Dave McCarty’s Facebook page is where some are trying – without success – to get full explanations for the ineligibility rulings in the 2023 Hugo Nomination Report released on January 20.
McCarty, a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division, previously gave File 770 this reason for ruling R. F. Kuang’s Babel, fan writer Paul Weimer, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman tv series, and second-year Astounding Award nominee Xiran Jay Zhao as “not eligible”:
After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.
People have been trying to pry more information out of McCarty in a prodigious exchange on his Facebook page. Initially he referred them to the original reply above. And slapped back at one fellow who persisted in questioning with “Asked and answered.” Then, when that didn’t silence the questioner:
And
Clearly, Joseph Finn isn’t Tom Cruise, and Dave McCarty isn’t Jack Nicholson.
Yet it’s an innate part of human psychology to want to be understood and accepted by other people. The need is so strong that even the formidable McCarty had to make some effort to answer this question.
Neil Gaiman has been quite upset about what is essentially a Catch-22 explanation – the Sandman series was a Rule 3.8.3 casualty, but the individual episode that triggered the rule was also tossed as “not eligible”. Earlier today he had this exchange:
Silvia Moreno-Garcia replied:
When Jon Nepsha tried to lay some guilt on McCarty his friend Tammy Coxen stepped in with a heavy hint that there’s a more noble explanation, it’s just not being said out loud.
But McCarty himself has taken the opposite tack by defending the adequacy of the report.
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@Laura: A Worldcon could be bought with the involvement of real people casting real votes. Suppose that Corporation A in City B, Country C decides to spend $100,000 on bringing the Worldcon to City B.
The corporation puts out the announcement to their employees: “Help bring a major international event to City B, Country C!” Employees are asked to come in and pay for membership in the current year’s Worldcon ($50) and the site selection fee with their own money ($50), and once they show that they have cast their site selection ballot in favor of City B, Corporation A immediately reimburses them for the $100 they have paid.
So Corporation A could generate a thousand votes for City B for $100,000, all real people with real addresses, which usually would be enough on its own to win the Worldcon for City B.
I’m not even talking about Corporation A threatening anyone’s job to participate. In many places, not limited to China, employees might be willing to sign on to something that costs them only a few minutes of time, to help their city out of civic pride and prestige.
@Joshua K — to my surprise there has been resistance to a simple rule that would have mitigated both the Chengdu bid and the puppies. Supporting memberships should be available only to those who have attended a physical WSFS convention. Supporting memberships are for people who are in our community but can’t make it this year, not a means to enter the community virtually. Virtual attendance allowed during global pandemic. Why should people who have never gone to a worldcon pick where it will be, or what works it will honour?
Or if you hate that, “No more than x% of the ballots on a Hugo or site vote may come from supporting members” where the percentage is some historical level plus a margin. Or per candidate?
$$$$$$$$$
Yes, let’s keep a master list of everyone who has ever attended a worldcon, pass that on around the world, trust it to pass through other countries, Make sure no names are misspelled, no one changed their name at any point–and if they did make sure it’s in a nice database.
Plus the elitism and gatekeeping aspects.
@Andre Lieven
I saw nominating ballots come in with 8 people at one address. Not in China, but in the US. We tried to verify them, but got an angry letter from another person, not any of those we were trying to verify. So…plots can exist, without government (or lots of money) being involved.
Your concern has been noted.
By the way – that was more than 30 years ago.
You are suggesting that not only are Hugos and site selection for sale, but that it is an important source of revenue which can’t be given up? I have to admit, I’ve never been motivated to buy a supporting membership just so I can vote, so maybe I am unusual. I have bought pre-supporting memberships because I wanted to help people, that’s about it. Those who vote in site selection do get a supporting membership, I guess they could be excluded from a cap if that’s important as a revenue source for site voting fees.
