a suggestion from the WSFS that “this would be a good thing to do”, in light of the increased participation of fans from around the world.

    Jared Dashoff speaking says the amendment would provide no real change.

    Standlee says committee’s proposal has superseded the original proposal.

    Recommended verbiage change by committee is passed.

  2. (Yes, I’m catching up. Please to forgive any temporal anomalies.)

    @SJW75261: “with the puppies it isn’t really about SFF other than Larry writes urban fantasy gun porn. It is about straight white male privilege. Read Larry’s blog like I do and reads like a mix of Free Republic and Storm Front.”

    That’s pretty much my take on it. Bog-standard “grab whatever’s at hand, link it to your Big Cause, and start agitating” tactics at work. It is not enough to be part of the conversation; they insist that they are Being Oppressed unless they are not only allowed to dominate the discussion, but to do so “free” from opposing views. The projection is strong in them.

    In that way, the Puppy campaigns are just another tendril of a shoggoth we’ve seen many times over. It surfaced in GamerGate and the SFWA Bulletin flap, it rampages across Fox News, and its glazed eyes peer back at us from the MRA, PUA, KKK, and Tea Party movements. It howls with the screech of every toddler ever forced to share his toys and speaks with the soft words of every sexual predator who has slipped something into a drink, of every employer who has seen an employee’s skirt as reason enough to deny them a promotion, and of every abuser who’s shed crocodile tears while promising never, ever to do it again… right before picking up another couple of six-packs. Their arguments are flimsy because they only exist as recognition signals and cheap disguises. The reality lies underneath, in their privileged sense of entitlement: This belongs to me, and you can’t have it because you’re not one of us.

    I, for one, am very glad to see fandom standing fast upon this bridge, facing the Balrog with those immortal words that nobody here needs me to repeat.

  3. Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that the people making the argument were saying EPH was undemocratic, merely that they were concerned that we would not be able to be able to explain it simply and clearly enough to people who are being introduced by to the nomination process if this is ratified to prevent the naysayers from claiming (IMHO incorrectly) that the Hugo nomination process is undemocratic.

  4. Electronic Signature amended substitute proposal passes and will be up for ratification at next year’s Worldcon.

  5. Thank you; I’d already commented on GRR Martin’s opposition as one of the Old Guard, staring through rose-tinted glasses and telling themselves that it will all go away.

    I suspect that GRMM knows that he’s being irrational because he also admits that there is no way to get through to VD; I also suspect that he’s not hugely good at maths. Kevin Standlee commented on NotaBlog explaining to George that increasing the number of nominations would not, in itself, reduce the ability to dominate the ballot by people nominating in lock step; George doesn’t want to know.

    Were there any big name fans from outside the U.S. who thought that the slates would go away without any of the rules changing?

  6. Standlee thanks everyone who helped run the Business Meeting for their hard work, and thanks all participants for generally staying civil and dealing with the restrictions of the rules, especially since half of them are first-time attendees. Kevin says that this is the longest meeting with the most items in his memory, and in WSFS history of which he’s aware.

    Motion to commend Kevin Standlee for doing such a fantastic job, standing ovation by acclamation.

    Meeting adjourned sine die in memory of Bobbie DuFault and Peggy Rae Sapienza.

  7. Electronic Signature, as returned by the committee, was adopted by a huge margin and returned to MAC2. Kevin is now very gracefully thanking all concerned parties. Todd Dashoff asks for a resolution thanking Kevin for his outstanding work. Adopted by acclamation. Kevin is obviously pleased. And we are adjourned in memory of Bobbie and Peggy Rae. Finis. Fade to black.

  8. @ Microtherion Agreed.

    We will munch on the wreckage of the Puppies’ domination and use the shards of their shattered plans to pick our teeth!

    How’s that?

  9. I, for one, am very glad to see fandom standing fast upon this bridge, facing the Balrog with those immortal words that nobody here needs me to repeat.

    ‘THERE AIN’T NO FLIES ON US!’

  10. We will munch on the wreckage of the Puppies’ domination and use the shards of their shattered plans to pick our teeth!

    How’s that?

    “Conan! What is best in life?”

    “Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their blogposts.”

  11. While many of my SMOFish friends may disagree, I’m glad that EPH passed. Yes, it’s more complicated than the current system, but the current system has been proven to be exploitable and those who did so are vowing to keep doing so as long as possible. If problems with EPH come up, we can always not ratify it next year. As the vote on popular ratification proved thia year, ratification votes are not just a pro forma rubber stamp. We need to have the EPH option available to ratify next year, because if the puppies are successful in packing the ballot again, I’d not like to see us have to wait until 2018 to see an untainted Hugo Awards.

