Tag Archives: WSFS 2019

Dublin 2019 WSFS Business Meeting Day 4

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Corina Stark completed the marathon today with notes of Monday’s session, “WSFS Business Meeting 3”, which can be read on Alex Acks’ blog.

Once video of the meeting has been uploaded, it will be available at Worldcon Events on YouTube.

The agenda is available here. The references (e.g. “D9”) identify items in it.

Chair Requested to Rule on Handouts: Business meeting chair Jesi Lipp answered Nicholas Whyte’s request for a ruling about charging debate time against opponents to a motion due to a handout they distributed at yesterday’s meeting, and/or their allowability in general.

Lipp said there is nothing in the rules that explicitly disallows handouts of any kind, nor any provision about printed materials classified as debate. While they qualify philosophically as debate, procedurally they do not. They are not disallowed. However, a proposed rule about them, submitted yesterday and referred to committee, will be addressed next year.

Someone appealed the ruling of the chair. The meeting voted to sustain the chair’s decision.

New Business: Item D9, Non-Transferrability of Voting Rights. This would essentially divorce the membership of WSFS from attending the con.

The motion was referred to committee with Dave McCarty and the makers of the motion, Ben Yalow and Kate Secor (along with anyone else who asks to be added). Yalow will chair the committee. 

D10, Preserving Supporting Membership Sales for Site Selection. The proposal would add this rule:

1.5.10: No convention shall terminate the sale of supporting memberships prior to the close of site selection.

The makers of the motion, Cliff Dunn, Kate Secor and Ben Yalow, proposed the rule because Dublin 2019 terminated the sale of attending memberships and day passes [but not supporting memberships] two weeks prior to the start of the convention.

An attempt to refer the motion to committee was defeated. The main motion passed and will be up for ratification at next year’s business meeting.

Close of Meeting: The Chair was presented with an engraved gavel which says “Jesi Lipp, Chair, World Science Fiction Society, 2019, Dublin, Ireland.” The Chair said they had fun, “even though it is sick and twisted to call this fun.” The meeting adjourned.

Dublin 2019 WSFS Business Meeting Day 3

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Corina Stark provided full notes of the Sunday session in “WSFS Business Meeting 2”, which can be read on Alex Acks’ blog.

Once video of the meeting has been uploaded, it will be available at Worldcon Events on YouTube.

The agenda is available here. The references (e.g. “D7”) refer to items in it.

Site Selection: Washington D.C.’s unopposed bid to hold the 2021 Worldcon is officially voted in. (See File 770 post “Site Selection Confirms Washington DC” for vote count and GoH info.)

Seated Worldcon: CoNZealand made a short presentation. Membership price goes up October 1. Program signups are available now. CoNZealand.nz is the website.

Pass-On Funds: Kevin Roche passes along some funds from Worldcon 76 to Dublin 2019, CoNZealand, and DisCon III.

Continued New Business: Resumed with D8, No Deadline for Nominations Eligibility.

Martin Pyne offered an amendment to add a 2024 sunset clause. Nicholas Whyte, one of the makers of the motion, opposed it because either it [D8] is a good idea or it is not, and a sunset clause would be counterproductive. A vote was called and the amendment failed.

Kevin Standlee said there was an “entryism” problem which is why there originally was a January deadline., and he moved to amend to reinstate January 31 as the deadline. The amendment passed.

A vote was called and D8 passed as amended. It will be forwarded to next year’s agenda for ratification.

D13, Best Game or Interactive Experience. Ira Alexandre, a maker of the motion, spoke in favor. (See Spark’s full notes for argument.)  There was a motion to refer the motion to a committee to report back next year. Ultimately, the business meeting voted to refer D13 to a dedicated subcommittee in the Hugo Awards Study Committee.  The proponents of the proposal were invited to join the committee as part of this consideration.

D7, Five and Five. Rafe Richards moved to amend the motion so it does not subtract six or add five to rule 3.8.1 – which the chair explained would keep the number of finalists at 6 but still get rid of the existing sunset clause (reversing the intent of the original motion.)  

When the meeting voted on the amendment (to keep 6, and to get rid of the sunset clause) it passed. The amended main motion also passed, keeping 6 and removing the sunset clause. It will be forwarded to next year’s agenda for ratification.

Then the meting considered B4, Suspend 5 and 6 for 2020, and the voters rejected the motion, keeping 5 and 6 for 2020.

D11 is Clear Up the Definition of Public in the Artist Category Forever. An attempt to refer the proposal to committee failed. The main motion passed. It will be forwarded to next year’s agenda for ratification.

Proposed Resolution: The meeting next took up B.5, Credit to Translators of Written Fiction. B5 would award a Hugo to the credited translator of a novel, novella, novelette, and short story, when the original text is not in English. Kent Bloom argued against, confused about what this is trying to do – it is within the authority of the administering Worldcon or dealt with as a constitutional amendment depending on what they are trying to do, so is not appropriate as a resolution. The meeting voted against the resolution.

