DisCon III’s WSFS Division head Nicholas Whyte today announced on Twitter and Facebook that the Hugo Administration team of the 2021 Worldcon has resigned en masse:
Departing WSFS Division Head Nicholas Whyte was also in charge of the 2023 Site Selection voting.
The committee has not yet addressed the staff resignations.
This is the second team of Hugo administrators to quit DisCon III this year. The con’s original WSFS Division Head Jared Dashoff explained here in January why he and the Hugo Administrator resigned. It had to do with efforts to manage policies created by the committee “to deal with a) space constraints at receptions and award ceremonies, b) budget constraints of the receptions and trophies, c) constraints relating to font size on both ballots and in-ceremony visuals, and d) in response to multiple requests to list long lists of contributors to Hugo Finalists over the last few years….”
Dashoff made his comment in response to Colette Fozard’s guest post about why she resigned as DisCon III co-chair in the same timeframe.
The protested restrictions, which DisCon III announced January 11, were repudiated the next day by DisCon III chair Bill Lawhorn (see “DisCon III Abandons Previously Announced Hugo Policy”). Lawhorn said:
…All publications and visuals linked to the Hugo Awards will include all Hugo Finalist creators named to DisCon III with no restrictions to the number of names. This includes, and is not limited to, the Hugo Awards ballot, the visuals used during the Hugo Awards Ceremony, the plaques on the Hugo Awards trophies, the Hugo Awards Ceremony program guide, the DisCon III souvenir guide, and the DisCon III and Hugo Awards websites.
We will address concerns about the size of events such as the Hugo Pre-Reception, the number of Hugo Awards trophies, and any other cost considerations individually with the finalists….
However, it seems that when the time recently arrived to address these concerns, some controversial limitations were still on the table – see the message documented in Pixel Scroll 6/19/21 item #6.
When Nicholas Whyte announced on Facebook last January 17 that he had signed on as DisCon III’s new WSFS Division Head, he commented: .
…The Hugos have had some reputational issues to deal with. Having fought off direct assault by ill-wishers in 2015 and 2016, some pretty significant mistakes were made more recently. Many of those were outside the immediate responsibility of the Hugo Administrators, including most notably the awful botching of last year’s Hugo ceremony and the Hugo Losers Party in 2019, and the hostile response from some in the community to the winners of the award for Best Related Work in both of those years (cases where I very much stand by the eligibility decisions that were made by teams that I was a part of).
I have made mistakes as well, and I hope that I have learned from them. In particular, it’s clear, not least from the problems that arose in the last few days, that the Hugos as a whole need to be less siloed and need to improve communication in both directions with the rest of the Worldcon and with the wider stakeholder community (as my work colleagues would put it). DisCon III had already started putting structures in place that would improve this side of things, and I look forward to working with those and building on them.
What led to today’s round of resignations Whyte doesn’t explicitly say. He simply quotes Lawhorn’s aspirational statement about last January’s policy reversal, and says “It is clear that we have taken the process as far as we can, and that our input is no longer needed by the convention leadership.”
[Thanks to James Davis Nicoll for the story.]
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I see that the Discon III committee web page has been updated–but they forgot the bit at the bottom that lists the subcommittee.
For what it’s worth, I’m planning on attending Worldcon, pandemic permitting, and the Hugos aren’t an important part of that decision. I’d very much prefer that they work out well, but they aren’t the center of the Worldcon for me.
A surprising result from the puppies conflict was finding out that a lot of fans had no idea that the Hugos were voted on by Worldcon members.
Nancy Lebovitz: A surprising result from the puppies conflict was finding out that a lot of fans had no idea that the Hugos were voted on by Worldcon members.
I think that a lot of the people who are very invested in the Hugo Awards would be shocked to know that the number of Worldcon members for whom the Hugos are not important is much higher, by a factor of 2 or 3, than the number who do find them important. Likewise the number of members for whom authors do not feature as any part of their Worldcon experience.