  12. @Rev Bob: In that way, the Puppy campaigns are just another tendril of a shoggoth we’ve seen many times over. It surfaced in GamerGate and the SFWA Bulletin flap, it rampages across Fox News, and its glazed eyes peer back at us from the MRA, PUA, KKK, and Tea Party movements. It howls with the screech of every toddler ever forced to share his toys and speaks with the soft words of every sexual predator who has slipped something into a drink, of every employer who has seen an employee’s skirt as reason enough to deny them a promotion, and of every abuser who’s shed crocodile tears while promising never, ever to do it again… right before picking up another couple of six-packs. Their arguments are flimsy because they only exist as recognition signals and cheap disguises. The reality lies underneath, in their privileged sense of entitlement: This belongs to me, and you can’t have it because you’re not one of us.

    I, for one, am very glad to see fandom standing fast upon this bridge, facing the Balrog with those immortal words that nobody here needs me to repeat.

    QFT, plus, it’s just so darn pretty!

    *fangirlz u*

  13. @May Tree: Interesting idea, though I don’t warm to it, sorry. It feels like another Best Novel category with special criteria, which isn’t needed. Plus, series novels have won – not regularly, but it happens. Also that would open up the “eligible in two places” issue (granted, an amendment passing the first time addresses that…which I have some issues with…heh). Thanks for the interesting thoughts on how to recognize series works more.

    @Bruce: Thanks for clarifying. Since it is more democratic, I’m okay with just explaining over and over again that it is, until it sinks in (for those it can sink in to). I understand their concern about perception versus reality, but IMHO it’s not a reason to not fix what’s broken! That’s a really horrible argument on their part, IMHO.

    @Various: “More data needed” is the rallying cry for postponing everything indefinitely, it feels like.

  14. Glad to hear they both passed.

    Next year will still be interesting but now that I’ve voted for the first time I can nominate for the first time next year as well.

  15. @May Tree: Interesting idea, though I don’t warm to it, sorry. It feels like another Best Novel category with special criteria, which isn’t needed. Plus, series novels have won – not regularly, but it happens. Also that would open up the “eligible in two places” issue (granted, an amendment passing the first time addresses that…which I have some issues with…heh). Thanks for the interesting thoughts on how to recognize series works more.

    I’m not sure how valid an argument of “We don’t need another novel Hugo” is though. It has been argued — rightly, I think — that in the current publishing environment, recognizing a large handful of short works and only one long work is the inverse of what we should have to reflect the present number of works being published in the field. Would having two Hugos for novel-sized works be a bad thing? If so, why? The criteria for producing a top-quality work in-series and a top-quality work out-of-series are different and they are judged differently by readers, so why not have different awards? If there’s room for prozines, semiprozines, and fanzines, why not a Novel Hugo and a Series Novel Hugo? What’s the harm?

  16. running EPH against this year’s data won’t tell the entire story. Do you really think that people’s voting strategies won’t change when the rules change?

  17. @Martin Easterbrook: Within minutes of the committee releasing the data, I should think. The implementations are all warmed up and ready to go.

  18. @rrede:

    Hey, it’s Sunday. Sometimes I am obliged to sermonize. (Or Simonize, but I haven’t done that in ages.) 😉

    ETA, @May Tree: (quoting “We don’t need another novel Hugo”)

    Can someone please call Security to remove Ms. Turner from my brain before I start filking? 🙂

  19. Mike Kerpan

    Well, no fix is perfect against people unhampered with moral scruples, but the prospect of indefinitely wading through the steaming rejects from the slush pile masquerading as Hugo contenders, as evidenced by the Hugo package this year, is enough to break anyone’s spirit.

    People will do it if there’s light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, but, once the powers that be start telling themselves that everything will be fine, the grunts will analyse the situation and pick a more enjoyable form of masochism, probably involving alcohol. This is an improvement on fragging the SMOFs, at least from the SMOF’s perspective, but it certainly isn’t going to uplift the reputation of the Hugos…

  20. Many thanks to JJ, Rick Moen, Rachael Acks (on her blog), & others here for live blogging this – to Mike Glyer for hosting – to Kevin Standlee for all his hard work and impartial handling of the meeting – and to everyone who went to the meeting and participated!

    I’m thinking of the song “I got no strings” (sung by Pinocchio). I’m no filker, so this will be bad, but hopefully the sentiment makes sense – we’re happier without slates to tell us what to do.