Standing Rules Change. As a result of a handout being distributed at the business meeting this weekend, there was a proposed B.6 Standing Rule Change, which would require someone making a written response to new business to submit it 14 days before the business meeting so the originators of the new business can have a chance to respond in the same (written) fashion.

Don Eastlake III moved to refer the rule change to the Nitpicking and Flyspecking for next year. The proposal was referred to committee.

Business carried over: Items D9 and D10 will be considered at Monday’s business meeting.

Resolution Asks That Hugo Trophy Also Be Given To Translator, When Applicable

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A resolution by Mark Richards, Chris Barkley and Juli Marr has been added to the Dublin 2019 Business Meeting agenda. It has been designated B4, (although there was another item which had that number.)

B.4         Credit to Translators of Written Fiction

Resolved, it is the sense of the Business Meeting that, for the written fiction categories of Best Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story, when the winner in one of these categories is a translated work, the credited translator shall be awarded a Hugo alongside the author.

Mark Richards explains the purpose of the resolution with these comments:

The choice of translator can make the difference in the impact of a work of fiction in translation, in comparison to its impact in its original language.

Fluency in the original language may be enough for a good translation. We feel that familiarity with the context in which a work was written adds to the quality of the result, and that a translator’s contribution there can make a difference.

For example, Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem wouldn’t have been nearly as successful had Ken Liu not gotten all of the nuance of Chinese history during the Cultural Revolution and been able to transmit that
emotional impact.

And there’s a collection of connected short stories, Kalpa Imperial, by the Argentine author Angelica Gorodischer, Any decent translator, I imagine, would have given us a good translation. It was the late
Ursula Le Guin, however, whose prose style was perfect for giving us as fine a work in English as it presumably was in the original Spanish.

Closing, we feel that a translator’s contribution to the success of a story merits recognition in the awarding of a Hugo.

Dublin 2019 WSFS Business Meeting Day 2

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Corina Stark provided full notes of the Saturday session in “WSFS Business Meeting 1 Liveblog”, which can be read on Alex Acks’ blog.  (And Acks will be writing summary articles later.)

Once video of the meeting has been uploaded, it will be available at Worldcon Events on YouTube.

The agenda is available here. The references (e.g. “D7”) refer to items in it.

Mark Protection Committee: The current year’s open seats on the Mark Protection Committee were filled by Kevin Standlee, Ben Yalow, and Jo Van Ekeren by vote of the meeting.

New Resolution. A new resolution was added to the agenda, B4: Credit to Translators of Written Fiction. In it, Mark Richards, Chris Barkley and Juli Marr request that when a work in translation for Novel/Novella/Novelette, or Short Story wins a Hugo, that a Hugo rocket also be awarded to the credited translator. (See makers’ explanation in File 770 post “Resolution Asks That Hugo Trophy Also Be Given To Translator, When Applicable”.)

Business Passed On: Items that received first passage in 2018 were brought up for ratification.

C1, Adding Series to the Series, adds the bolded words and deletes the struck-over word.

3.2.6: The categories of Best Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story, and Series shall be open to works in which the text is the primary form of communication, regardless of the publication medium, including but not limited to physical print, audiobook, and ebook.

The motion passed unanimously.

C2: Comic Books and Graphic Stories. The motion adds “or Comic” to the category title. The change was a product of the Hugo Awards Study Committee.

3.3.7: Best Graphic Story or Comic. Any science fiction or fantasy story told in graphic form appearing for the first time in the previous calendar year.

The argument was that it avoids any implication that comics are less eligible than graphic novels. The meeting voted to ratify the change.

C3, Notability Still Matters. The motion adds the language in bold. (See Dave Wallace’s File 770 guest post “How ‘Notability Still Matters’ Would Have Affected the 2017 and 2018 Hugo Long Lists”.)

3.12.4: The complete numerical vote totals, including all preliminary tallies for first, second, . . . places, shall be made public by the Worldcon Committee within ninety (90) days after the Worldcon. During the same period, the results of the last ten rounds of the finalist selection process for each category (or all the rounds if there are fewer than ten) shall also be published. Rounds that would otherwise be required to be reported for nomination may be withheld from this report if the candidate to be eliminated appeared on fewer than 4% of the ballots cast in the category and there are no candidates appearing on at least 4% of the ballots cast in the category in rounds to be reported below them.

Dave McCarty advocated the change, saying it would lower the burden on administrative staff as many administrators publish a long “long list” anyway.

Dave Wallace shared an analysis of past results if the change had been in effect, saying that the Short Story category is disproportionally affected and that it would have left off many excellent stories by well-known names in the field. As this helps Hugo voters to discover new works, the harm of leaving this information off outweighs the benefits of the proposed amendment.

