In a “Hugos/Sad Puppies Guest Post by Jameson Quinn”, “the guy who came up with the basic idea for the E Pluribus Hugo proposal”, does his best to unravel the coalition that passed it on its first reading at Sasquan.
In order to understand this, it’s important to see that the Sads actually did have the germ of a valid grievance: in past years, many Hugo nominators have been from a pretty small and insular group of authors, editors, and hardcore fans, who often know each other personally and whose vote is probably influenced to some extent by factors extraneous to the work itself. Writings from authors who are personally well-liked, or whose overall body of work is stronger than the individual writing, probably have had a bit of an unfair advantage in getting nominated.
Of course, that’s not to endorse the Sad Puppy point of view. Of their three complaints — that the Hugos have been too artsy-fartsy, that they have been too political, and that they have involved logrolling — the first two are sour grapes, the second two are hypocritical, and the relationship between the three exists only in their heads. Only the third could be even slightly legitimate as cause for organized action; but certainly not for the action they took, which was basically to vandalize the awards as a whole, without any hope of actually accomplishing their objectives.
The efficiency of Quinn’s self-sabotage is impressive when you consider that half of the post is wasted concern-trolling the Republican primaries.
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@Andrew Trembley – I would rather not win at all then win by deceptive (i.e. the “personal” aspect) means which run counter to the main proposal. I fully understand that this is how most “politics” is run. If indeed we were to let the process become “political” rather than based upon the actual merit of a work – or of the proposal – then I would be fully inclined to just stay out of the process entirely and let the rabids on both sides of the fence have their fight while I enjoy the convention. I suspect that there would be a great many who would feel likewise.
Never having attended a Worldcon, let alone a WSFS Business Meeting, I cannot comment on whether JQ’s posting was politically astute or not.
But I don’t see anything there that I really disagree with.
1. The Worldcon is not the Parliament of Fandom, and has never to my knowledge claimed to be. One can recognize that Hugo voters (especially in the pre-Puppy era) have been a non-representative slice of fandom without accepting the whole Tor-Scalzi-SJW conspiracy therory that certain Puppies have advanced.
2. Advocates of EPH, your humble svt. included, have tried to garner support from Puppies by pointing out that if left-wingers are trying to goose the Hugos by putting forward a covert slate, EPH will undermine those efforts just as effectively as they will undermine the overt slates of the Puppies.
3. If you are offended by comparisons to Donald Trump, you can substitute this year’s provincial elections in Alberta, in which, thanks to first-past-the-post voting, a very liberal party took control of the legislature with a plurality of the popular vote while conservatives split their votes between two parties.
Here’s where I’m coming from.
I have spent weeks of my life on EPH, without anything like the payment I would normally get for that kind of work (that is: train tickets are nice and I am grateful for those who helped pay for them, but if EPH hadn’t happened I would be richer, not poorer). I did that for three reasons:
1. I wanted to help the Hugos patch a loophole that was causing problems.
2. I wanted to raise awareness about voting systems in general; how inferior voting systems can be harmful and good ones can be beneficial.
3. I wanted to get more people interested in, and hopefully donating to, Electology.org, a non-profit where I happen to be on the board.
I think things look pretty good in terms of 1, and that I also did a decent job at 2. I didn’t get a chance to do as much of 3 as I would have liked, since people seemed to see it as more in conflict with 1 than I would have expected. But since 1 and 2 were higher priorities than 3, that’s OK.
But if I want to keep doing 2 and 3, I will have to, among other things, write things about this subject matter that people will want to read. In particular, the ideas I expressed in the blog post were not controversial within the context of the blog where I posted them.
I understand that, insofar as I have deliberately taken on a position of some degree of leadership with respect to EPH, I have a responsibility not to be inflammatory or to court controversy when talking about the Hugos. I am in fact trying to live up to that responsibility. But I don’t believe I can or should muzzle myself from making any statement that somebody might disagree with.