    We got no slates to hold us down
    To tell us how to nominate
    You had slates, but we are free
    For us there are no slates.

    Heigh ho, the merry oh
    That’s the only way to be
    We want the world to know
    We don’t want your slates, you see.

    We got no slates, so we have fun
    We’ll rec books to anyone!
    They had slates, but you can see
    The nasty slates are done.

    (Okay, the last line is premature, since there’ll be slates next year.)

  21. I, for one, am very glad to see fandom standing fast upon this bridge, facing the Balrog with those immortal words…

    “Chu for President!”
    Or if Silverbob is Gandalf:
    “Hare Krishna!”
    Or the words of power
    “E Pluribus Hugo!”

    And mighty live blogging people – I felt I was there. And thanks to Mike!
    I an in Monday already and Morning from the Peer Gynt suite is playing instead of In The Hall of the Mountain King…
    ( yes Sibelius would be more geographically appropriate but Grieg was as close as I could get.)

  22. Mike Kerpan: If problems with EPH come up, we can always not ratify it next year.

    EPH does not take effect until 2017 and that’s ONLY IF it’s ratified at MidAmericon II. It does have a sunset provision which ends it in 2022. We’ll have five years worth of data on which to base a decision as to whether it continues to be done after that.

    But next year will be the same situtation as this year. And we have no guarantee that a larger flood of nominators will stem the Puppy tide.

  23. Can’t help thinking that arguing against EPH solely because it is complicated boils down to we could fix this problem, but we need to respect people’s theoretical stupidity.
    I’m not a math person.
    Seriously not a math person, but after the tenth or so run at it, it started making sense even to me.
    So how about respecting my willingness to figure out something difficult, instead of treating my mathematical weakness as an excuse not to do the right thing.
    And, as for the puppies using its difficulties to whine about democracy?
    So what.
    They will whine regardless.
    They are whining right now for how undemocratic it is that they were massively outvoted.
    We need to install the puppygate, to keep them from messing in the house.
    Thanks for engineering the thing, people.

  24. Well, depending on the ewoks it could be really, really right…

    I suppose I should defer to the Rev on moral matters, particularly since I need more libations…

  25. @David Lang: No doubt their strategies will change, but running EPH on this data will tell a lot.

    @May Tree: I believe strongly that not everything deserves a Hugo and not every concept needs a Hugo category, though, so “there’s a lot of work in series” isn’t a persuasive argument to me, especially when the works are already eligible (and win!) in Best Novel. I sometimes feel like 3 short fiction categories is a lot (though short fiction seems to be on the upswing anyway). I guess I’d rather see a truly different category that could be distinguished from Best Novel – not just a subset of Best Novel, i.e., giving two bites at the apple. Re. prozines – there’s no prozine category, and I’ve never liked the semiprozine one (I think there should be one category for pro/so-called-semipro, FWIW). Fanzines are a completely different type of animal – despite the ‘zine’ in their name.

    Mind you, I’m not saying there’s harm (but “where’s the harm,” also, isn’t a persuasive argument). Someone else wrote a lot of very cogent arguments against a Best Series type of award in the comments here when it came up, a month or two ago. I agreed with a lot of them. Best Novel in a Series is different, yes – but still carries some of the same baggage (tough to read stand-alone; people would just vote their fave series without trying to read 14 books in Butcher’s sprawling series so they could honestly vote whether #14 was best; etc. – sorry, I don’t recall all the points made).

    But I’m just barely sympathetic enough to like hearing different ideas, even if so far I haven’t liked any of the ideas so far. I’m not anti-everything, honest! 😉

    ETA: I wasn’t originally in favor of Best Graphic Story, but I adapted to that quite nicely. Though it’s easier (IMHO) to pick up an ongoing comic book series in the middle than a 14-novel series….

  26. How about the series category only for completed series, not single works.
    If earlier books had won awards, that’s fine.
    Some people win multiple awards.
    If the final volume of a series were also in the running for best novel, the proposed diversity rule would kick in.

  27. David Lang on August 23, 2015 at 1:56 pm said:

    running EPH against this year’s data won’t tell the entire story. Do you really think that people’s voting strategies won’t change when the rules change?

    Since EPH is a change to the procedure for Hugo nominations which does not affect the Hugo voting in any way, shape, or form, I am hard-pressed to see why anyone would think that EPH even could make people change the way they vote.

    Apart from that, there was extensive analysis and discussion of EPH on the Making Light blog, and “um, how will this affect people’s nomination behavior?” was one of the many issues that came up. The consensus conclusion was that most/all ‘strategies’ were either irrelevant or counterproductive under EPH, so the best thing you could do was just nominate all the stuff you thought was best. Which is, you know, exactly what Hugo nom’ers should be doing, so yeah.