Ratification failed, by a vote of 41 for, 44 against.

New Constitutional Amendments: Any of the proposals that pass get forwarded to next year’s Business Meeting for a ratification vote.

D1, Clarification of Worldcon Powers. The proposal removes struck over words and adds words in bold.

3.2.12: The Worldcon Committee is responsible for all matters concerning the their Awards.

Kevin Standlee said the change would make it mechanically impossible for a future Worldcon to “take away” Hugos from a previous year. The motion passed unanimously.

D2, Disposition of the NASFiC Ballot. The proposed addition to the rules would resolve Site Selection if it crashes at a NASFiC, which has never happened, but this would allow for a safety net and call a Business Meeting at a NASFiC solely to deal with Site Selection.

4.8.5: In the case the administering convention is a NASFiC, it shall hold a Business Meeting to receive the results of the site selection voting and to handle any other business pertaining directly, and only, to the selection of the future NASFiC convention. This meeting shall have no other powers or duties.

The motion passed.

D3, A Problem of Numbers. The proposed change clarifies that a member can vote in the Final Hugo Awards and the Site Selection even if they do not know their membership number or it has not yet been assigned, as the staff may supply it for them. The motion passed unanimously.

D4, The Needs of the One. Clarifies that an item can be moved around on an individual ballot, while the other clauses in the line item applies to categories as a whole. Adds the words in bold.

3.8.7: The Committee shall move a nomination on an individual ballot from another category to the work’s default category only if the member has made fewer than five (5) nominations in the default category.

Motion passed unanimously.

Item D5, The Forward Pass. Clarifies that the pass-along of member information to future Worldcons must be done in compliance with all appropriate laws such as GDPR. Discussion surfaced several issues that could not be immediately resolved and the pending amendment and a related motion on the floor were referred to the Nitpicking and Flyspecking Committee for a report next year.

D6, That Ticket Has Been Punched. The proposal would amend the WSFS Constitution by adding a subsection to Section 3.4.2:

3.4.2.1: For finalists in the Series category which have previously appeared on the ballot for Best Series, any installments published [in English] in a year prior to that previous appearance, regardless of country of publication, shall be considered to be part of the Series’ previous eligibility, and will not count toward the re-eligibility requirements for the current year.

During debate a motion to amend the proposed rule by adding “in English” was passed 39-29. Stark’s notes don’t say where the words were added, so I have placed the phrase in brackets about where it seems to belong, pending confirmation. The motion as amended then passed and will be subject to ratification next year.

Stark’s notes say “D7, Five and Five will take significant time to discuss and debate…” without stating what happened to it, but that the meeting voted to proceed to item D8.

D8, No Deadline for Nominations Eligibility was debated. The proposal would get rid of the requirement for people to buy Worldcon memberships by the December 31 deadline in order to be allowed to nominate for the Hugos. (See File 770 discussion “The Right Date?”) Martin Pyne moved to add a sunset clause for 2024.

At that point the meeting adjourned, with plans to take up D8 on Sunday tomorrow with proper wording of the sunset clause. D13, the Best Game or Interactive Experience amendment, will also be discussed on Sunday, after the Site Selection results are presented.

Dublin 2019 WSFS Business Meeting Day 1

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Corina Stark did a fantastic job of notetaking in “WSFS Preliminary Business Meeting Liveblog”, which can be read on Alex Acks’ blog.  

Once video of the meeting has been uploaded, it will be available at Worldcon Events on YouTube.

The agenda is available here. The references (e.g. “D7”) refer to items in it.

Short summary: The business meeting rejected the proposed Best Translated Novel Hugo by a motion to postpone indefinitely. Basically, everything else was assigned a debate time and will be taken up tomorrow.

Here are the highlights – see the full post for what the participants had to say, and details of the parliamentary maneuvering.

Last year’s Worldcon chair (Worldcon 76) Kevin Roche responded to a question about their financial report. “Kevin Roche reports they are still in litigation which reduces the pass-along funds, but he has brought three checks for Dublin, CoNZealand, and the 79th Worldcon. First four complaints dismissed with prejudice, defamation claim still pending…. Kent Bloom questions Roche about surplus to give a donation for preserving the Worldcon memorabilia. Roche will check his budget, but they anticipate prevailing in the lawsuit however it is a hope not a guarantee.”

The motion to add a Standing Rule giving the Committee of the Whole the ability to extend itself rather than repeat the labyrinthine maneuver from last year’s business meeting was passed, and (by a second vote) given immediate effect. The text of the rule is —  

Rule 5.12: Committee of the Whole. The Committee of the Whole shall have the right to amend its duration without seeking permission from the Business Meeting by way of a motion to extend debate.