Sigh, I guess (since I have seen this objection before) I should have pre-answered it. You can have as little or as much security on this rule as you wish. You could simply print a rule on the form to buy a supporting membership and have them fiill a box saying “I attended the Worldcon in ” You only check it if there’s a reason to check it. Now almost all worldcons have published their membership lists (and they all provide them to the next worldcon for hugo nomination verification.)
The reality is, almost nobody is going to lie, and it really only matters if a very large group of people lie, and if you suspect that, it’s worth some extra effort. The simple presence of a box to fill in does 99% of what is needed. I doubt it would ever need to happen, but you could check, or even send a note (this is 2024, we all have email) for clarification or (if you really want it) extra evidence.
You could go the other way, and each convention going forward could email each person who picks up a badge a token to use in the extremely unlikely event their claim needs checking. But I don’t see this happening. The core is simply to make the rule, so nobody says, “Hey, let’s buy 2,000 memberships to win site selection” or “Let’s buy 200 memberships to win a Hugo category.” They no longer do it simply because it could be a waste of time if somebody gets suspicious. You stop it before it happens.
The real question was what I asked, not can this be done but it is what we want? Is it important that people who have never attended be able to buy supporting memberships? Fandom does want to welcome all to participate in worldcons, but does it need to welcome that? When we discussed the ethics of the Chinese supporting member vote, some pointed out it was common practice for all bids to try to rally up local fans who had never been to worldcons to buy supporting memberships and vote, and so it was OK for China to do that. But those local cons never rallied more than a few people do do this, and China at best “rallied” a few thousand, and some allege they may even have been fake. Is this need to rally the local fans essential to our process?
@ Mike Dunford:
This seems to be a very common feeling. It’s also one that makes it much harder for someone to become a fan of Worldcon.
I do not see how you reach this conclusion. I’ve never been on a major concom position with a Worldcon, nor have I ever been part of a group trying to use sneaky means to get one to be held where I live.
Of the 32 I have attended, I feel fortunate that three were held in my country. And, the first one of those took place 15 years after my first attended Worldcon. Heck, for my first one, it wasn’t even on the continent where I live.
Those issues of location in no way made it hard for me to be a fan of Worldcon.
And given this 2023 mess, it seems fair to say that Worldcons should only take place where local laws and practices do not result in such outrages.
For the bid committees? Yup. People will buy pre-supporting memberships and the bid committee uses that money for their bid.
After the bid wins, pre-supporting members can upgrade, and that money the Convention needs also.
It should be pointed out that had the Discon actually followed the rules, all those votes with no address would have been discounted, and we most likely would not have this problem.
But I digress.
@ P J Evans:
I saw nominating ballots come in with 8 people at one address. Not in China, but in the US. We tried to verify them, but got an angry letter from another person, not any of those we were trying to verify. So…plots can exist, without government (or lots of money) being involved.
Your concern has been noted.
It’s one thing when it involves 8 people, and quite another when it involves 2,000 ‘people’ used to grab a site selection win.
I would rather think that that difference in the current circumstances, is obvious.
And the jiggery pokery around the 2023 Hugos further speaks to the major difference in the present issues relative to your past small tale.
Brad Templeton said
That sound you hear is puppies laughing.
Everyone who voted in site selection for Chengdu received an attending suppliment (membership in the old parlance)… good luck figuring out whether they were really there or not.
Given the precedent of Chengdu, I am more confident in a Worldcon committee passing along their member list to a permanent Hugo Awards Committee than I am a Worldcon deciding eligibility of nominees and winners.
If a Worldcon committee attempted to corrupt the Hugos at the stage where a member list is needed to accept nominations, that is at least early in the process where it might be detected in time to make a difference.
@Joshua K
No argument here. That’s why I think the proposal which will require full postal addresses for site selection ballots to count is somewhat pointless.
To answer the Hugo half of that question, because we like to support Worldcon by participating in the Hugo Awards, even if our personal or economic situation has given us few opportunities to attend.
@rcade
“I am more confident in a Worldcon committee . . .”