If any WSFS member is offended by what I wrote, I can only say two things. Firstly, on a trivial and personal level, it was not my intent to offend anyone. And more importantly: EPH is not me, nor is it a system designed in any way to enforce my own preferences. It is only a way to count the votes so that the way that the Hugos have usually worked in the past will be able to continue even in the presence of organized slate voting. All voters should have an equal voice. If, because of my having opinions you disagree with, you can no longer trust me on this, I encourage you to evaluate the system yourself or to find somebody you can trust to evaluate it. That’s really what everybody should be doing anyway.
In terms of “vitriol”: I’m pretty thick-skinned, and I can handle Mike criticizing me. But I’d also think that there should be some consideration for context. The opinions I express in this article were not the kind of things I would have posted in a “neutral” space like the comment threads of Making Light or here. They were posted on a pretty openly partisan/opinionated blog, and I think in that context, they are not objectionable. (Of course, I would think that, wouldn’t I?)
There are plenty of reasons a puppy might support EPH:
– Rabids are the more numerous faction. In 2015, wherever sads and rabids went head-to-head, rabids won. As it turned out, rabids cribbed much of the sad ballot. There’s no guarantee that this will continue. Without EPH, rabids could completely lock out the sads.
– Now that the taboo on slating has been broken, it could be that more slates will follow. Sads are a smallish faction. A larger anti-puppy faction, organizing a slate, could conceivably freeze the sads out completely. (Non-puppies swear up and down that they haaaaate slates and would never do this, but Puppies may not wish to rely upon these promises.) EPH would guard against this.
– Sads may believe that slating is perfectly acceptable, but that limiting the success of slates to a few entries is just good politics. The aim, after all, is to bring some work of otherwise neglected writers to a greater audience. Seizing the entire ballot has been seen to enrage the fans and lead to a painful counter-reaction. Perhaps nominating only a few things per category would lead to happier results? That’s very difficult to organize as the rules now stand, but under EPH puppies could organize normally and be assured that they won’t accidentally seize thee entire ballot.
The Only Reason For a Sad Puppy To Oppose EPH: “I think it’s totally fair for a smallish minority faction to take the entire ballot, I’m confident that the Rabids will permit my faction to do this, and that SJWs won’t organize in greater numbers than my tiny faction, and I’m confident that, for whatever reason, when we do this the fans won’t punish us in exactly the way that they did last year.”
Those first three reasons do not suck. That last one is weak. I’d expect a lot of puppies to support EPH.
B.I.N.G.O. !
Jonathan Gruber isn’t Obamacare.
@brianc:
It’s up on github:
https://github.com/The-Center-for-Election-Science/HugoVotesim
Here’s the same data in csv form, which might save you about 20 seconds work:
https://github.com/mdennehy/EPH/blob/master/data/raw.csv
Surely you recognize that getting good voting systems to replace bad ones is a thorny political problem that must be handled with finesse.
Words travel. If you’re saying something overtly political about EPH and something non-political elsewhere, the former’s going to be a factor in how you’re received on the latter.
Actually, as I said in the post, I think Sads and Sad-preferring hybrids were more than twice as numerous as pure rabids. There were more rabid-only things among the winning finalists, but that’s largely because the rabid slate generally had 5 things per category while the sad one often had just 3 or 4. But in a category like Best Fanzine, the sad-only candidate easily beat the rabid-only one. Another place where there was a conflict was in BDP Short Form, but there, the Sad list had two episodes of shows from Cartoon Network, and it seems that a number of otherwise-faithful Sad voters did not think these merited a Hugo.
Of course words travel. If I’d said something egregiously inflammatory, I’d deserve censure. But I think I should still have a right to say things that are mildly controversial when taken out of their original context.
I have no problem with Jameson Quinn’s rational, low key discussion of the voting system he gave to us. Just gratitude for his help.
To Laertes: As you know, I’ve always supported EPH and the Puppies.
Sad leaders were stunned when the results of the nomination phase were announced.
Kate the Impaler has stated that the recommended reading list will now be 10 in each category knowing that will dilute the power of the Sad Puppy voters.
As to the He Who Rules the Horde, I look forward to seeing how he applies the rules of 4G warfare to the Hugos considering he is Lind’s publisher.