Motions to extend the Hugo eligibility Prospect and Worlds of Ursula K LeGuin both passed.

Debate times were set for ratification of business passed on from last year, to be considered on Saturday.

Debate times were set for new constitutional amendments D1-D6.

D7 – the “Five and Five” motion to cut back the number of Hugo finalists in a category to five – was challenged by a motion postpone indefinitely. . [See discussion of motion at File 770 in “Reform or Rollback?”] The motion to postpone indefinitely failed, for lack of a two-thirds majority, 46 in favor, 30 against. Debate time was set.

D8-D11 debate times set.

D12 – The proposal to add a Best Translated Novel Hugo was eliminated when the meeting voted in favor of a motion to postpone indefinitely.

D13 – The proposal to add a Best Game or Interactive Experience Hugo survived a motion to postpone indefinitely and debate time was set.

All the items for which debate time was set will come up for consideration at a subsequent business meeting session this weekend.

How “Notability Still Matters” Would Have Affected the 2017 and 2018 Hugo Long Lists

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Guest Post By Dave Wallace: One of the proposed WSFS constitutional amendments up for ratification this year in Dublin is C.3, “Notability Still Matters.” [(Dublin 2019 Business Meeting Agenda as of August 5)]  What it would do, if ratified by this year’s business meeting, is allow the Hugo Award Administrators to omit from their report on the nominations any entry that got less than 4% of the nominating votes in that category, unless there is a previous entry getting more than 4% of the votes that was eliminated in an earlier round which was reported.  (Currently, the Hugo Administrators are supposed to report the last 10 rounds of eliminations in their report).

While it is true that the Hugo Administrators are allowed to voluntarily publish more information in their report than the constitution requires, the constitution is the primary way the business meeting can give the Administrators binding instructions, and there’s not much point in amending the constitution if we expect the Administrators to routinely ignore their instructions.  Therefore, I’ve taken a look at how this amendment would have affected the Hugo Long Lists in each category for 2017 and 2018 (the previous years for which EPH was in effect) if the amendment had been in effect and the Administrators had followed it strictly.

I took the nomination data from the following published reports:

2018 (pp 20-26): https://www.worldcon76.org/images/publications/2018DetailedResults.pdf

2017: http://www.worldcon.fi/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/HugoReport2_nominations.pdf

http://www.worldcon.fi/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/HugoReport3_nomination_details.pdf

For 2017, most of the necessary information is in Report2, although the details of the eliminations are in the tables in Report3.  For 2018, both the total nominations and the % of the nominating vote each entry got are presented in the original tables, making it much easier to see the effect of the amendment.  One further note: in 2017, the last 10 rounds of eliminations were presented in each category, yielding 16 entries in each long list.  In 2018, only the last 9 rounds were presented in most tables (except Novelette), so most long lists only had 15 entries.  Thus the effect of the amendment would likely be even greater in 2018 than what I present here, if the #16 entries were also considered.

Here is my summary of the number of entries that would have been deleted from the long list for each category if the amendment had been strictly observed, followed by the details of what would have been omitted:

Number of Nominees Lost from Long List with 4% Notability Threshold

Category20172018
Novel00
Novella11
Novelette10
Short Story74
Series00
Related Work30
Graphic Story62
Dramatic Long00
Dramatic Short30
Editor Long01
Editor Short02
Pro Artist02
Semiprozine00
Fanzine04
Fancast14
Fan Writer21
Fan Artist30
Young Adult/Lodestar–0
Campbell02

In Best Novella, we would have lost Chimera in 2017, and In Calabria in 2018.  In the Best Novelette category, we would have lost Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Kid Dark against the Machine in 2017.  Best Short Story would have been most affected.  In 2017, we would have lost Lavie Tidhar’s Terminal (Tor.com), Seanan McGuire’s Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands (Uncanny), Cat Rambo’s Red in Tooth and Cog (F&SF), Aliette de Bodard’s A Salvaging of Ghosts (BCS), Rebecca Ann Jordan’s We Have A Cultural Difference, Can I Taste You? (Strange Horizons), Peter S. Beagle’s The Story of Kao Yu (Tor.com), and Aliette de Bodard’s Lullaby for a Lost World (Tor.com).  In 2018, we would have lost Mareen F. McHugh’s Sidewalks (Omni), Naomi Kritzer’s Paradox (Uncanny), Nick Wolven’s Confessions of a Con Girl (Asimov’s), and Nancy Kress’s Dear Sarah (Infinity Wars).