Recall that it was a Worldcon committee that hosed up the Hugos.
Certainly, puppy-types might lie. (Though to be begrudgingly fair to them, the puppies did not lie, they stuck to the letter of the rules, violating their spirit for a cause they believed in.) But what I was saying that nobody is going to lie because it’s not a productive lie. If you suddenly get 2,000 supporting memberships that’s a bit of a hint that you might want to check those. Or even randomly check a sample of them. The point of the declaration is to make it not worth wasting your money on the memberships because it’s too easy to fail. It’s a deterrent.
Now the reality is that I am guessing the majority of fans are trivial to check. A large fraction of the population purchasing supporting memberships are well known fans, their names were on the rolls of the previous worldcon. We already use this to validate Hugo nominating ballots today. Of the remaining group whose names are not on the rolls of any recent worldcon you have handy, I would bet the majority could offer evidence of past attendance with a simple email. If asked, I could provide a photograph of myself at many cons, and so could 90% of others, I would guess. Or a progress report. Or a saved badge or convention souvenir. Wait, what if I’m one of those who can’t do that? No problem, you let me buy the membership anyway as long as there aren’t hundreds in that condition, which there aren’t. In fact, you’re never getting this far.
Now, for anal retentive fans, you could set up a mechanism where fans get a token showing they picked up their badge, so they can rest easy that they could never be denied their precious supporting memberships. I will admit I think the existence of supporting memberships is a nice-to-have which end up causing more problems than they are worth, so you may differ with me on the importance of being meticulous on preserving vigourously the right to buy supportings. Frankly, I don’t know many other communities which sell something like supporting memberships, it always seemed kinda strange to me. But tolerable until it started getting abused And it’s getting badly abused.
So one option, which I don’t think would cause great harm, would be to just stop supporting memberships. But since some would protest that, having you sign a declaration that you previously attended seems a simple step.
Obviously not all agree. Many felt that it is so important to sell supportings that they did not approve of questioning the lack of address on 2,000 last minute membership forms. I understood that concern, as it had a bit of rule-of-menness about it, but my main reaction was, “Why do we allow people who have never been members of our community to vote in our elections at all?”
@Andre Lieven
Thanks for your condescension. You are not a typical attendee, I suspect.
I’ve been buying, reading, and watching SF/F for over 50 years. I happened to attend one Worldcon that was local to me, and I didn’t like it because of the size and the crowds. However, since then I have bought supporting memberships because I care about SF/F and the Hugos. I like nominating for them, and voting for them. It’s my way–in addition to buying books (and doing virtual fan stuff)–to be part of the genre. For me, Worldcon is the vehicle whereby I can nominate and vote for Hugos. No one who cares enough to participate in the Hugo awards should have to get on a plane and fly to a specific place to participate. Absent nefarious slates, we show our commitment to the value of the Hugos by paying for a supporting membership, nominating, and voting. Not by traveling to do so.
No probably not this problem. We might still be speculating about the demise of Worldcon/Hugos for some other reason if it had been in Winnipeg.
And to simplify more, I am much less interested in the details of how to implement it and whatever skepticism you may have over whether it can be done easily than discussion of the general principle. Is it consistent with the ethos of WSFS to say that supporting memberships are open only to those who have previously attended? Forget for a moment on how that’s verified (if it is verified at all, rather than just attested to) and talk about if that violates some principle. Because little point in discussing how to do it if people think it would be a bad, rather than good thing. It would have averted this most recent crisis (though with the big step of delaying a Chinese worldcon until such time as those who attend worldcons, including Chinese fans who travel, wished to vote for one) and probably would have deterred the puppies, though I can’t be sure they didn’t have enough attending members in their movement.
There are other votes that let anybody vote, or any subscriber. I ran some online votes on the early internet for SF awards. There are a lot of ways to do it. The Hugos are the award from the WSFS community, and the question is, do we need those who have never come to a convention to be able to buy participation?
