246 thoughts on “A Free Page 8/26”

  7. ::ticky:: in a futile attempt to catch up. Been away for work conference: It went really well but I am socialed-out &. feel like being a hermit for a while to recharge.

  10. A couple of posts on EPH that I just noticed:

    Rachael Acks (negative, on the lines of Dave McCarty’s reaction)

    Steve Wright (more positive, plus an interesting observation about slate discipline this year)

  14. In which case:

    Number Five: Where am I?
    Number Five: In the Scroll.
    Number Five: What do you want?
    Number Five: Pixels.
    Number Five: Whose side are you on?
    Number Five: That would be telling. We want pixels… pixels… pixels.
    Number Five: You won’t get it.
    Number Five: By hook or by crook, we will.
    Number Five: Who are you?
    Number Five: The new Number Five.
    Number Five: Who is Number Five?
    Number Five: You are Number Five.
    Number Five: I am not a comment! I am a free page!
    Number Five: [laughs]

  15. Re Neffies – I am struck with the feeling that less than 10 people nominated for these awards.

    It is like the time where my friend filled in the paperwork and wrote himself in as a regional delegate for the GOP. He won with a single vote.

    Regardless, I wish the Neffies well (and hope that the get more nominations in future years).

  16. Clearly the neffies are a more prestigious award than the Hugos, having a far lower barrier to entry at only $6 to vote.

  18. In a Facebook discussion with Gary Farber on whether longtime SF/F fen are too resistant to societal change, Tor editor Moshe Feder introduces a concept I thought might be of interest here.

    It’s called Fandom Prime. He writes:

    As we’ve discussed many times and were among the first to point out, I don’t believe that any change we can control will save what I once named “Fandom Prime.”

    That fandom depended for its special character on SF&F being a scorned minority interest. (It was why fandom was the first place you and I ever felt truly at home.) That won’t be true again for the foreseeable future, if ever, nor would we want it to be.

    More from Feder on the concept can be found on his Tor activity page, such as this longer definition:

    The part of fandom I believe myself and feel myself to belong to is the part with its roots in the 30s and a direct, un-branching line of descent from there. I arrived in time (about 1970) to meet many of the founding fans of that era, and their younger friends, and thus I have no doubt that they and everyone I consider to be in Fandom Prime were and are involved in the same shared thing, the original stefnal ‘cosa nostra,’ to interpret that Italian term literally. …

    The genres of the fantastic dominate the mass media and are appreciated by the broad public in a way that the fragile, scattered, tiny community of fans in the ’30s would never have dared to dream. It may have been stuck with an ugly dynastic name, but Sci-Fi is the King of all Media. That being the case, fandom (prime, core, and otherwise) can never be the same and will never again serve the same purposes. But if we are true to ourselves, it won’t matter.

  19. As Bartimaus says, Steve Wright makes a very interesting point about the better quality slate works generally being the worst supported by the RP slate. (That’s leaving aside the good quality works that also got broad-based support.)
    My pulled-out-of-a-hat explanation is that there was an element in the puppy spectrum of SP who had become more rabid this year, and who at least in part wanted to “send a message”. They will have been voting for some stuff they just liked, plus choosing the most offensive elements of the RP list for their “message”. As there was a pretty strong link between a work being nominated purely to annoy voters and also being total crap, this meant they were actually ignoring the better stuff on the RP list to make space for their own preferences.
    There’s obviously no way to prove this, but anecdotally I saw plenty of people declaring they’d been Sad and were moving towards Rabid. There’s also the stated support by SP leaders for some of VDs little traps like Safe Space that suggests they were using this “send a message” tactic.

  20. I wrote a long comment on Rachael Acks’s thoughtful post. I’m copying it here:

    Thanks for a thoughtful post. I think it deserves a response.

    On the charge of “too complex” and “unverifiable”, there really is no defense. It’s just a matter of whether you think the advantages of EPH (slate resistance, diversity, reduced strategic incentives/ increased fairness) are worth these downsides.

    But on your concerns around the BDP categories, and especially BDP:Long, I think you have it wrong. And, frankly, I think that this is partly Dave’s fault. At the meeting, I didn’t want to highlight this disagreement, because I’m quite grateful for all he’s done, and deeply cognizant that he has been acting in good faith and with the highest ideals of impartiality. But it seems to me he got this one wrong.

    BDP: long is an unusual category, in that there are relatively few strong candidates. This makes it less likely, not more, that EPH will change results in a year without explicit slating. Say that there are 4 dominant candidates plus bunch of also-rans. The typical ballot will still not nominate all 4 of the strong ones; tastes still differ, and fans, like anyone else, enjoy making a pet of the occasional contrarian opinion. So each ballot will nominate 1-3 of the strong, and maybe an also-ran or two. That’s a lot more overlap than a typical category; but it’s not more “slate-like”. You can still see that a ballot votes for work A, and remain mostly in the dark in terms of guessing which other works it nominates.

    The upshot, in EPH, will be that the gap between “points” and “nominations” will be a bit higher for BDP:long, but that the rank ordering of “points” will remain largely the same as that of “nominations”. And in this kind of situation, EPH does not change the results from a system based solely on “nominations”.