The 2017 Related Work category would have lost Rob Hansen’s THEN: Fandom in the UK, 1930-1980, Diana Pavlac Glyer’s Bandersnatch, and André M. Carrington’s Speculative Blackness.  Graphic Story was another category that would have been heavily affected.  In 2017, we would have lost Clean Room, Vol. 1; Injection Vol. 2; Lumberjanes Vol. 4; Pretty Deadly, Vol 2; Decender, Vol. 2, and Oglaf (Bodil Bodilson). In 2018, we would have lost Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol. 6; and Above the Timberline.  The 2017 Dramatic Presentation Short Form would have lost Chapter Seven: The Bathtub and Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers from Stranger Things, along with Salvage from The Expanse.  2018 didn’t lose any Dramatic Presentation entries, but Game of Thrones: The Spoils of War came pretty close with only 4.03% of the vote.  In the Best Editor categories, 2018 would have lost Gillian Redfearn from Long Form, and Marguerite Kenner and Trevor Quachri from Short Form.  In Pro Artist, 2018 would have lost Likhain and Dan dos Santos.

Fanzine and Fancast are also categories that would have lost significantly: 2018 Fanzine would have lost Camestros Felapton, Quick Sip Reviews, Ansible, and SF Commentary.  2017 Fancast would have lost Vaginal Fantasy, while 2018 Fancast would have lost Kalanadi, Fast Forward, Get to Work Hurley!, and Eating the Fantastic.  In Fan Writer, 2017 would have lost O. Westin and Cora Buhlert, while 2018 would have lost the memorable Chuck Tingle.  The 2017 Fan Artist category would have lost Liz Argall, Lauren Dawson aka Iguanamouth, and Simon Stålenhag.  Finally, the 2018 Cambell Long List would have lost Annalee Newitz and Erin Roberts.

Comments and Opinions:

Having looked at what the impact of the amendment would have been, I think this amendment would do significant harm to the value of the current long lists, and should be rejected.  I don’t know how many other people look at the long lists, but I do and I value the information that is there.  This value can take several forms:

First, for those who nominated entries on the long list, knowing how your entry placed gives you a form of validation that other Hugo voters also found that entry worth of nominating, and a sense of how close you came to getting that work on the ballot.  I nominated two of the short stories that would have been left off under the amendment, and I appreciate having this information.

Second, it should be apparent from the Short Story results above that we are not just talking about omitting minor works from artists very few voters care about, but significant stories from some major names in the field.  While many of these stories were published online, there were also several stories first published in traditional print media, unlike most of the finalists.  Keeping such stories in the long list helps others seek out these stories, and may help make a case for splitting the category in the future, if there is a persistent bias against print media with our current categories.

Third, particularly in categories where entries tend to repeat from year to year (e.g., Editor, Artist, Zines, Fancast, Fan Writer, Graphic Story), presence in the long list can help an entry find an audience for future years.  In 2017, I made a point of trying to listen to at least an episode of each fancast on the long list, in order to be able to better appreciate and nominate fancasts in the future, and I found several fancasts that I now listen to regularly.  I did not do the same for 2018, but I see at least one entry from the list of potential losses that I would like to check out further.

Fourth, those who have nominated long list entries that are ultimately eliminated have an opportunity to audit the results of the EPH implementation by seeing if the change in points when that work was eliminated are consistent with the rest of their ballots.

Finally, there doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason to make this change for the normal Hugos.  The system we have now seems to be working well, providing good information to those members who choose to read it.  The minutes last year mention the tail of the retro-Hugo nominations having relatively few votes in some categories, but most future years are not going to have retro-Hugos.  It doesn’t make sense to me to make such a drastic change just to shorten the rare retro-Hugo report a bit.

[Originally published on Dave Wallace’s Livejournal.]

New Addition to the Dublin 2019 Business Meeting Agenda

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Dublin 2019 Business Meeting Presiding Officer Jesi Lipp has used their discretion to add a post-deadline motion to amend the WSFS Constitution  to the agenda (see August 2 update):

Commentary: The decision by Dublin 2019 to terminate the sale of attending memberships and day passes two weeks prior to the start of the convention is largely without precedent. We note that this is likely due to a desire to avoid a last-minute swamping like what happened on the first day of the Helsinki Worldcon in 2017, a legitimate concern, and thus with this amendment we make no attempt to restrict the right of a convention to act to control attendance in such a manner as to avoid repeating that scenario.

Though informal indications appear to have been made that supporting memberships will still be sold in conjunction with site selection, the decision of Dublin to restrict membership sales in advance (and the phrasing used with them doing so) raises the specter that a decision could be made to block the sale of supporting memberships in conjunction with site selection. This chance is higher than it might have been in the past due to Worldcon moving around the world more. Thus the risk of a committee that isn’t as familiar with Worldcon’s traditions and practices being seated and then “losing something in translation” with respect to the precedent set by Dublin (of not selling attending memberships) and refusing to sell supporting memberships, creates complications with respect to the hand-carrying of ballots for at-site site selection voting. Based on several decades of prevailing practice, it seems wiser to simply codify this portion of existing practice.