@Brad Templeton
“ Fandom does want to welcome all to participate in worldcons, but does it need to welcome that? ”
Yes. Yes it does. Otherwise membership dwindles year by year until there is nothing left. Meet your friends in a city of your choice for drinks every year if you have to, but don’t foster the insular, exclusionary bs that suggests Worldcon is for you and you alone.
Elsewhere in this thread I complained about how the system in place acts as a deterrent for the average fan to feel their input has any value.
This whole mess started because, allegedly, people were denied the ability to be active recipients of the Hugo award, due to some level of censorship.
And part of the solution is to add another level of gatekeeping and force someone to provide credentials that prove they are fannish enough to join?
Let’s say we implemented this. What’s to stop a Con Chair coughDisconcough from waving through 2k people because the Chair found a loophole in the rules? It seems members of the Executive Committee of Conventions don’t always follow their rules. What do we then? Fire the chair?
Where will the staff come to vet these people (granted we are unlikely to see that many folks just walk up (unless * coughChinarunsagaincough*)? But it will add to the burden because we run these thing on volunteers? Is there a magical pool of volunteers out there?
You want to be the person whose name is on the form letter saying they don’t meet the criteria to join.
On a personal level, demanding someone to have proof of their fannish background runs counter to the very concept that fandom is for everyone.
Laura said
Perhaps you are right, but I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with more than one apocalypse at a time.
Good thing Chengdu gave all the folks who voted in DisCon site selection attending memberships. 🙂
@Brad Templeton:
Worldcon membership has been open to almost everyone. The exceptions I’m aware of aren’t categories of people, but specific people known to the community. The rules for Hugo voting are a little narrower, because they specify “natural persons”–NESFA can buy a membership, and if someone wants to buy a membership for her stuffed toy she can, but the club as a group can’t vote, and buying a membership for your stuffed animal doesn’t get you a second vote.
So, advocate for a significant change if you want to, but you’re phrasing this as though it’s just a not a change, that letting everyone vote is something that “other votes” do.
I am curious why you think fandom would shrink if never-attended people could not purchase supporting memberships. My estimation is that the number of people who have never attended a worldcon who purchase supporting members is, outside of puppies and Chengdu, vanishingly small, though I would be interested if anybody has a way to estimate it.
As I said, I prefer not to talk about implementation so presume there is no level of gatekeeping, no credentials by default. Zero. Zip. Nada. None. Presume that all you have to do is certify a box on your membership saying “I attended the Worldcon in ” and that nobody checks these claims. Or nobody checks them unless there is a serious problem. Or any other system you would like.
It just seems to me that WFSFs has taken a lot of grief from the fact you can just mail in money and buy a supporting membership. Most of our grief (though we are good at making other types when we don’t like the GoHs or sponsors of other people’s cons.)
So as the cause of so much of our grief, what’s the good it’s bringing? How many fans who have never been to a worldcon are buying supporting memberships because they really just want to spend some cash to vote on the Hugos and site selection? Anybody here like that? Anybody here who did it for other than self-interested reasons, like voting for your buddy for a Hugo, or voting for your home city to host the con? Bueller? (To be fair, since such people have never attended a Worldcon, it might not be too surprising I’ve never met you, but we’re online, not at a con.)
@ P J Evans
Thank you for showing that you have no actual argument against anything that I wrote.
I dare say that I am far more a ‘typical’ Worldcon fan than 2,000 very likely not real site selection ‘voters’ of the 2023 bid. Heck, I can even offer a verifiable address.
I’d also note yet another way in which Chengdu failed in it’s responsibilities.
As voters in 2021 Site Selection, both I and my wife were at least entitled to supporting memberships in the winning bid. Normally that comes with at least the option of receiving PRs and Souvenir books and the like in physical form, or at least some variation of PDFs, et al.
Of course we both got nothing at all. No other bidcom/seated Worldcon has ever done that in my experience.