I think Worldcon will be fine as long as there is a cohort of people who are:
a) willing to volunteer significant amounts of time and expertise
b) comfortable with the inevitable internet drama
What’s always interesting is how completely different teams administering the award can each screw them up every single year, albeit it in different ways. The Hugo’s are unlike any other award I can think of, existing as a concept and a trademark but without an oversight body to administer them. The Cons who run the show each year are entirely responsible.
Like someone said, I’m going to Discon for the Con, not so much the awards. I attended Worldcon in 2019 in Dublin, and skipped the awards ceremony despite friends being on the ballot. The Hugos are important to SFF, but I go to be with my peers, and the very good friends I’ve made, and to learn from others about the craft, or engage just in the general glow of fandom.
If WSFC wants to keep the Hugo’s relevant going forward, they’ll need to start caring for them, not leaving them up to the vagaries of whomever is putting on the show. Failing to carefully tend and care for them fails the fans and drives them towards irrelevance.
@JJ. Possibly, probably true. But the great and wonderful thing about Worldcon is that both extremes – and every variety between them – can all take place at the same event.
It seems that limiting invites to the award ceremony and pre-Hugo reception set things off. While I understand the limits, they apparently didn’t communicate with the finalists first as promised.
It’s all very dumb. They’ll know who’s coming. If that means that 20 of the 87 SH folks are there then they know how many people they need to make space for at the reception. They know to talk to them about how if they’re called up for the rockets then they’re still going to get just the normal three minutes and maybe a procession rather than coming up and everyone giving a nine second speech would be better.
NickPheas says It’s all very dumb. They’ll know who’s coming. If that means that 20 of the 87 SH folks are there then they know how many people they need to make space for at the reception. They know to talk to them about how if they’re called up for the rockets then they’re still going to get just the normal three minutes and maybe a procession rather than coming up and everyone giving a nine second speech would be better.
If, and I’m making up the name and other details to protect the guilty, Chocolate Manholes with fifteen staff members wins the semi-prozine at Islandia in 2024, it’s unrealistic to expect that all nine staff will each get time to say something about winning that Award. They should be told in advance that one of them will be accepting the Award.
NickPheas: maybe a procession
I don’t know if you’ve ever herded cats at an event before, but a procession of anything more than a dozen people would take way too long. And in the past, I remember seeing at least 4 people get to give speeches for one win, which was really excessive.
But that wouldn’t be treating all the nominees with equal levels of respect, which is what I’ve been led to believe is the issue.
It is of the whole thing is done in the fly without any preparation. A lot of the problem here is that the ConCom have tried to set expectations early, but have forgotten to talk to the nominees first.
Well that was equally mismanaged. Doesn’t mean all events must be mismanaged going forwards.
rob_matic says But that wouldn’t be treating all the nominees with equal levels of respect, which is what I’ve been led to believe is the issue.
Actually we have no idea what the issue is.
And unless we want a Ceremony that makes the last look an exercise in restraint, there will be a need to put limits on how many acceptance Speeches are made. Even a minute speech multiplied several dozen times quickly add up as you’ve also got the time for each person to get up and down from the stage. You could be looking at four or five hours of time.
We manage this all the time at the theatre. Getting people on and off the stage quickly is doable.
James Davis Nicoll: We manage this all the time at the theatre. Getting people on and off the stage quickly is doable.
Yes, but large groups, 20 times in a less-than-2-hour span? Not so much.
James Davis Nicoll says We manage this all the time at the theatre. Getting people on and off the stage quickly is doable.
I got them off and on stage at music festivals as well. (Well if they hadn’t been drinking too much which a certain English folk singer had once…) But I assume they’re doing scripted speech, not improv speech. Major difference that. I still hold that if everyone is allowed an acceptance speech, the Hugo Awards this time could well be even much longer than the GRRM debacle was.
I work in theatre and during dance comp season we move large groups on and off once every three minutes for days that start at nine AM and end in the evening. I assume clients are at least a little motivated to cooperate by the knowledge overtime is expensive.
Having watched companies run through lengthy programs without getting more than thirty seconds off schedule, the key seems to be having someone in charge of keeping stuff moving forward who is organized and who the performers will listen to.