  28. But next year will be the same situtation as this year.

    No. Too many options and I don’t want to write a novel, so briefly: The SP narrative doesn’t work anymore the votes were a clear signal from fandom that the SP are not a silent majority. They will have a hard time recruiting people who are not dyed in the wool ideologues who gladly pay $40 to spite people they consider ideological opponents. SP are further hampered by being unable to deliver, being losers. Third based on this year SP can expect nominees either rejecting them beforehand or refusing the nomination (this year showed that “staying on the ballot anyway” is not a good strategy, building longterm goodwill by refusing the puppy nom is a valid alternative). If that leads to SP nominating “their own”, regardless of quality, see above, recruitment problems. Otherwise their impact is diluted by nom refusals and the need to nom quality independent of politics, at which point the slate is much less of a problem. It would still disenfranchise lots of nominators, but if the nominated works are good, that’s something people can live with for the most part.
    RP are a different matter, though even here their loss 2015 will make recruitment in 2016 harder. Plus the expanded nominator base and the loss of SP (see above) and there’s a good chance they can only hurt the more fractured categories. Plus the risk of withdrawals.

    So no, overall I think the puppies prospects for 2016 are a lot worse than expected before this year’s award ceremony.

  29. Having followed all this process as far as I am able, I am inclined to believe one thing in particular:-

    Kevin Standlee deserves a freakin’ medal.

  30. @Lori Coulson: I’m well aware that EPH can’t take effect until 2017. But with initial passage of EPH this year, at least the. canine rampage is limited to 2 years. I also hope that greater fan participation during the nomination stage can at least keep the puppy damage limited to fewer categories in 2016.

  31. I guess I’d rather see a truly different category that could be distinguished from Best Novel – not just a subset of Best Novel, i.e., giving two bites at the apple. Re. prozines – there’s no prozine category, and I’ve never liked the semiprozine one (I think there should be one category for pro/so-called-semipro, FWIW). Fanzines are a completely different type of animal – despite the ‘zine’ in their name.

    I think I was thinking of “best editor short form” for “prozine.” although it occurs to me that maybe that means best editor of short stories? Since it was all Puppies this year I didn’t check out the works nominated and it occurs to me that maybe I misunderstand who this category is intended to honor.

    I don’t really have an issue with “two bites of the apple” — if a book is good enough to sweep both awards, then let it, because no one worries about one movie getting 9+ Oscars if it deserves them. I would guess that in most cases there would not be double-dipping, but if there is, again, I don’t see an issue. In most years I think this split would allow two deserving novels to be honored out of the many, many book-length SFF works published each year, which does not seem like an overabundance of honors to me! I would not like to see a book restricted to EITHER a Best Novel OR a Best Series Novel as that would force fans of, say, Lois Bujold to decide where to nominate her latest Vorkosiverse offering, potentially splitting the nom vote and causing the book not to be nominated at all, as could happen when two episodes of the same show are nominated in the Short Drama category.

    I am of the opinion that series authors often get shafted on the Best Novel Hugo once their series gets too long for people to catch up easily, and I think that’s a shame. Having this category available would also reduce the impulse to play games with the existing Hugo nom categories like was done for Wheel of Time, as individual books in the series could instead be nominated.

  32. Mike, from your keyboard to the Higher Power’s ears! I hope that more fen will nominate next year, but I’ve seen comments from the canines that they’re going to double down…sigh.

  33. Mk41: The new narrative will be that Toni W was mistreated/insulted by No Award. They wont mention the numbers. Each conflict creates a new grievance. SP4 will be phrased in terms of revenge.

  34. Rev Bob : I, for one, am very glad to see fandom standing fast upon this bridge, facing the Balrog with those immortal words that nobody here needs me to repeat.

    “Yngvi is a louse”?

  35. I would not like to see a book restricted to EITHER a Best Novel OR a Best Series Novel

    At which point the rule about nominations in two categories comes in, and it goes in the one with more nominations, if I understand the rules correctly.

  36. Do you really think that people’s voting strategies won’t change when the rules change?

    I’m sure they will. But to be honest, if Teddy wants to invest a lot of time and effort into setting up a bullet slate so that his fans can force him onto the ballot each year then let him go for it. The gun porn fans are a part of the community. I don’t think anyone’s ever said they have no right to see their works appear on the ballot at all (though I expect Hoyt has said that people have said this) just that they have no right to see only their chosen works on the ballot.