Interesting times.
That’s funny. I’d gotten the idea a while back that Rabids were much bigger than sads. Maybe that belief needs to be re-examined in light of the more recent data. Let’s see:
Best Novel: Sads have Trial By Fire (199 votes) where rabids have The Chaplain’s War (196). That’s pretty near even.
Novella: Sads list three. Rabids add two. The SP+RP nominees get 292-338. The rabid-onlys get 145 and 172. Here again, the sad and rabid factions look to be about equal-sized.
Short Story: Sads and rabids agree on three and differ on two. The three on which they agree get 184-230. Sad-onlys get 132 and 185. Rabid-onlys get 151 and 162.
Okay, so I withdraw the remark above about Sads being much weaker than Rabids. Looks like they were about the same at the nominating stage. In which case my first Good Reason For Sads To Support EPH would instead read:
Happy Puppy: Kate the Impaler has stated that the recommended reading list will now be 10 in each category knowing that will dilute the power of the Sad Puppy voters.
Just so you understand, lists of 10 are still a slate, and this is still going to incur the same amount of ire from non-Puppies. This is still putting “a thumb on the scales”, and it is still antithetical to the spirit and intent of the Hugo awards process.
Seriously — why can’t she just post a long Recommendation List and leave it at that? Why post a slate and try to pretend that it’s not a slate, just because she’s not using the word “slate”?
@JJ: Depends, I think, on whether she follows through on her threat to order them by popularity, thus signaling the Correct Five For Strategic Voting. If she instead orders them, say, alphabetically? And there’s ten? That starts to look like a plausible good-faith effort at not slating.
Damnit, I hate when friends fight. (N.B. I do not know Jamison particularly well, but I did try to help him hawk T-shirts after the Hugos. That was fun.)
Jamison, I think the other thing that Mike might be referring to is that we got at least one Sad Puppy vote for EPH in the Business Meeting who was persuaded by the rationale that it will disincentivize *all* bloc nominating, so given that it hasn’t passed yet, it’s a good idea not to be too political around it. I hadn’t pinged onto the other stuff as an issue. I can’t speak for Mike, but I imagine he very much wants to see EPH passed and is mindful of the tenor of Worldcon business meetings and longtime attendees.
Wait… what?? I thought a “slate” was when you intentionally proposed a list of things that people should vote on and actively campaigned people to get them on the nominations.
If someone want to propose some amount of books for reading with a #HugoWorthy attached I don’t think that it matters if they propose 3 or 10. It’s just a suggestion. When we start policing people’s opinions then we run into a whole different and nastier can of worms.
When someone actively organizes a group with the intention of swaying the vote through leveraging the group’s voting power then that’s a slate. Someone listing some arbitrary amount of books they feel is Hugo worthy is not.
@Seth Gordon:
It’s irrelevant to politics unless perhaps Mr. Quinn runs for (some) political office in the near future. The people who are likely to attend WSFS Business Meetings already have their various views about EPH and are adult enough not to think better or worse of it based on their personal assessment of one of its creators and of his expressed views.
Lovely teapot, interesting tempest.
@Happy Puppy
Really? Then why didn’t any of them respond to those results by saying, “we’re sorry, we totally didn’t mean to do that. I guess our theory that we were fighting against a pre-existing secret slate has been disproven. How do we fix this?”
Instead, they acted pretty stunned all right. Stunned with glee and giddy with triumph.
@UncannyValley:
If you present a “reading list” of five items per category, that’s quite plainly a slate, whatever label you stick on it. This has nothing to do with “policing people’s opinions” and everything to do with observing that a pitch inside the goddamn strike zone is a strike, even if you claim you were throwing at the batboy.
@JJ, McJulie: Can we please not pile on Happy Puppy? In this thread of all places?
About the anonymization: I am a statistician and I have been the data administrator for the Seattle Center for AIDS Research in the late 90s. So yes, I understand that it’s not trivial.
One option would be to treat it as sensitive data; that is, do the obvious stuff, but also make people sign a commitment not to look for identifying data and not to publicize it if they see any.