James Davis Nicoll says Having watched companies run through lengthy programs without getting more than thirty seconds off schedule, the key seems to be having someone in charge of keeping stuff moving forward who is organized and who the performers will listen to.
They’re not performers, they’re folks getting Awards. Performers are professionals who are used to following the orders of others. (Well most performers are.) I still don’t know why a person cannot be designated to be the person who accepts the Award for the winning nomination. If it’s a team effort, damn act like a team.
I just don’t get it why teams of 87 persons expect everyone to be part of the ceremony. You never see the whole special effects team up on the stage for a Visual Effects Oscar. One or two representatives is the norm.
My sympathies to the con staff and various committees. They have to make choices and have to deal with the inevitable complaints because, in this reality, there aren’t any choices that will please 100% of the nominees or award recipients. The displeased will be loud and vitriolic.
Some of their choices involve risks. If they choose poorly against the risks, then they will be double darned.
Regards,
Dann
I don’t think I’ve met anyone with a stronger work ethic than Ray Charles. – Clint Eastwood
Do we know whether those 87 people do all expect to be part of the ceremony? Have they said so?
From what I’ve seen, groups expected to have the way participation would be arranged to be discussed with them…as was promised after the last debacle. And that apparently didn’t happen.
On a deeper level, I suspect they wanted to be treated as people to be celebrated, not a problem to be managed.
Clickity. I’m working through my Hugo packet now (I even requested the video games) and I’m not sure how to react to any of this. It feels like an administration issue with the ceremony itself more than a problem with the awards or the finalists, but it’s still disturbing.
I’m less concerned about knowing what is happening than I am about being reassured that the Hugos will be properly awarded. Without the team, how is it possible?
I use the novel nominations as a reading list. I discover new to me writers that way. For example, I will be reading horror this year, a genre I almost never read. So they are useful. Also I try to see all the long form movies and I have seen interesting movies I would never see.
So far, the only place with a group of 87 or so who might comment has, reportedly, NOT been one of the groups having a fit at the idea of limiting their acceptance presence to a few representatives. (I believe they were upset at having them cut off a visual slide back at the finalists announcement, but that’s a different beast from saying “we want 87 people filling the rows, and brought onto a stage that will safely hold fewer than that”.) Putting them all on a slide is, ideally, a copy paste by a smart data entry person, and some formatting tweaks. (There may be a similar question about what finalist announcers are to read aloud, but that’s easier for programming to discuss with them.)
topic break
One difference I notice in the logistics of getting large groups off and on a stage for a competition versus an awards show is that at the competition we know in advance exactly which group is coming up, in what order. We don’t know who will win in advance, and telling them and setting them up to get going would be a massive massive spoiler to ruin the moment. That means getting the group off their chairs, cued and lined up is a very different prospect from when you have 15 minute warnings, 10 minute warnings, 2 minute warnings, and “If you aren’t lined up in preplanned order at the stairs to the stage right now, you aren’t going on with your group.”
Oh, and note, I DO agree with evilrooster that the idea of HOW to limit things could have been discussed, not announced, within reason, if only to show some respect. I don’t think this was handed well by Discon at all. My last comment was merely meant to clarify a point I keep seeing, where it seems to be assumed the finalist with the most logistically unwieldy list is obviously also complaining. This is not what I have heard.
@steve davidson:
“The wonderful thing about Worldcon is Worldcons are Wonderful things”
evilrooster says Do we know whether those 87 people do all expect to be part of the ceremony? Have they said so?
From what I’ve seen, groups expected to have the way participation would be arranged to be discussed with them…as was promised after the last debacle. And that apparently didn’t happen.
On a deeper level, I suspect they wanted to be treated as people to be celebrated, not a problem to be managed.
Ok I’ve run festivals and concerts. Management isn’t something you discuss with those who are being part of it. The staff decides what the policy is, applies it equally to everyone involved and that’s how it happens. Such things aren’t democracies, they’re group efforts undertaken by a overworked, often under appreciated volunteers.
