272 thoughts on “Hugo Rules and Other WSFS Minutiae

  1. @Cassy B:
    I don’t think one is a pup unless one publicly espouses puppy viewpoints, as tastes in literature, film, art, etc., are entirely personal and subjective.

    Question: were those your only nominations?
    Question: do you adhere to the puppy ideology?

  2. Andrew M on August 30, 2016 at 6:57 am said:

    Camestros:

    Yes, for example, if everybody nominates The Martian, then even if the rest of the nominees collectively don’t represent many people, the full set does. But in that case you have one really popular work dominating and you’ve got your likely winner right there.

    Well, being really popular at the nomination stage doesn’t guarantee a thing will win, witness Penric’s Demon. I’m worried that any ballot with Penric’s Demon on it would satisfy this criterion, unless you set X so high it could never be reached. (Slaters are less vulnerable to EPH and 3SV if they nominate popular things – which is still bad because…. see my previous comments ad nauseam – and I fear that would be true of this plan as well.)

    Doesn’t guarantee it will win but it means other nominees have to beat something that is genuinely popular with a hefty chunk of the people who nominate.

    Novella 2016 is an interesting category in this regard. You are right that it is not one that the auto+2 scheme I listed would probably impact. Penric’s Demon got nearly 40% of the vote, so even if X% was 50% then the category would only need to pick up another 10% of nominees from among the other 4.

    Notably, it is also a category in which EPH would have some impact on the order of the longlist but not on the shortlist https://midamericon2.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/EPH-2016-For-BM.pdf

    If the top 5 had somehow fallen below X% (without EPH) then the next extra nominee would have been Nick Cole’s Fear of the Unknown and Self-Loathing in Hollywood which wouldn’t have improved the field much.

  3. Steve Davidson, those weren’t my only nominations by any means; those were the nominations I made that overlapped with the Puppy ballot. Someone upthread (don’t recall who) suggested that any ballot with five or more puppy nominations should be thrown out. I dislike the Puppy manifesto, I think their expressed taste in books is, for the most part, sophomoric, I think that JCW is a risible writer (and when he had a waning moon rising in the east at sunset I nearly threw my ebook across the room), and I though that some of the puppy Best Related Work nominees were libelous.

    I also tried to read everything on the ballot (some of it I didn’t finish), and vote fairly. I recognize that there were hostages, and I cheered as loudly as anyone when The Martian won. I watched that movie three times in the theater.

  4. Camestros, I’m one of the nominators of Penric’s Demon. I ended up voting it second place behind Binti, which I hadn’t read until it came in the packet.

  5. @Cassy B

    Yes, I agree that keeping a strict numeric definition of Puppy supporter is a bad idea. Just having poor taste, or a work being poorly written, shouldn’t be grounds for judging it so.

    Focusing on the Best Related Work where some pieces were pure hatchet jobs aimed at smearing or harassing fandom and huge parts of the fannish communities would be the only workable path. (If I had been the administrator, I’d have been seriously considering asking myself if Hugo works that clearly were in breech of the con’s CoC could be allowed on the final ballot.)

  6. Cassy B on August 30, 2016 at 12:37 pm said:

    Camestros, I’m one of the nominators of Penric’s Demon. I ended up voting it second place behind Binti, which I hadn’t read until it came in the packet.

    Noted – but that implies that you had a choice of at least two nominees in the set of finalists that you felt where Hugo worthy, right?

  7. Camestros, very true, and for that I’m grateful. (Honestly, the only short story in the bunch I thought was Hugo worthy was “Cat Pictures, Please.”)

  8. (If I had been the administrator, I’d have been seriously considering asking myself if Hugo works that clearly were in breech of the con’s CoC could be allowed on the final ballot.)

    An interesting idea, but I’m dubious. I suspect that, among other things, Rachel Bloom’s notorious (and amusing) music video, which was shortlisted for DP:SF in 2011 (well before the slating nonsense started) would have a hard time passing such a rule. Especially a convention where Ray Bradbury was a member. (Which, I admit, isn’t likely to happen these days, but was still possible in 2011.)

    Now some people might think this is a good thing, and that FMRB shouldn’t have been on the ballot. I respectfully disagree.

  9. It’s hard to see how Midamericon’s CoC, written to apply to members of a 2016 convention, can be read to apply to works written in 2015.

  10. Camestros: My thought is this. Suppose they nominate Penric’s Demon, and four works by Wright, Torgersen, and the like. And suppose there is nothing with the impact of Binti, so that’s what gets on the shortlist. Having Penric’s Demon on the list ensures that, with any likely value of X, they don’t trigger the additional finalists rule. And though there’s something deserving on the ballot, which will win, lots of other deserving works, which might have won, have been squeezed out.