If Discon had followed the rules would Winnipeg have been on the ballot? I vaguely recall some questions about that from 2021.
@Andre Lieven; @Brad Templeton
The idea that “Worldcons are, well, for fans of Worldcon” or that any participation should be for those who have participated before boggles my mind. That’s not a science-fiction fandom; it’s just a self-licking ice cream cone.
@ Mike Dunford:
‘The idea that “Worldcons are, well, for fans of Worldcon” or that any participation should be for those who have participated before boggles my mind. That’s not a science-fiction fandom; it’s just a self-licking ice cream cone.’
I have not stated a position that only prior attending members should get site selection voting rights, though I am willing to consider the question and arguments both for and against.
Rather, my concern stems from attempts to game voting rules when it comes to both the Hugos (The 1987 Scientology affair, the Puppies, and now how Chengdu ‘won’ their selection) and to site selection.
I do not have a ‘perfect’ solution to this issue, but I do view all the ways that Chengdu went off the rails to be a strong case that something effective should be done, and sooner rather than later.
It’s not a big deal, to use an earlier example, that eight people all shared one address when it came to Hugo voting. But, 2,000 unverifiable votes for site selection, where almost all of them were from ‘people’ we had no prior relations with, says that this is an issue now.
And, I quite agree that had the rules been followed in 2021 at DisCon, much of this would not be an issue now.
Mike Dunford
What is under discussion is not normal participation. Of course anybody could attend a worldcon who has never attended one before. Would be silly to want to interfere with that. At question are the people who wish to legitimately vote for awards and site selection who have never attended before I believe this is a very small group of people, and that indeed that most of this small group (very large at DisCon) were people simply attempting to buy influence in the community’s votes.
So of course people who actually go to conventions are a fandom. While it was not my sentence, of course worldcons are for people who like worldcons, but the question is whether voting in WSFS elections is for those who have never participated and that’s different.
That WSFS lets a random stranger send cash and vote with no other involvement is somewhat unusual. There are other organizations that do that of course, mostly those without physical presence but they also don’t have anybody with any motive to buy vote results. WSFS does, and has suffered for it, and I am sure I am not the only one who thinks it’s a bit odd that you can just vote for money with no other involvement in the community.
But if anybody has a way to estimate the size of this group of people who buy supporting memberships but never have attended just because they love voting and getting publications, I would be curious.
@Brad Templeton
For a start, there’s no such thing anymore as “Supporting Membership”.
There is “WSFS Membership”, and a “Worldcon Attendance”. This was because there’s some legal, regulatory and accounting issues with doing it the old way.
What you are suggesting would not only raise those issues again, it would introduce new ones. How do we handle the GDPR issues of keeping a record of all the people who have ever attended a Worldcon? How do we ensure people can challenge the denial of a WSFS Membership because of a database error? How do we even verify that Bob Smith of Idaho who attended Montréal 2009 is the same Bob Smith of Idaho who wants WSFS membership for Dublin 2029?
This all adds a burden onto WSFS membership that by necessity would make it harder to get, and thus shrink it far beyond just shrinking it to people who physically attend Worldcons. And natural attrition is going to continually reduce the stock if it is not replaced with fresh membership.
And since the path for many new members has been to first support a Worldcon with WSFS for voting rights and any other ‘goodies’ the Con might provide those members, and then later attend their first Worldcon in person, I suggest this would be a massive reduction in attracting new membership.
I myself and everyone I know who participates in Hugo voting does so remotely. I have no idea what the breakdown of attending/supporting is when it comes to voters. But the suggestion that we should be excluded from voting because we either don’t want or don’t have the means to attend a globe-trotting convention is asinine.
Just going to point out that I have only got more housebound and emptier-pocketed over time, so the idea that I will – desire and enthusiasm aside – magically teleport to a Worldcon in the years left to me… is sure a thing. Nice to know that disabled fen can be handily discarded by some, I suppose.