  37. Mk41

    I agree that Puppidum misjudged the mood of the voters; I do not, however, believe that light will dawn and wisdom will prevail. After all, they have already accused the administrators of fraudulently misrepresenting the votes, and it’s going to get a lot worse.

    There was a massive increase in the number of votes cast, and a 3:1 majority for EPH at the business meeting; people don’t believe that Puppidum will stop stuffing the ballots until the rules make it much harder to stuff the ballots. So, it’s ceaseless vigilance, and the hope that when the Helsinki Worldcon comes in 2017 we will have fit-for-purpose Hugo rules.

    Also a lot of parties and jokes about the absence of personal pronouns in Finnish, which should make Breq feel at home, even though the trilogy will have been completed long before…

  38. Rev Bob : I, for one, am very glad to see fandom standing fast upon this bridge, facing the Balrog with those immortal words that nobody here needs me to repeat.

    My hovercraft is full of eels…?

  39. At which point the rule about nominations in two categories comes in, and it goes in the one with more nominations, if I understand the rules correctly.

    I wasn’t aware this rule even existed. Is that in case there is disagreement over whether a work is a novella or a novelette? Or is that when you can’t decide if something is a Long or Short form drama?

    And are the nominations for both forms combined in that case?

  40. It would be nice to think we’ve seen the last of the Puppies, but I fear this is overly optimistic. After all, Gamergate, with which the Puppies share many characteristics and some personnel, has been widely publicly discredited and exposed as nothing more than a front for misogyny and abuse since last year, and yet they are still plowing their sad, spiteful furrow. I will be surprised if the Pups do not exhibit similar tenacity in their toytown fascism.

  41. I’ve just finished watching the final business meeting video. Wow. My most sincere respect – and thanks – for the endurance shown by all of you who were there, and that to the power of infinity for Kevin.

  42. Rev Bob : I, for one, am very glad to see fandom standing fast upon this bridge, facing the Balrog with those immortal words that nobody here needs me to repeat.

    “Your place or mine, big boy”?

  43. I am of the opinion that series authors often get shafted on the Best Novel Hugo once their series gets too long for people to catch up easily, and I think that’s a shame.

    But isn’t that inherent in the way the awards work? An awards process in which people are invited to read and compare a number of works cannot effectively handle books which you cannot understand, or appreciate, unless you have read fourteen previous books. I suspect if there were a series fiction Hugo, it would generally go to the kind of series fiction which gets nominated now (which it does, quite often).

    I agree that there is a kind of series fiction which doesn’t do well in the Hugos; but that kind of series fiction is very hard to define, so I don’t see you can have an award confined to it.

    It does seem to me that there is at least one good reason why there should be a lot of categories for short fiction and only one for novels; we have to read all this stuff in quite a short period, and having to read more novels in that time would be hard. If novels are going to be divided I would suggest doing it by length, having a category for Short Novels (as I think Eric Flint suggested); and you could perhaps amalgamate that with the top end of novellas, the kind which are published as books, with the other short fiction categories modified to fit this. (Or you could divide them by age group, since young people’s fiction is generally quite short; but that faces its own issues, no doubt).

  44. While this year might make it harder to recruit for Sad Puppies, who actually thinks Beale will bother to ‘recruit’? I strongly suspect he’ll take some hostages for fun… If he doesn’t we can fail to ratify both and move on.

    If not, we’ll have a solid year of data on what things look like in order to make a decision for what to implement.

    Reading Beale’s Blog, he doesn’t seem to think he’s going anywhere.

    For a start, there are 500(ish) puppies with 2016 nomination rights – that’s more than enough to stuff almost every category if they follow Beale.

  45. Iain

    I entirely agree; that why I was so horrified by the Old Guards refusal to remove their rose tinted spectacles, whilst sticking their fingers in their ears lest anyone disturb their beliefs with those nasty things called facts…

  46. I think the Puppies will be reasonably successful next year, simply because the Rabid Puppies – i.e. the group that was actually dominant this year – aren’t based on a “silent majority” narrative, and will almost certainly redouble their effort. And I worry that the anti-Puppy side will be less effective in rallying the troops, although the gulf in size between the two factions does mean that we can be a lot less effective and still win in the actual voting. All the same, I suspect the 2016 Hugos will go much like the 2015 ones. It looks like their share of the nominating pool is still large enough to control nominations via slating, based on the voting statistics – 20% or so.

    2017 will be interesting; I think Beale will have a much harder time gaming EPH via the tactics available to him with his resources.

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