But I think the best thing would be:
1. De-couple the categories, as has been discussed. A reasonable statistical analysis will still be able to put reasonable bounds on how many cross-category puppies there likely were.
2. For any work with fewer than 5 nominations, delete its name and refer to it only by number.
3. Include the summary canonicalization data — that is, how many people spelled each work each way — but do not include spelling info ballot-by-ballot.
I think the combination of these three measures would be enough to publicly release the ballots. Any conclusions one might draw about which ballots came from whom after they’d been anonymized like this would be just speculation.
That’s interesting and it wouldn’t have occurred to me. What kind of interesting stuff can you do with those data?
@Laertes
OK, awkward baseball allegories aside, we seem to be talking about two different things here. You are stating that is someone proposes a specific group of five for all Hugo categories that is a slate and I have to admit that seems pretty slately to me.
10 suggestions seems less so. I think it’s prudent to not go overboard. I think it’s necessary to examine both obvious intent and actions. If some fan or author or whoever wants to publish a Top Ten suggestions list for works in each category that seems like an opinion. If a group of authors or activists get together and each propose a joint agreed upon group of books to their followers that’s obviously a slate. I think there’s a lot of room for leeway between the two.
An alphabetical/random list of ten items per category would be totally legit. Other groups do similar things. A list of ten items per category, listed in order of popularity would just be a poorly-disguised slate.
People tend to misspell words consistently (“basicly” rather than “basically” for example). Also variants like UK-v-US shows up pretty solidly. Also, how you habitually shorten authors names or titles, which might appear in other places like your facebook/livejournal/twitter feeds. That’s off the top of my head, if you sat down and thought about it, you could come up with more.
A mitigating factor in all of this, by the way, is that while the Hugh admins (okay, just the one, I don’t think any of us knew the announcement made at the business meeting was potentially ultra vires) promised to release the data, they did not promise to release it into the public domain, but only in selected cases. So presumably you could vet the reasons for which the data was sought and obtain signed confidentiality agreements regarding the use of the data. Not perfect, but damn better than nothing.
I don’t think it’s productive to attempt to nail down a clear definition of what is and is not a slate. The Puppy brand has firmly associated itself with slating. If the inheritors of that brand have seen that this is a bad idea and they want to turn over a new leaf, good for them: let’s see what they do to convince us that the SP4 recommendation list is not a slate. The burden of proof is on them.
A definition of “slate” based on objective criteria of the list (rather than subjective criteria involving the intent of the slate-makers) just invites future rules-lawyering. “So-and-so says that anything with X and Y and Z is a slate, but we only have X and Y here, and Scalzi did X and Y and Z…” Screw that. When I want to engage in Talmudic hairsplitting, I can do that with an actual Talmud.
This has nothing to do with “policing people’s opinions” and everything to do with observing that a pitch inside the goddamn strike zone is a strike, even if you claim you were throwing at the batboy.
There’s also he fact that the Pups have zero accumulated goodwill at this point. If someone were to create a reading list with no accumulated history, then we could give them the benefit of the doubt. But the Pups have an accumulated history of three years of slating and behaving like jerks. They don’t get any benefit of the doubt quite simply because of how they have behaved over the last couple of years. They may not like that, but it is the result of their own actions.
Obviously, I’d be willing to sign documents committing not to violate anonymity. If I did that, and if the admins offered, I’d be willing to take data where only the names/identifying info was removed, and cross-category, unpopular-work, and spelling data was all maintained. Moar data good. I’d be careful.
But if you gave me a choice between moar data with an NDA, or public data anybody can analyze, I’d take the latter.
Hi McJulie: still can’t get over the fact I liked HPMOR, eh?
Brad has written, and no I’m not going to look for the quote as he’s written far too much these past few months, that he expected (hoped?) To get a few works on the ballot — not sweep the ballot.
As to apologies you can read his post “Emmanuel Goldstein has left the building” explaining why he felt issuing apologies was futile.
Always, obviously, but we may not get that choice until all of this is only of historical interest, so if the former was an option, that could give both the benefits of the data and the benefits of not being sued… and whatever about the SP, you know that Beale would jump at that chance.