    Yes, it’s true, there will be some slight correlation between two ballots, along the dimension of “mainstream” versus “alternative”. And “mainstream” will act as effectively a slate, so EPH could have an effect there, contrary to what I said in the previous paragraph. But I think that effect would actually be healthy; to get rid of the weakest “mainstream” option, as most people who voted for that would have other finalists they like, and replace it with the strongest “alternative” one. In an alternate version of this year, with EPH and without slates, that might mean “Age of Ultron” would drop off; it’s pretty much consensus by now that it’s not the strongest of the MCU films, and most people who nominated it probably actually preferred at least one of The Martian, The Force Awakens, or Mad Max.

    What about BDP:Short? Honestly, I didn’t include that in my paper with Bruce because data cleaning was a nightmare. I did a lot of work cleaning up the 2015 ballots, and I think I got it right, but I still couldn’t be fully confident that I’d made exactly the same calls as the admins. What do you do when people write things like “any Korra episode” in BDP:Short? Since my first priority was not to undermine the legitimacy of the admin decisions, I punted. But… Dave was the admin, and he had the cleaned-up data. I didn’t want to fight with him about leaving this category off of his analysis, but I actually do think he made the wrong choice, even though he thought that I agreed with him.

    Obviously, in BDP:Short, each show is a natural slate. But most individual-show fandoms are coherent enough that there’s clearly one episode that stands out. In that case, minor fans of that show can afford not to act like a slate. They don’t have to say “I’d better vote for the 5 best episodes because if I leave one off that might be the one the other voters like the best”, so they can just vote for the 1 stand-out and then use the rest of their ballot for other things they like. So in this case, EPH is just encouraging the kind of voting behavior that I think most of us would agree is healthy anyway.

    ….

    One other point you bring up is that you find it surprising that EPH worked better this year, when the slate was weaker. To me, once I’d seen what it did last year, that’s not surprising at all. The most a slate can possibly get is all the nominees; as it gets weaker, it loses the first and second and even perhaps third nominee under EPH one by one, before it loses any under the prior system (bloc approval voting, in technical terms). So, that’s not at all counterintuitive to me.

    …

    As for 3SV: as I argued in the business meeting and in the EPH+ FAQ, I think that 3SV without some form of EPH is a recipe for disaster, inviting slaters to simply take over the longlist.

    …

    Once again, thanks for your thoughtful post. I’m quibbling, but it’s clear to me that you’ve considered the issue with good faith, wisdom, and intelligence. I hope I’ve convinced you to rethink certain aspects, but you are still free to come to whatever overall conclusion you see fit. Cheers.

  23. @Jameson Quinn

    That’s a good explanation, thank you. I watched the video including the section where that came up, and I came away a but confused about what you and Dave were actually saying about BDP, and I suspect that at least some BM attendees were also a bit concerned on this point.
    However, your explanation about Long is perfectly sensible, and your candid reasons re Short are understandable.

    As I suspect there’s some ongoing confusion about the issue, you might consider expanding on your reply a bit in a proper post, so it doesn’t just languish in comments. If you do, I’d expand on Short a bit more, as I think there’s a lot of concern about what will happen to natural show fan “slates”, and I think a clear explanation of how EPH only serves to concentrate votes on the strongest episode(s) would help.

  24. Mike: email me if/when you want me to write a post about BDP as Mark suggests. But no pressure; getting better is top priority.

  26. Unrelated to above discussion, I just finished Jo Walton’s Necessity. I didn’t find the time-travel plot as compelling as the plots of the previous books*, but I love the characters, both new and returning. At times, the book felt like an extended “Joy to you” from Walton to her readers.

    *Or maybe I just wanted a different plot. I would have liked to read more about the interactions between the platonists and the space humans.

  28. You… hipster.

    (Did you hear him —
    Did you hear him?
    Oh, the monster overbearing,
    Don’t go near him —
    Don’t go near him —
    He is swearing —
    He is swearing!)

  30. Not sure which twisty thread mentioned virtue signaling among the Pups, but I’m tired of looking for it on this balky, insensate machine, and there’s only so many times even I can be amused to see “virtue not found” at the top of the page. So here it shall be.

    This is important to a group so dominated by jargon and neologies. They don’t signal “virtue.” They signal “authenticity,” which means exactly the same thing, but is not tainted by their own use of it as a sneer word, so they had this abs brill idea (much like calling a rabbit a Smeerp, which is also totally new and original, so don’t you SJABCs go stealing it) to rebrand it, and they got their inspiration from that American hero, the drugstore cowboy.

    As I once saw it—I mean, HIM—explained by Ugly John Carver, this rugged individualist can’t hang out in front of Rexall’s without he has got the right kind of cowshit on his boots, and since he has no regular access to kine, he must carefully hunt for, and find, and apply, the shite before he saunters casually downtown. Their hero, G.W. Bush, is the epitome of the type (and a twofer: he’s also a drugstore warrior).

    So: Authenticity Signaling. Fail an item on the checklist, let alone question the list, and you might as well dye your hair pink and read Hugo winners. And wipe that stuff off your boots: you ain’t worthy.