I cannot possibly express the extent to which I do not wish to see yet another rehashing of AO3’s win and the extremely mutual cultural misunderstandings that followed, not least because I still haven’t settled on a good shorthand for sf/f convention fandom that’s anywhere near as satisfying as transformative works fandom, and trying to explain to people what the problem is when they both call themselves “fandom” is a goddamn headache.
Certainly there has been zero talk of interfering with remote voting. None of any sort or form, so I am surprised you got that impression.
The question is about voting by people who have never attended a Worldcon (including the one they wish to vote during.) And yes, Jay, I know that officially there are WSFS memberships and attending supplements, but I hope that you know that these are much, much more commonly referred to as supporting memberships and attending memberships.
But once again, I hope delay the side matter of how (or if) you would enforce it. I think it would be fairly effective if entirely unenforced, with no enforcement powers. Ie. even if the committee had no power to invalidate a request or accuse somebody of lying, the simple fact that the rules stated you could not buy a “non-attending WSFS membership” if you had never attended and you just had to declare that you had, and nobody ever checked. Even if people could just lie and nobody would check. So let’s stop worrying about that.
Is there anybody here who has ever done this thing people are keen to protect? Anyone? In particular, I am looking for somebody who never attended a Worldcon but bought a supporting (non-attending) WSFS membership other than to vote for a buddy in the Hugos, or to vote for your home city in a site selection? (While both those are within the rules I don’t think they’re particularly vital activities to protect.) I’m looking for that high-minded fan who said, “You know, while I have never gone to one of these and am not going this year, I do want to put down $100 to help them make the best choice on where to go in 2 years” or the slightly more likely “I want to spend $50 to make my voice heard in the Hugos for the good of the Hugos.”
@ Kalin Stacey
In my view, there are several issues here in discussion.
One topic area is site selection, and who should be eligible to vote there, and what are the requirements for a vote to be considered legitimate, especially in the case of hundreds to thouands of such votes coming in from non attending ‘members’.
The Hugos are another topic, and it appears to me that the issue here is not tightening voting qualifications but are about what entity would administer and count the Hugo nominations and votes, and what transparency would come with that.
@Brad Templeton
Me.
I do appreciate the attempt to make my basic participation as a housebound person in fannish community sound terribly high minded and noble, I suppose.
I’ve never attended a Worldcon in person. I don’t vote in site selection. I do vote in the Hugos.
@Brad Tenpleton:
I’d have to think about the costs, but I’m sure there’s a sensible price for which I’d be willing to gather up evidence of the chronic health problems that have impaired my ability to deal with travel, crowds, and other factors since I first became disabled at 15, in 1980. I was already an sf/f/h fan then and have remained so, at various times pretty active in fandom online and occasionally apa-hacking as well. I don’t quite see how Worldcon, the WSFS, or fandom at large would benefit from excluding my participation in the Hugo’s. Maybe you can explain it.
Nor, contrary to your ignorant and offensive garbage, am I any kind of unique special case. Fandom’s been full of people subject to harsh physical constraints – health, poverty, caretaking, etc – from the outset. Fandom has long had a markedly higher proportion of such people than the general population, because we are more likely to end up needing + wanting to read (watch, listen) to more and because it’s been so open to participation from a distance.
I am genuinely disgusted and furious, and will be taking some time off to simmer down because of the harm this level of angry stress can do to me. I wish that you had not written the single most appalling suggestion and the stupidest, most ignorant defenses of it this side of McCarty.
@Bruce Baugh
/solidarity fistbump
“In my view, Worldcons are, well, for fans of Worldcon. In my case, I’ve attended 32 of them.”
An entity that exists only to serve existing fans of that entity is an entity destined to die soon.
Rcade’s proposal could be done, though it’s a significant change to the system, where conventions are run by and for fans, and fans want to conduct and give out the Hugos, and it’s part of why they work to bid and win. So it would take that away, with the result a more regular management of the awards.