[Thanks to Jo Van Ekeren for the story.]

Defining “Public Display” in the Best Fan Artist Hugo Category

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[Editor’s Note: Third in a series. Dublin 2019 has posted the 2019 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda (July 25 update) [PDF file] containing all the business submitted by the July 17 deadline. File 770 will post about some of the proposals and invite discussion.]

2019 Best Fan Artist nominee Ariela Housman, and Terri Ash, respectively the artist and manager of Geek Calligraphy, didn’t like the feedback they got from the Hugo Administrators about their submissions to the Hugo Voter Packet. Their solution is a rules change proposal that radically redefines the Best Fan Artist’s “public display” requirement.

Proposed by:

Terri Ash & Ariela Housman

Commentary:

Public Display includes: art shows (SF/F convention or otherwise), Internet posts (including but not limited to: personal blog posts, twitter posts, tumblr posts, Facebook, someone else’s blog, etc), Etsy shops, print on demand shops (TeePublic, RedBubble, Threadless, etc), dealer tables, Artist Alley displays, the art hanging in a cafe somewhere, magazines, fanzines, online advertisements. Basically, if it exists in a way that doesn’t require you to pay to see the image in full resolution (not counting a watermark), it’s public.

Back in April, Ariela Housman’s Geek Calligraphy blog post “Hugo Eligibility Revisited” explained the grievance that is at the root of this proposal:

Voting will begin soon, and when the voter packet is distributed, you’ll see two of our pieces in there…

But where did “Lady Astronaut Nouveau” go?

So, funny story about that.

When we published our eligibility post in December, we included the above two works, plus “Lady Astronaut Nouveau” based on The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. The former two were created earlier in 2018 and shown in art shows at Confluence and ICON. We finished “Lady Astronaut Nouveau” late enough in the year that we didn’t have any more art shows booked in which we could show it. We put it all over the interwebs, though.

This is what the Hugo Awards Website gives as the criteria for the Best Fan Artist category (bolding ours):

The final category is also for people. Again note that the work by which artists should be judged is not limited to material published in fanzines. Material for semiprozines or material on public displays (such as in convention art shows) is also eligible. Fan artists can have work published in professional publications as well. You should not consider such professionally-published works when judging this award.

The internet is about as public as it gets, right? It was even included in Mary Robinette’s Pinterest Gallery for Lady Astronaut Fan Art.

Even I was surprised by the next development:

Apparently the Hugo Committee disagrees. Per the email I received from the committee member who contacted me prior to the announcement of the ballot:

The first two pieces clearly qualify, so that is fine. I’m afraid that the rules exclude pieces that have only been displayed online.

This, dear reader, is ridiculous.

Although the title of their rules proposal refers to “categories,” and it’s clear from the same blog post they were calling for people to support them “Because it is time and past to overhaul the Pro Artist / Fan Artist categories” – no corresponding proposal about the Pro Artist category is on the agenda.  

We have blogged before about why we think that restricting the Professional Artist category to “professional publications” is outdated in an age when it is possible to make most if not all of one’s artistic income from online sales directly to customers. But there’s something extra odd and gatekeeper-y in telling a fan that their fan work doesn’t count until someone else – a zine or an art show head – gives it their stamp of approval.

(Also, art shows cost money to enter, adding an economic barrier-to-entry that I find particularly distasteful.)

If authors who publish online are real authors, then artists who post their work online are real artists.

If fan writers who write online are real fans, the artists who art online are real fans, too.

For Housman and Ash it’s all about a simple and direct effort to overturn an injustice – if you can see it online without paying, they feel that’s as much of a “public display” as an art show.  There’s nothing wrong with that logic.

However, the rule as drafted will have other effects.

It will write into the black-letter rules that work shown online to advertise works which can be purchased – Housman’s calligraphy is just one item in that universe – is fan art.

And remarkably, the authors of this motion don’t even want to be locked into this category, as noted in a June blog post (“Asking Permission vs. Begging Forgiveness”)

Oddly enough, this is one of the reasons I’m working on a proposal to the WSFS Business committee about the art categories. I don’t think what we do is fan art. Even when the art is based from something we didn’t invent in our heads, it’s work produced for sale.

People at the Dublin 2019 business meeting need to look down the road and decide if free views of product offered for sale is the kind of thing they want this category to reward. If not, they shouldn’t vote for this proposal. If yes, then maybe all the category needs a new title that will correctly label the work it’s recognizing, which will encompass a whole realm of commercial art.

The Right Date?

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[Editor’s Note: Second in a series. Dublin 2019 has posted the 2019 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda (July 21 update) [PDF file] containing all the business submitted by the July 17 deadline. File 770 will post about some of the proposals and invite discussion.]