  32. Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman which I highly recommend is on sale today for $2.99. Not a fun book, include all the trigger warnings, but worth reading.

  35. @Kip W:

    This is important to a group so dominated by jargon and neologies.

    In your comment alone, we had the jargon of “virtue signaling” followed by the neologism of “authenticity signaling”. I’m not saying those are bad, just that they, too, are jargon and neologism. It’s a point on which both sides (and not so much the middle) of the Puppy Wars are guilty, guilty, guilty, even when I agree with what’s said.

  37. This has me wondering–if someone were to build a virtue signal, what image would it project on the clouds?

    (Hey, that makes me wonder about something else. How did Gordan contact Batman on clear nights?)

  40. One of those blocky figure 8-y S glyphs that every kid used to draw on their school books, with a J and a W tacked on in a super half-arsed way.

  41. There were 10,350 Worldcon members for Sasquan in 2015, per Wikipedia.

    All of those members were eligible to nominate in 2016, as were new members who joined for MidAmeriCon II. If 1,500 members were new in 2016 (just a hypothetical guess), that would mean a pool of 11,850 eligible voters.

    If I’m understanding 3SV correctly, if the rule was in place this year and 11,850 members were eligible to vote, 2,370 reject votes (20% of 11,850) would have been required to keep a work off the ballot at the long list stage. (Reject votes must be at least the greater of 600 or 20% of eligible voters.)

    5 of 17 categories in 2016 had at least 2,370 nominating ballots cast.

    8 of 17 categories in 2016 had at least 2,370 final vote ballots cast.

    Is 20% too high to reach?

  42. Camestros Felaptron: it appears that the researchers should have read “The Education of Tigress McArdle” before completing the research protocol; the description of the robots’ behavior (from a BBC article) seems pretty mild (e.g., crying only for cause).

    Simon Bisson: heh-heh. (I remember the Arisia just after Patrick McGoohan’s death; there were quotes on every floor of the staircase that we took because the elevators were insufficient, and I wondered how many attendees recognized them.)

    rcade quotes Moshe Feder:

    The part of fandom I believe myself and feel myself to belong to is the part with its roots in the 30s and a direct, un-branching line of descent from there.

    That’s a rosy-hued view of the past. A lot of the early fans were both conrunners (when cons started happening) and fanzine writers, but IME there was a split (not just a spectrum) between the two by the time Moshe got involved. The attitude of some of the more rabid fanzine fans (e.g. Ted White) was that they were the mainline and conrunners were just a trivial offshoot, but that doesn’t match the facts.

  43. Darren:
    This has me wondering–if someone were to build a virtue signal, what image would it project on the clouds?

    A Dinosaur?

  44. @rcade

    If 1,500 members were new in 2016 (just a hypothetical guess), that would mean a pool of 11,850 eligible voters.

    You are eligible to nominate for awards in year N if you were a member of WSFS in years N-1, N, or N+1. But to participate in 3SV, you must be a member in year N.

    For MidAmeriCon II, it seems it would have taken about 1400 downvotes to disqualify something. Compare that to votes for No Award, and it seems that the bad nominees for Best Related Work could have all been eliminated.

  45. @rcade Are you conflating voting with nomination? Because not all of the Sasquan members were eligible to vote this year (but they were eligible to nominate).

    It’s my understanding that 3SV is a voting stage, so the numbers there would be much lower.

  46. A lot of the early fans were both conrunners (when cons started happening) and fanzine writers, but IME there was a split (not just a spectrum) between the two by the time Moshe got involved.

    If Feder’s talking about the story we tell ourselves now about what SF/F fandom is, informed by what it was when we arrived, isn’t that split a lot less relevant today than it was when it happened? I only think of the factions within early fandom if I’m diving deep into the subject historically.

  48. NickPheas on August 26, 2016 at 4:11 am said:
    Clearly the neffies are a more prestigious award than the Hugos, having a far lower barrier to entry at only $6 to vote.

    Spent an unproductive twenty minutes tracking down Neffies, and what seems like their earlier incarnation, Laureates.
    Intermittently produced in the 40s-50s, and again since 2005, like a couple dozen in total.

    Current ballot basically unvotable in fiction.
    Whatever, play with it outside.

  49. Jameson Quinn: If you haven’t already. email me a reminder now so in a week or so when I am home I will see it.

  50. Are you conflating voting with nomination?

    It appears that I am.

    I had trouble finding language in the WSFS constitution and 3SV proposal that defined eligible voters. I assumed that since the first stage allowed nominations from last year’s con members, the qualification stage allowed that same group of people to participate.

    Section 3.8.1 of 3SV states, “Only WSFS members may vote in this stage.” I didn’t realize what this meant until I checked Section 1.4 of the constitution: “The Membership of WSFS shall consist of all people who have paid membership dues to the Committee of the current Worldcon.”

    Compare that to votes for No Award, and it seems that the bad nominees for Best Related Work could have all been eliminated.

    More people vote in the final stage than the nominating stage. What percentage of No Awarders will vote in the qualifying stage? I haven’t tried to figure that out.

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