In which case DisCon probably shouldn’t have promised to discuss these matters individually with the nominees in the statement they made after the last furore. Given that they did make that commitment though, I don’t think that it’s unreasonable for nominees to expect it to be upheld.
@Evilrooster: Thanks for that post.
I have not seen much reaction from the 87 people, so I don’t know what they exspect. I think the are in the mind of the organisators the reason for the rules but as far as I know not the people who are angry.
While I do understand the limitations you are right a talk with the nominees would be good and your last sentence is probably somethink what got away from the discusion.
I just hope that next year will not have that many problems and if that the worlcon can solve them to the satisfaction of the nominees.
Amy my thanks to Nicholas Whyte and his team.
Ed M says In which case DisCon probably shouldn’t have promised to discuss these matters individually with the nominees in the statement they made after the last furore. Given that they did make that commitment though, I don’t think that it’s unreasonable for nominees to expect it to be upheld.
If Discon III did that, they made a grevious mistake. It’s their responsibility to manage the Worldcon and that means making decisions on how everything is managed. The attendees are not generally consulted on such matters at festivals I’ve been involved in as regards seating or anything else. That’s what management does.
And even if they were consulted, it does not they mean they’ve got a veto over the final arrangements. Again this isn’t a democracy. The only folks who have a say in how it is managed are the Worldcon folks themselves.
Who ever said anything about the finalists having a veto over anything? The issue appears to be that a significant portion of the “Worldcon folks” wanted arrangements made to ensure that the finalists felt honored and believed strongly that consulting the finalists themselves was an important part of ensuring this was the case; and another portion of the “Worldcon folks” believed strongly that the prestige of the Hugos was diminished by honoring too many people, and was unwilling to even take into account the preferences of any group which felt differently; and the second group both had the institutional power to override the first group and decided this was a hill they were willing to die on.
@Andrew (not Werdna): you earwormed me. Curse you.
The wonderful thing about Worldcons
Is Worldcons are wonderful things!
They’ve panels on rockets and filking
And quests for invisible rings!
They’re random fandom, can’t withstand ’em,
Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!
But the most wonderful thing about Worldcon’s
Each year there’s another one!
Worldcons are parties and cosplay
Worldcons are quiet long chats
Friendly and gossipy (possibly
Ending in quarrels and spats!)
The wonderful thing about Worldcons
Is Worldcons are varied and weird!
Like boxes of candies and bonbons
We sample together each year.
They’re Hugo’d, you know, why don’t you go
To one, one, one, one, one!
‘Cause the most wonderful thing about Worldcons
Is Worldcons are wonderful fun.
@Steven:
I agree with the first half of your thesis:
But I’m not sure you’ve got the other half right. It seems to me that there’s also a fear that the ceremony might end up in an epic fustercluck like last year, and a feeling that the problem then was a lack of control over things. So there’s a desire to keep everything small, controlled, corralled, safe.
Which is totally understandable. People got hurt last year, and people do fear that we only get so many fusterclucks before the whole thing is just…broken. (I think the Hugos have more momentum than that, but I get the anxiety.)
Also, don’t forget that the pandemic is eating everyone’s brains to one extent or another.
@evilrooster:
That is entirely possible, and a more generous reading of the situation than mine. I reasoned that if the concern was over practical issues, then there would be more room for compromise and they would not have adopted such a rigid, alienating approach; but an obsession with control could also explain their inflexibility.
@evilrooster
less seriously – there is a Mr. C. Robin holding for you on line one. says his friend with the rubber top and springy bottom would like a few words with you.
more seriously – that was very nice
Regards,
Dann
Reality simply consists of different points of view. – Margaret Atwood
@JeffReynolds said
I assume you mean WSFS, not WSFC. And there is no such thing as WSFS separate from the individual conventions that run Worldcon. WSFS is Worldcon. Worldcon is WSFS. Worldcon is a series of conventions run by different groups in different parts of the world every year. There is no mechanism to do what you ask.
For pity’s sake. There’s a difference between moving actors around and moving people who’s only reason for being on the stage is receiving an award.