I also want to chime in and thank Jameson Quinn profusely for all his expert help in dealing with Puppygate. EPH is the main reason I feel confident the Hugos will recover from all the piled-up-puppy-poop and be stronger than ever once the new system is implemented (assuming it is.)
I also didn’t see anything wrong or inflammatory in Mr. Quinn’s blog post, except perhaps a tiny bit of the “Hugos have been too inbred” stuff — people who aren’t inside fandom seem not to make the connection that Hugos=Oscars; the voting pool has always been very limited, composed only of fans who care enough to pony up for the right to vote. They’ve acquired prestige through the awareness that fans who are that “into” SFF are probably good judges of works that deserve a second look, though of course not every book awarded will be equally to everyone’s taste. The Hugos are more democratic than the Oscars only in that you can buy the right to vote on the Hugos, whereas you can’t buy a membership to the Academy (at least not officially…). And of course there is a social/community element to what wins in systems like this, or films like “Shakespeare In Love” and “Argo” would not have taken home Best Picture awards. This is not to say they weren’t solid, entertaining movies — both were — but they were hardly Art For The Ages. They won because the one thing Hollywood loves more than money is patting itself on the back for how amazing and important Hollywood is. It’s their community, and they reward films that boost the community. That’s human and natural.
But I can see why someone not a long-time member of fandom could make that mistake and buy into the concept that somehow the Hugos are “too insular” because they think the Hugos are some kind of general-purpose quality award instead of what they really are: an award given by Worldcon members to the books, stories, editors, and fan works that the members most enjoyed in the previous year, without any referent to the preferences of non-Worldcon members. Clearly, word-of-mouth in the community is going to play a large role in which books are widely read and considered.
But I see that as merely a misunderstanding on Mr. Quinn’s part and not an insult or offense, and I’m very grateful that the Hugos had the benefit of his expertise. I regard it as invaluable.
I do have a quick question about voting system math here that I’ve been wondering about. I’m sure this was asked and answered at Making Light, but I’ve not even been able to keep up with the commentary here at File770 so I wasn’t able to track that whole discussion. Why is a single vote split into fractions preferable to, say, giving everyone five votes and letting them apportion those votes as they see fit, such that a person could give a favorite book 4 out of 5 “vote tokens” and another book 1 out of 5 “vote tokens,” rather than forcing a 50/50 split? What little I know of voting math comes from watching CGP Grey’s Youtube videos on the topic (which I highly recommend) and this is kinda-sorta similar to the current voting system in New Zealand, which can be oversimplified as “One person, two votes.”
The only reason I could see for favoring a fractional vote rather than a multiple-vote system is that a fractional vote can be infinitely divided (if you want to nominate twenty works, they each get 0.05 of your vote) while a multiple integer vote will have to have a definite number of votes (3, 5, 6, whatever) that cannot be infinitely split. But as a math tutor, I’ve found that most people are far more comfortable with integers than fractions, and using the multiple-vote system does give the option of unequally weighting two books instead of forcing a 50/50 split.
I apologize if this has all been dissected in detail and I’m treading well-worn ground, but I’ve really been wondering about this in terms of the ability to “sell” EPH. Multiple votes seems like it would be more comfortable to many people than fractions.
UncannyValley:
Sad Puppies slate will still be a slate, even if they call it a reading list. There are several reasons (as per the proposal from Paulk):
1. It will be a political campaign for these works running and being published on several different blogs, complete with political logo and everything.
2. There is a political reason for the reading list being done, not to promote excellent work, but to promote conservative authors.
3. Not all recommended works will be published, the list will be culled at the top 10 most popular.
4. The list will be sorted on popularity.
5. Voters are encouraged to vote for the most popular items to increase a chanse of them winning.
This is slating. Block voting. Not to just read and nominate what you like, but to sort books on popularity, to encourage people not to vote on what they liked best, but on what the group as a whole thought most likely to win. This is aggregation of votes to game the system.