Good. Because the system that exists now is inadequate and has been inadequate. McCarty, Yalow and Chengdu proved it.
If the Hugos not only want to be the premier award in SFF, but to avoid dwindling into increasing irrelevance, third party counting and tabulating of nominations and votes is necessary. It demonstrates to voters and nominators that their votes will be counted fairly and accurately. It provides confidence in the process.
Right now, that confidence is broken. And it needs to be rebuilt, for the sake of Worldcon, for the sake of the Hugo Award.
I think Glasgow and Seattle should take steps to do this on their own recognizance, and it should be in the WSFS constitution that it must be done this way. So, its my intention to bring up or support a proposal to do so at Glasgow.
“Supporting memberships should be available only to those who have attended a physical WSFS convention.”
You really are bound and determined to kill Worldcon quickly aren’t you?
At the risk of pissing off a lot of my Chinese friends, and Chinese SF in general, can I raise something that I don’t believe was ever noticed or commented on previously. (Note that I am coming from the angle of “WSFS/Worldcons should be run better”, and absolutely not “China/Chengdu cheated”.) Namely:
The Chinese translations of Mary Robinette Kowal’s (Chair of Discon III) Lady Astronaut books are edited in China by Yao Haijun, who was on the Chengdu bid team, and later the Chengdu concom itself. I feel like this is/was a potential conflict of interest when it comes to ruling on site selection in 2021.
The Chinese edition of The Calculating Stars was published in June 2021, so that professional relationship definitely existed by the time of Discon III. (NB: I was the one who added that entry to ISFDB when I realized the potential relevance/importance earlier this summer, but you can verify that info from CSFDB and Douban.)
You can confirm a relationship existed between MRK and YHJ if you look at the latter’s Hugo packet for Best Editor, Long Form; in it you will see that it includes the first half of the Chinese edition of The Fated Sky. I guess it’s possible that The Calculating Stars was handled by a different editor – I’ve not seen a copy of the Chinese edition, and I don’t know if confirmation of who the Chinese editor was is online – but it feels unlikely to me?
Maybe I’m being naive, but it feels that the decision to judge on the eligibility of the Chengdu site-selection votes should have been made by someone else? I don’t know who that might be, but that’s my point – how to handle conflicts of interest on important decisions like this should all be nailed down unambiguously, but instead it seems like people would rather engage in stuff like Roberts Rules fetishization. (Possibly that’s unfair, but that’s my perception.)
Note: my personal opinion is that the Chengdu site-selection votes should indeed have been approved (given the ambiguity over what “address” means) and that Kevin was well out-of-order. However, in the interests of transparency and everything being above board – and I think recent events show we are in desperate need of that – I think someone else should have been the one making the decision.
Let me also note: I think all this is cock-up rather than conspiracy. MRK wasn’t Discon chair until well after the Chengdu bid was in motion, so – unless you believe there was some convoluted nefarious plan to maneouvre her into that position so that she could later ensure the Chengdu bid was successful – she was unfortunately the wrong person in the wrong place for this particular decision.
Further – and this isn’t something I’ve ever discussed with my much better informed Chinese friends, so quite possibly I am talking rubbish here – the perception I have is that Yao Haijun is a victim in all the drama around the Chengdu Worldcon, not a villain. I remember noticing after Chengdu had won the bid, that he seemed to be much less present in public presentations about the con, until just a few months before the con, when he reappeared and become much more prominent. This gave me the impression that after the bid had been won, the Chengdu Business Daily people took (more) control, then later on they realized that they needed the actual SF people. (I hasten to add, this is my perception just from seeing online reports from the opposite side of the world; quite possibly within China the reality was very different.)
Apologies in advance if I’ve got any facts wrong and/or misremembered things, and above all I want to reiterate my belief that Chinese SF fans and pros are at least as much – and IMHO much more – victims in all of this mess. To directly quote from an English-language comment by a prominent figure in Chinese fandom that he made online earlier today: “My role here is more to increase the transparency between the fandoms on both sides.”