@EdM has the heart of the matter. After the pre-nominations uproar, they said that they would consult with finalists. Then they made another set of top-down, non-consultative announcements. I think that’s what people are primarily mad about. The finalists want to be enlisted in the problem solving instead of just having decisions made.
Now, there’s no reason that Worldcons shouldn’t be allowed to make top-down decisions. They may decide not to do so because they don’t want to deal with the fallout, or because they want to create a more collaborative convention. But in this case DC said they were going to do one thing, then did the exact opposite. The biggest errors in this instance are in communication and the lack thereof.
@evilrooster: Thank you for completing the song. I hope they sing it at Discon.
@Andrew: That would be disconcerting.
@evilrooster
Love the song!
@Ed M @Tammy Coxen
Yes, that’s the conclusion I’m coming to as well. They said that they learned that they screwed up in not getting more feedback back in January. They said they wouldn’t do that when it came to this. Then they did.
@evilrooster: That’s a brilliant pun. Thank you.
Lat I heard, most of the feedback should be “yes we’ll be coming” or “no, we won’t be there, but here’s who we’d like to accept for us”. If the nominees want a say in how the ceremony is arranged, they can join the committee and help.
(No, I’m not feeling very sympathetic. The Hugos aren’t like the costume contest, where arrangements are necessary; they’re more like the Oscars.)
P J Evans,
But they apparently didn’t even ask for that before saying this is how it will be. And they said they would. At least that’s my impression.
I find it interesting – but not surprising – that people who don’t care about the Hugos “know” that the vast majority of Worldcon members don’t care about the Hugos while the members who do care are equally certain that the greater number of members do find them important.
My first worldcon was DisCon 1, in 1963. I just made my hotel reservation, and bought a ticket on Amtrak to go to DC. I’m going to see friends, hang out in the dealers room, see the art show, and have dinner with my friends.
But I will not be at the Hugo Awards. I haven’t attended the last couple of Worldcons I’ve been to. The Hugos no longer represent the kind of SF, or fandom, that I have any interest in. And I say that as a 25-time Hugo nominee and a 3-time Hugo winner.
EvilRooster, I love your filk, and I’m sure someone can arrange for a disconcertina.
On several occasions, I have been the person responsible for getting people on and off the stage at Hugo Ceremonies. The only people I was ever unhappy with were the persons who did not attend the rehearsal and the people who did not follow instructions. In those days, the only tricky situations I had to deal with were nominees or presenters who were older and physically infirm, or those persons who had the possibility of needing to be on the stage two or more times for consecutive or nearly-consecutive awards. Over the years, I found ways to deal with those issues.
I never had to face the possibility at 87 people all wanting to get on stage at once. I think I would have drawn a hard line at a much smaller number (probably 4). Fire and safety regulations would have a number for the total people on stage at any given time and I would have shared this with the participants. All of this would have been discussed in e-mails prior to the ceremony and confirmed at the rehearsal.
The real issues that we have been facing in this and several other controversies in recent years has been the changing expectations of the persons involved as Hugo Nominees and/or Program Participants. Every worldcon committee needs to do a better job of managing these expectations. This is complicated by the fact that the expectations themselves are a moving target. Alas, I have no great wisdom about how to predict how people are going to react to committee decisions ahead of time.
We do that, too. The two general models are:
A: On, brief speech whose MC-enforced time limit has been made clear beforehand, off.
The extreme model doesn’t allow the recipient to talk at all: up, take their award, head back to their seat.
B: On, another interminable rambling speech that only ensures things will drag on longer, sounds of despair from the audience [1], James gets overtime for which the client ultimately pays.
While I make a lot more money with the second [2], the first is more enjoyable all round, if only because if the show runs past 12:30 AM, all public transit shuts down.
1: The most memorable being the time when, having handed out all the visible trophies over several long hours, the MC whipped the tablecloth off the award table to reveal a larger number of trophies previously hidden from view.
2: Although the most money I ever made was a single eight hour shift on Labour Day, for which they offered me a mind numbing amount to come in and staff a box office that didn’t see much business that day.
There was also a rather sad dance showcase where parents just got up and walked out as soon as their kids were off stage, to the audible distress of the organizer.