Another proposed rule rollback would get rid of the requirement for people to buy Worldcon memberships by the December 31 deadline in order to be allowed to nominate for the Hugos.

Item D.8 on the Dublin 2019 business meeting agenda is — Short Title: No Deadline for Nominations Eligibility.

D.8         Short Title: No Deadline for Nominations Eligibility

Moved, to amend the WSFS Constitution by revising Section 3.7.1 as follows:

3.7.1: The Worldcon Committee shall conduct a poll to select the finalists for the Award voting. Each member of the administering Worldcon or the immediately preceding Worldcon as of the end of the previous calendar year shall be allowed to make up to five (5) equally weighted nominations in every category.

Proposed by: Nicholas Whyte, Kathryn Duval, Marguerite Smith, Steven Mollmann, Tammy Coxen, Hanne Madeleine Gates Paine, Doug Merrill, Karl-Johan Norén, Claire Rousseau and Vince Docherty

Commentary: At present, those who want to nominate for the Hugos must either be members of the previous year’s Worldcon, or have joined the current Worldcon before 31 December of the previous year.

Until recently, the deadline was 31 January. The move to make it a month earlier (proposed by Nicholas Whyte and Kathryn Duval in 2017, ratified in 2018) was partly prompted to fit with the then proposed three-stage nominations process (which did not pass) and partly inspired by tidiness (no other date is in the constitution).

In practice, it has led to some frustration among members who join after 31 December and who did not realise that there was a deadline.

From the administrator’s point of view, it is actually much easier to give new members nominating rights, up to the deadline, than to exclude them. This has been the practice for voting on the final ballot for the Hugos for a very long time.

This does carry a certain risk of entryism, with people joining at the last minute as part of a campaign. The deterrent here is social: Hugo voters have now demonstrated that they will react strongly against any such moves by voting for No Award ahead of finalists who have reached the ballot as a result of such campaigns.

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Commenting on the supporting arguments —

In practice, it has led to some frustration among members who join after 31 December and who did not realise that there was a deadline.

If this year’s administrators have had to deal with people who are unaware of the deadline, could a contributing factor be that Dublin 2019’s WSFS page fails to tell people there is any deadline in its description of the rights of members? It only says —

If you are a full or supporting member of Dublin 2019 then you are a member of WSFS.
As a WSFS member (through Dublin 2019) you are entitled:

    • to nominate works for the 2019 Hugo Awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the 1944 Retro Hugo Awards.

Next, there is an argument about the administrator’s convenience:

From the administrator’s point of view, it is actually much easier to give new members nominating rights, up to the deadline, than to exclude them.

Let’s remember that there has been a deadline in the rules for almost three decades – it has been part of the Hugo Administrator’s brief for a long time. That it would be “much easier” not to have to do that part of the job might not mean that it should stop being part of the job.

This has been the practice for voting on the final ballot for the Hugos for a very long time.

It is more accurate to say that practices for Hugo nominating and final ballots have been different for a very long time, and not gloss over the reasons why there are different rules for each.

In 1989 the Noreascon 3 committee was confronted with a flagrant case of bloc voting. (See details in “Source Materials About The 1989 Hugo Controversy”.)

“In counting the nominations, we observed a significant pattern of what appeared to us to be bloc voting, amounting to over 50 votes in some categories. The number of these votes was sufficient to place nominees on the final ballot in the following categories: Novel, Professional Artist, Fan Writer, Fan Artist, and John W. Campbell Award. More seriously, about half of these ballots were received with new Supporting Memberships, nearly all of which appeared to have been paid for by the same persons (the payments were made with blocks of consecutively-numbered $20 money orders, purchased at the same post office.) We were highly disturbed by this practice….”

Leslie Turek, editor of N3’s conrunning publication Mad 3 Party, looked for ways to make this abuse more difficult to repeat. The first of her two ideas was to encourage maximum participation by members in nominating works for the Hugos. Her other idea produced the rules change —

Second, I’m thinking of proposing a change to the voting rules, to limit nominations to people who joined the Worldcon by December 31 of the year covered by the awards… This would mean that no one could send in a membership and a Hugo [nominating] ballot at the same time: they would have to purchase their membership before December 31, and then also send in a ballot after December 31. This won’t stop a determined bloc-voter, but it would certainly mean they’d have to plan a lot further ahead and be a lot more organized.

The motion was passed for the first time in 1989. At the 1990 business meeting, it was amended to make the deadline January 31, ratified by vote, and added to the WSFS Constitution.

Even the makers of the current motion understand that by rolling back the rule they will be increasing the risk of abuse:

This does carry a certain risk of entryism, with people joining at the last minute as part of a campaign.

But they think everyone should be satisfied because they can always vote No Award – rather than continuing with a rule meant to discourage the abuse.