@Andre
It’s complex to be sure. The constitution says that WSFS is the body that chooses the winners of the Hugos (not the convention, other than in the sense that the convention membership and WSFS membership are the same people.) WSFS appoints an entity to run the convention, which includes the administration of the awards and thus, presumably the physical counting, and of course the ceremony, and promotion of these. WSFS used to own the marks, now they belong to a non-profit it controls, though the conventions also have some control over that non-profit in addition to the ability of their members to elect 3 board members, but in their WSFS member capacity, not their convention member capacity. We are told in this thread that no explicit licence is made for the marks. Back when WSFS owned the marks, presumably no licence was needed for WSFS (the giver of the awards) to use them. It’s not clear if you delegate to some entity to do your work for you (administering the awards) if you need to licence them for them to use them on your behalf. While the convention is not paid, it might be argued the convention is a delegated worker, not an independent entity which needs a licence. WSFS is such an unusual structure I am not sure how much precedent one might find on this. Perhaps the convention corporations take actions on their own with the marks which would require a licence.
So in the constitution, it was WSFS who officially selected the Hugos. It delegated the management of that to a convention committee who applied censorship rules to the process, such censoring actions possibly violating the constitution (though that’s not clear) and definitely against the desires of most non-Chinese members. So now perhaps WSFS will have a beef with the body it selected to delegate the task to, but it has few ways to express that beef directly. WSFS can issue resolutions at business meetings, change its constitutional rules with 2 business meetings, and elect members of its mark protection committee and temporary subcoms. It’s unclear there are things that can be done via those avenues, other than after-the-fact things, like the special award for the censored I suggested, or a motion of censure which doesn’t do anything but says something. It is unclear to me if Chengdu ever itself used the Hugo mark (rather than doing so as part of its job as delegated agent of WSFS) though that would depend on the WIP licence agreements.
ie. I am suggesting this could more like I have a mark and I hire an employee and tell them to use it. They don’t get or need a licence.
Not sure anybody can give a clear answer as there’s lots of unusual things here.
That was me for several years. I have attended one Worldcon since then but probably won’t do so again (too many people make it too stressful). I certainly wouldn’t have attended that Worldcon had I not been a Hugo voter before.
My wife and I became attending members of my first Worldcon (because Worldcon happened to be close enough to travel to that year) just before my wife became pregnant . In a very slightly alternate universe, medical difficulties could have led us to have to switch to supporting memberships and prevented any further Worldcon attending (as it is, various issues have kept me from attending more than a handful in several decades). I have voted for the Hugos and site selection virtually every year since that Worldcon, and had I been unable to attend, I would have no doubt done the same.
In answer to my previous question, Winnipeg missed the deadline for making a bid for 2023. Had the rules been followed to the letter, Chengdu would have won by default even without the questioned ballots (a disappointment to me, who voted for Winnipeg).
@Brad Templeton:
There are many things about the Worldcon structure, trademarks included, which find little precedent in the case law. Sometimes when a thing isn’t found in the case law very often, it’s a sign that there’s nothing wrong with it. But sometimes it’s an indication that someone has in fact managed to find an entirely novel way to get in trouble by doing something that the more rational would not attempt.
And, to preempt an obvious rejoinder:
“Things hadn’t gone bad before this” isn’t evidence of anything but good luck.
Thanks GiantPanda. While I didn’t think there were no such people, I wasn’t sure there would be any here. Was wrong. As such the question then becomes, is preserving that ability worth the grief we’ve had because anybody can buy a supporting membership and vote? You might feel it is.
But as long as you can buy a vote for Hugos or site selection, it does seem there will be problems that are a challenge to solve. It’s already more expensive than people thought would be enough. So how do you tell those who just want to buy into the community to control it from those who want to join the community as members and are willing to pay to be part….