If you wouldn’t want to game the system with block voting, you would have:
1. Not set a limit on slated works to 10.
2. Not been motivating the need of the list on political grounds.
3. Not mixed a drive to get new voters with a drive to get voters to vote on a small compiled list.
4. Published the list in alphabetical order instead of popularity.
5. Not encouraged voters to vote strategically, but instead according to their own opinions and minds.
Which is to say, we are playing the ITERATED Prisoner’s Dilemma here, and not just the base version, and the Pups have a history of defecting. That can and must affect how the other community members evaluate the chances of further defections. (…And also defecations.)
One of the selling points of EPH was that it is just as simple from the voter’s perspective as the current system. Proposing that would have changed how Hugo voters nominate and made that process harder for them.
UncannyValley: Wait… what?? I thought a “slate” was when you intentionally proposed a list of things that people should vote on and actively campaigned people to get them on the nominations… When someone actively organizes a group with the intention of swaying the vote through leveraging the group’s voting power then that’s a slate.
That’s exactly what Kate Paulk’s Sad Puppy Lists of 10 are going to be.
May Tree: Why is a single vote split into fractions preferable to, say, giving everyone five votes and letting them apportion those votes as they see fit, such that a person could give a favorite book 4 out of 5 “vote tokens” and another book 1 out of 5 “vote tokens,” rather than forcing a 50/50 split?
Under EPH, voters don’t “apportion” anything. They nominate from zero to 5 works they think are Hugo-worthy in a given category. Each of those works gets 1 nomination. That’s all. Just as it’s always been.
The point system is part of the software calculation. It is used for determining which works are least popular and should be considered for elimination. The one with the lower number of nominations is eliminated, then the process is repeated for the next two with the lowest point totals.
This allows people to nominate something even if it’s not wildly popular. Their nomination helps that work, but if it eventually gets eliminated, then their 4 remaining works are still in play, and now have proportionally more points.
The point system is part of the software calculation. It is used for determining which works are least popular and should be considered for elimination. The one with the lower number of nominations is eliminated, then the process is repeated for the next two with the lowest point totals.
As I understand it, from Keith’s example, the points really come in when there’s a tie in number of nominations for the lowest number. The one lower in points is taken out first, as having less support. It sounds more complicated than it actually is.
Regarding anonymization, shouldn’t it be enough to go through and replace each Member-ID/Category combo with a Random-ID/Category combo, then randomize the order of nominations for each ballot?
e.g.
Member-ID, Category, Title
1234, Novel, The Peripheral
1234, Novel, Echopraxia
2222, Novel, Skin Game, Penguin
42, Novel, GOD STALK
1234, Short Story, The Breath of War
2222, Short Story, Totaled
2222, Short Story, Goodnight Stars
42, Short Story, Jackalope Wives
...
becomes:
Random, Category, Title
0b5d422, Novel, Echopraxia
0b5d422, Novel, The Peripheral
fc51e38, Novel, Skin Game
ad7d147, Novel, GOD STALK
5bcbb72, Short Story, Jackalope Wives
9d4422d, Short Story, The Breath of War
fcc537e, Short Story, Totaled
fcc537e, Short Story, Goodnight Stars
...
So even if someone manages to correlate random # ad7d147 with a Goodreads profile or blog post, that only means you have correlated that one category and have no new information. There is a different random ID for Novel vs BDP-L vs Fan Artist, etc. EPH does not care what cross-category nominations are, only what one ballot has listed for each category. Randomizing across all categories means that even if one category gets correlated, you know nothing (Jon Snow) about how that (#InAllModesty, the finest) nominator nominated in other categories.
Ah okay, so the deal with EPH is that all the new complexity is hidden from view and handled by a computer, so unless you look under the hood you won’t see any change in your voting behavior. Multiple vote tokens might look simpler up front and be simpler to explain but they would spread the new complexity to both the “front end” and the “back end” of the system and require changes in voting behavior, is that right?