The deterrent here is social: Hugo voters have now demonstrated that they will react strongly against any such moves by voting for No Award ahead of finalists who have reached the ballot as a result of such campaigns.

Maybe so, but people campaign under the existing rules already – the question is, how much easier do you want to make it for them? Fans at the Dublin 2019 business meeting will need to decide if a membership deadline is a helpful tool in leveling the playing field.

RELATED: Reform or Rollback?

Reform or Rollback?

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[Editor’s Note: Dublin 2019 has posted the 2019 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda (July 21 update) [PDF file] containing all the business submitted by the July 17 deadline. File 770 will post about some of the proposals and invite discussion.]

While the Sad and Rabid Puppies slates were filling up most of the slots on the 2015 and 2016 Hugo ballots, majorities at the Worldcon business meetings passed and ratified several rules changes that made it much more difficult for that to keep on happening. The success of these majorities has tended to overshadow how many fans did not want any changes made – no matter how often Vox Day dictated what made the ballot – or else did not want these particular changes made. And there are business meeting regulars who evidently feel now is the time to start turning back the clock.  

Here’s a matched set of proposals to end the “5 and 6” part of the Hugo nomination reforms. If you are going to the Dublin 2019 business meeting, you will have to decide whether the claims made about convenience and efficiency warrant undoing the protective rules put on the books just a few years ago.

RELATED: The Right Date?

B.4         Short Title: Suspend 5 and 6 for 2020

Moved, to suspend the changes introduced by 5 and 6 for the following year’s Hugo Award nominations (only).

Proposed by: Nicholas Whyte, Kathryn Duval, Marguerite Smith, Steven Mollmann, Ian Stockdale, Tammy Coxen, Hanne Madeleine Gates Paine, Karl-Johan Norén, and Vince Docherty

Commentary: Please see the commentary for Amendment D.7.

D.7         Short Title: Five and Five

Moved, to amend Section 3.8.1 by deleting and adding material as follows:

3.8.1: Except as provided below, the final Award ballots shall list in each category the six five eligible nominees receiving the most nominations as determined by the process described in Section 3.9.

Provided that unless this amendment is re-ratified by the 2022 Business Meeting, the changes to Section 3.8.1 shall be repealed, and

Provided that the question of re-ratification shall be automatically be placed on the agenda of the 2022 Business Meeting with any constitutional amendments awaiting ratification; and

Provided further that any business meeting prior to 2022 may move to suspend the changes introduced by 5 and 6 for the following year’s Hugo Award nominations (only).

Proposed by: Nicholas Whyte, Kathryn Duval, Marguerite Smith, Steven Mollmann, Ian Stockdale, Tammy Coxen, Hanne Madeleine Gates Paine, Karl-Johan Norén, and Vince Docherty

Commentary: “Five and Six” was one of the reforms made in 2015-16 to minimise the future effects of block voting. It already has a 2022 sunset clause and a provision that any business meeting may suspend its operation for the following year’s Hugo Awards.

After three years, we now have enough information to be clear: EPH does make a difference to deter bad actors, “Five and Six” rather less. On the other hand, having 20% more finalists does significantly increase the administrative and financial burden on each year’s Worldcon, as anyone who has been to a recent pre-Hugo reception can testify.

In addition, the burden placed by the Hugo process on diligent readers has also increased in recent years, with the addition of a new category of novels (the Lodestar) and especially of the Best Series category. In 2019 there are 31 categories in the Hugo Awards, a record. It would be a kindness to voters to reduce the required reading from six finalists per category back to five.

Although there is a 2022 sunset clause for “Five and Six”, realistically we already have enough information to repeal it now, and to make life a little easier for Hugo administrators and voters from 2020 onwards.

The Constitution normally takes two years to amend, but in this particular instance the WSFS Business Meeting also has the power to suspend Five and Six for the following year. So we can decide now to do that for 2020 (see Resolution B.3), with the constitutional amendment taking effect in 2021.

The losers will be those who had placed sixth in recent years. There is only one case of a sixth-placed finalist at nominations stage going on to win the Hugo in the last three years (the rather odd situation of Best Fan Artist in 2017, where two finalists were disqualified). On the other hand, a reduced pool of finalists increases the cachet of being among that number.

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“After three years, we now have enough information to be clear: EPH does make a difference to deter bad actors, ‘Five and Six’ rather less. On the other hand, having 20% more finalists does significantly increase the administrative and financial burden on each year’s Worldcon, as anyone who has been to a recent pre-Hugo reception can testify.”

That’s it – that’s the argument — the sixth nominees are eating too many canapes at the pre-Hugo reception?

And if “Five and Six” is conceded to have some effect – at the time it was passed people already knew its impact would be “rather less” – then let’s take pleasure that the nominees eating the cheese and crackers were not picked by somebody’s slate.