The handling of code of conduct issues at conventions produced some of the most-followed news stories of the month of June.

New information, commentary, and further apologies for Balticon’s treatment of Stephanie Burke were the theme of four of the top ten posts.  

Another widely read post concerned an assault allegation against author Faith Hunter made at JordanCon which was resolved with an apology, followed by Hunter’s decision to cancel her convention appearances for the rest of the year.

Here are the 10 most-read posts of June 2022 according to Google Analytics.

1. Balticon Chair Apologizes After Author Stephanie Burke Removed From Panels
2. Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions #66
3. Balticon Publishes Program Head’s Apology to Burke
4. Assault Allegation Leads Faith Hunter to Apologize and Pull Out of Conventions For 2022
5. Balticon 56 Chair Will Lead Investigaton of Events
6. Pixel Scroll 6/4/22 Pixel Of Illusions
7. Pixel Scroll 6/1/22 The Ones Who Scroll Away From Pixelas
8. Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal
9. Pixel Scroll 6/8/22 Goodness, Gracious, Great Scrolls Of Fur
10. Jon Del Arroz’ Twitter Account Restored

SCROLL-FREE TOP 10

1. Balticon Chair Apologizes After Author Stephanie Burke Removed From Panels
2. Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask: A Column of Unsolicited Opinions #66
3. Balticon Publishes Program Head’s Apology to Burke
4. Assault Allegation Leads Faith Hunter to Apologize and Pull Out of Conventions For 2022
5. Balticon 56 Chair Will Lead Investigaton of Events
6. Hugo Voting Threshold Reform Proposal
7. Jon Del Arroz’ Twitter Account Restored
8. 2022 Locus Awards Winners
9. Loscon 45 Incident: What Happened, and the Committee’s Update
10. CSFFA Names 2022 Hall of Fame Inductees

For years the “special characters” that are common to some European languages have been rendered as question marks by my WordPress. And many times commenters have suggested what seemed like obvious solutions. Like, enter the HTML code for the character directly in the post (which would always look perfect in draft, then upon publication would become a question mark.) Or use a plugin — written by a Filer! — to insert the special character in the post. Followed by my looking none-too-bright as I explained I hadn’t been able to get these technically reasonable ideas to work. I have routinely had to use either of my two workarounds, substituting a Latin character and apologizing in an endnote, or creating a graphic of the name or title to be wedged into place that never looked like it belonged.

Adam Szedlak, a couple of months ago, planted the idea that it was a database problem. The database is not part of the WordPress program I can see, it’s not something I have dashboard controls to modify. I would have to enlist the help of my ISP’s customer support. So I procrastinated.

Then the Ignyte Awards finalists came out last week. Camestros Felapton got the news posted on his WordPress blog ahead of me, and I noticed one of the nominated magazines had multiple special characters in its title. His WordPress rendered the name correctly, whereas in my post with the same list that title was riddled with question marks. Even though we all know Camestros is a genius, I suspected he hadn’t had to do anything extra to produce the right result, the explanation was that his WordPress was set up correctly and something was wrong with mine. I finally set aside time to work with customer support.

At first, the biggest problem was convincing them I had a problem. I use workarounds, I don’t put up posts and let the question marks fall where they may. I needed to create an example for them to diagnose, which I did.

Then, while my ISP was casting about for a solution, they twice changed something and caused most of the apostrophes, quote marks, and hyphens to appear as black diamonds with a question mark in the middle. Bruce Arthurs commented when he saw that the other night.

But as of this morning they have fixed the problem by making the right modifications to a WordPress table and charset.  

So let’s celebrate! Here are examples of names and titles that I have had to work around this year which will now display correctly. Pour yourself your favorite beverage!

2022 Ignyte Awards Shortlist | File 770

Khōréō Magazine 

Candidates for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2022 (alma.se)

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bisera Alikadić, Author
Elmira Mekić, Author
Ranko Risojević, Author

2020 – 2022 – European Science Fiction Society (esfs.info)

Marta Ignerska “Świat Lema” (The world of Lem)

Two different groups of sff writers have banded together in separate public letters to lead readers in directions they think they should go. One wants to oust China as host of the 2023 Worldcon. Another encouraged the Russian army to “denazify and demilitarize the state of Ukraine.” Posts reporting on those two letters were the two most widely-read here in the month of March. And in a disturbing coincidence, the leading signer of the anti-Ukraine letter is a Chengdu Worldcon guest of honor, Sergey Lukianenko.

File 770 also hosted a letter from an unnamed fan in Moscow, now disillusioned, who asked, “please don’t leave us on our own; fight with us for freedoms.”

And Ukranian fan Borys Sydiuk shared that SFWA rejected a call to boycott Russia. However, two weeks after the Authors Guild and Horror Writers Association had already done so, they did announce “SFWA Stands with Ukraine”.

Here are the 10 most-read posts of March 2022 according to Google Analytics.

1. SFF Authors Release Open Letter Condemning China as Host of 2023 Worldcon
2. Numerous Russian SFF Writers Support Ukraine Invasion in Open Letter
3. Pixel Scroll 3/17/22 If You Can’t Handle Me At My Pixel, You Don’t Deserve Me At My Scroll
4. Note from a Fan in Moscow
5. Pixel Scroll 3/11/22 Why Am I The Only Person Who Ever Has That Dream
6. Patreon Bans Jon Del Arroz for Hate Speech Violation
7. Pixel Scroll 3/22/22 Captain Pixel Versus The Winter Solstice
8. Pixel Scroll 3/9/22 And A Scroll Will Never Need More Than 640K Pixels
9. Sergei Lukianenko Defends Russian Policy Towards Ukraine
10. Chengdu Worldcon Posts Membership Rates

SCROLL-FREE TOP 10

1. SFF Authors Release Open Letter Condemning China as Host of 2023 Worldcon
2. Numerous Russian SFF Writers Support Ukraine Invasion in Open Letter
3. Note from a Fan in Moscow
4. Patreon Bans Jon Del Arroz for Hate Speech Violation
5. Sergei Lukianenko Defends Russian Policy Towards Ukraine
6. Chengdu Worldcon Posts Membership Rates
7. SFWA Rejects Call to Join Boycott of Russia: A Guest Post by Borys Sydiuk
8. Celebrating The Wonderful Nehemiah Persoff At 102
9. SFWA Drops “America” From Name
10. Priscilla Tolkien (1929-2022)