As a side discussion, did the suggestion of “give everyone multiple votes to hand out as they see fit” get made? I’m assuming it did and was shot down, but I’m curious. Do folks here think that people would have found the proposed change easier to explain and “sell” if it didn’t involve fractional votes? Would it raise anyone’s “comfort level” with the adjustments to the voting system if it were more complex to implement but easier to grasp numerically?
So, you are putting a mathematical system out there for voting, with very clear rules, and your primary adversary is a game designer. Brilliant! I can see Vox pleading desperately with you not to throw him in that briar patch now.
And if I were a statistician for one of the groups who changed the rules repeatedly for what constituted AIDS, in order to be able to call it an epidemic and scare people, I would hang my head in shame, not tout it as a credential.
Other than that, my own plan is to compare all finalists to Dune, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Dorsai!, Way Station, Lord of Light, and Ringworld…..and vote No Award a LOT.
He’s as good a game designer as he is an editor. Which is to say, no one has anything to worry about.
It’s more like Fandom is being a good GM and throwing a bunch of quests requiring a high WIS at a munchkin min-maxer who thinks he can get away with pumping up INT and ignoring WIS. Yes, I’m calling Vox a munchkin. I don’t care if he is a super-genius like he claims, if he needs to roll a 30 to accomplish his “goals” but the die only goes to 20, he will always fail. Or, need to shift the goalposts again.
Aristotle!
Sorry, no.
Any attempt to determine how well EPH works with real data needs to actually work with real data–in other words, with all the different spellings that people use when they nominate.
Especially because my attempts at the Business Meeting to indicate how much work is involved at that stage were brushed aside (at best) and belittled (at worst) by other people at the meeting–and treated as outright lies by people commenting online during the live coverage of the meeting.
I realize that it’s so boring to accept someone’s real-life experiences (as a four-time Hugo Administrator) with the matter when it doesn’t match up with the theoretical discussions online on Making Light, but the real world is the one we’re stuck with.
May Tree, your best bet is to go and read the E Pluribus Hugo: Community Q&A, and then, if you still have questions (I think you will find most, if not all, of them answered), ask them there.
Math and Games don’t have that kind of relationship, which is why – for one well-known example – after several hundred years and more than a few massive supercomputers, we still don’t know whether or not chess is a draw with perfect play or if white’s first move means that the game is unbalanced.
Also, if it was that easy, any looper could game (say) general elections in Ireland and decide on the government there (or anywhere else that STV is the voting system).
Of course, I am not a fifth dimensional expert in 4GW, or even a third dimensional expert in 2DOF so obviously his plans are taking place in a brane far removed from my petty sight…
McJulie said:
“Sad leaders were stunned when the results of the nomination phase were announced. … they acted pretty stunned all right. Stunned with glee and giddy with triumph.”
McJulie nailed it.
I am on MHI Nation a lot. I can’t tell a sad from a rabid. They are all pretty much from the same litter.
So I shouldn’t ask you the age of Aquarius?
Um. I hate to tell my grandmother she’s sucking the egg wrong, but EPH doesn’t work on the raw data and neither does the current system. In both EPH and now, there is some other process doing data cleanup and normalisation (well, technically text clustering), and EPH and the current system work on the output of that process. Even if that process is “me, reading the nominations and using my common sense to note that Leckie, Ann is the same as A.Leckie if the titles match” — just because the algorithm is running in meat instead of silicon and isn’t open to peer review doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
EPH just replaces the counting bit. You can keep doing the clustering the way you do it now.
(Or you can use something smarter to do the clustering. I’m working on something for that right now in case it might be of use).
So, you are putting a mathematical system out there for voting, with very clear rules, and your primary adversary is a game designer. Brilliant!
Oh my sweet summer child. You actually think VD is good at the things he does. I feel so sad for you right now.
Except with EPH, you have to: (a) clean up the data further down the list (because you’re possibly eliminating slate entries); and (b) you have to clean up that data completly before you can run any programs on (rather than saying “Oh, look, here are some entries for GOT: The Mountain and the Viper”–I’ll add that count further up the list to the count I have for “Game of Thrones: The Mountain and The Viper”).
It’s easy to do that manually, not so easy when the data has to match exactly for EPH to use it.