  11. I hope it doesn’t come to needing rules to exclude people, but if it does, we should first try banning publishers (e.g. Castalia) and authors (e.g. Vox Day) before we resort to banning fans (e.g. anyone who voted to nominate “Rape Room.”)

    But I’m still optimistic that the combination of EPH, 5/6, and a decline in slate voting will make the 2017 awards a lot better. At a minimum, they probably won’t repeat the “hostage” strategy, since under EPH the hostages will cause their real nominations to kill each other, and the fans have proven they can disregard slating of legitimate works.

    The question isn’t whether they can come up with a strategy that would still be painful–clearly they can–but it’s whether they can muster enough enthusiasm among their troops for such a thing. If the strategy amounts to nothing more than promoting Castalia House, one wonders if more than 165 people will pay to do that for him.

  12. Karl-Johan Norén on August 30, 2016 at 2:10 pm said:

    Focusing on the Best Related Work where some pieces were pure hatchet jobs aimed at smearing or harassing fandom and huge parts of the fannish communities would be the only workable path. (If I had been the administrator, I’d have been seriously considering asking myself if Hugo works that clearly were in breech of the con’s CoC could be allowed on the final ballot.)

    You aren’t the only person who has suggested this. It’s a bad idea on multiple grounds.

    1. A given Worldcon’s Code of Conduct does not trump the WSFS Constitution. Worldcon Committees do not have the right to disqualify Hugo Award finalists for anything other than technical reasons (length, publication date, etc.)

    2. Worldcons have no precedent for “policing” finalists. There have been past finalists that may or may not have been violating the copyrights/trademarks of other creators. When those shortlists were announced, there were people saying that the Committee should not allow them on the ballot. The response (rightly IMO): “Such matters are between the rights holders and the creators of the work, and have nothing to do with the Worldcon Committee.”

    I repeat what I’ve said in multiple ways already: Letting Worldcon Committees make subjective judgements about whether a work is “worthy” of being a Hugo Award finalist is a seriously slippery slope. And the members of the body that makes the Hugo Award rules must have agreed to this, because they kill-filed with only limited debate a proposal that would have given Worldcon Committees a tiny bit of room to make such subjective judgements. Not even to disqualify works, but to add up to two more if they felt some sort of injustice had been done. And not even just “any work that caught their fancy,” but from a selection of the top fifteen works the nominators had selected. Even that was too much for WSFS.

    In my opinion, the clear voice of the people who make the rules in WSFS is, “Worldcon Committees should not exercise subjective judgement about finalists. Their job is solely to count ballots and make technical decisions.”

    As it stands now, the only group that can make decisions about whether a work deserves to be on the ballot are the members of WSFS acting collectively. That’s why I backed 3SV. I want the members of the current Worldcon (the people who will be voting on the final ballot) to be able to have a say in whether they think works belong on the final ballot without having to deploy the Hammer of No Award every single year.

    steve davidson on August 30, 2016 at 5:07 am said:

    If it wasn’t clear before, it ought to be now: SP & RP actions have little to nothing to do with eliciting culture change at Worldcon, improving the quality of the awards or “saving” science fiction.

    They have everything to do with creating a false controversy, setting themselves up as the heroes and reaping the sales benefits thereof.

    How long is Worldcon going to continue to allow itself to be the unofficial whipping boy and promotional tool for a bunch of hacks?

    Solution? Vote to bar certain individuals and/or companies from participation.

    It’s not impossible from a technical point of view. I wouldn’t write the individually banned persons/entities into the Constitution, though. I’d first propose enabling legislation that authorizes the Business Meeting to manage such a Banned List, and then assign the management of the list to the WSFS Mark Protection Committee (that’s the only permanent body of WSFS, and maintains the WSFS/Worldcon/NASFiC/Hugo Award web sites). A lot depends on the specific mechanism for getting individuals or publishers on or off the Banned List.

    Not that I’m advocating this, of course; I’m just explaining the most efficient way to do so technically. As usual, if anyone really wants to propose this seriously, contact me to work out the technical wording for submission to next year’s Business Meeting.

  13. If I had been the administrator, I’d have been seriously considering asking myself if Hugo works that clearly were in breech of the con’s CoC could be allowed on the final ballot.

    There’s nothing to stop Beale from putting something in Best Related Work that is extremely libelous or obscene. He could push a work that doxxes people.

    This is a terrible position to be in, and we’re there because we would rather take the long path of achieving a solution instead of letting a Hugo administrator use discretion to throw out bloc votes (with a suitable definition of what constitutes such a vote).

    I hope that 3SV passes and stops the problem in 2018. But I hate to sacrifice two more years of the Hugos to arson.

  14. Vote to bar certain individuals and/or companies from participation.

    Banning a company or individual from being nominated is achievable.

    If you’re going further and talking about bans on voting, how would that be possible when we don’t know how people voted?

  15. rcade on August 31, 2016 at 11:06 am said:
    … I hope that 3SV passes and stops the problem in 2018. But I hate to sacrifice two more years of the Hugos to arson.

    But we’re talking about only one more year, next year, not two.
    And next year in 2017 EPH and 5/6 should between them manage to provide at least one votable choice in even the most badly impacted categories.
    — And I’m not even sure how many puppies will turn up for duty next year at that.
    It may well be that this year’s voting numbers are more relevant than this year’s nominations.
    After that, assuming Helsinki ratifies 3SV, the 2018 ballot should not have obvious griefers.

  16. But we’re talking about only one more year, next year, not two.

    Correct. Sorry for the error.

    And next year in 2017 EPH and 5/6 should between them manage to provide at least one votable choice in even the most badly impacted categories.

    Having one is better than none, but it still means we’re not making a genuine choice between a selection of worthy nominees. It looks to me like EPH and 5 of 6 still leave us with a problem unless the arsonists get bored and go away.

  17. rcade on August 31, 2016 at 11:06 am said:

    This is a terrible position to be in, and we’re there because we would rather take the long path of achieving a solution instead of letting a Hugo administrator use discretion to throw out bloc votes (with a suitable definition of what constitutes such a vote).

    I suggest that anyone bidding to hold a Worldcon who announces, “If elected, our committee will ignore nominations for anything we consider a ‘slate’ or otherwise think should not be on the ballot,” would have difficulty getting enough voter support to actually win their bid. But you might want to ask groups bidding for Worldcon if they will appoint Strong Administrators who will throw out finalists that you personally think shouldn’t be on the ballot for whatever reasons you think. (Believe it or not, I’m not being sarcastic. The rules are run by people. Those people are appointed by the committees that we the members elect to run conventions. Those committees are subject to political pressure.)

    While you are not the only person who wants Strong Man To Hit Bad Man With Stick, I think most of the people who actually make the decisions in WSFS (the site selection voters and the business meeting attendees) think that your cure is worse than the disease. Burning down the village in order to save it comes to mind.

    Besides, the very fact that such obvious Puppy Chow has been getting onto the ballot is evidence that the massive fraud the Puppy leaders initially asserted isn’t happening and never was. They’ve had to resort to calling members who voted No Award being a case “bloc voting,” which means they either don’t really know what such voting means or else they know but don’t care about lying because They Are Always Right, or otherwise claiming other fraud. You know, sometimes in a democracy, you lose. That doesn’t mean the system is fraudulent; it means you lost.

  18. @Kevin Standlee:

    Yes, I very much agree that banning works from being nominated, or the people who nominated them, is a poor solution, and would be very hard to do given the principles that WSFS runs on.

    The thing I’m concerned about here isn’t nominees that can be considered unworthy by some. We have always had them, and they only become a problem if they dominate the ballot. EPH+ should be good enough to deal with that.

    The issue I have is nominees that are actively damaging to Worldcon or sf fandom simply by existing. “Safe Space as Rape Room” is a direct smear job against several valuable members of the sf community. “SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police” appears to be a handbook in silencing and disenfranchising others.

    3SV is one solution to this, but simply appearing on a preliminary longlist is enough to spread the damage the works do.

  19. I expect 3SV to become the preemptive No Award, but I also think, in future, Worldcon may want to have a mechanism in place that allows companies and or individuals who have clearly identified themselves as antithetical to the awards, Worldcon, etc.; to – not be banned, but automatically removed from consideration.

    SFWA has a list of “approved” markets – ones that meet minimal rate requirements and behave in a responsible manner when it comes to contracts, resolving disputes & etc.
    SFWA also has Writer Beware, to warn of “publishers” and others who engage in scams that seek to take advantage of authors.
    I’d expect something to be put on such a list to be the result of works published and public statements made, not just the complaints of a few individuals.
    Two years to be removed, just like two years to be approved for an amendment.
    If anyone else is interested in pursuing such a thing, please get in touch with me offline.

  20. ” to – not be banned, but automatically removed from consideration.”

    There is a difference?

  21. SFWA has a list of “approved” markets

    SFWA doesn’t have anything to do with the Hugos, and they set their rules the way they want them.

    WSFS could have allowed banning years ago, and hasn’t yet. I’d say there’s no real interest in banning people and businesses who haven’t actually broken laws (and which jurisdiction would the lawbreaking have to be in, or would WSFS need a lawyer in every country).

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