201 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/6/16 A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Pixel Scroll”

1. BOOK LOVE:

   @Greg Hullender: You’ve managed to intrigue me about The Fifth Season! thanks for writing that up for @Standback.

   @Steve Wright: Thanks for the comments on “Obsidian and Blood”!

   . . . admittedly, since failure to observe all the proprieties can get people horrifically killed, in this setting, I guess I can sort of see his point, there.

   LOL! And yeah, people react to whiny, etc. protags differently, so overall this sounds very good to me. 🙂

2. Thank you for the email info, Kurt. I sent them a note but haven’t heard back, although maybe you didn’t mean THAT swiftly. Or perhaps everyone at Midamericon is busy watching football. Or my info is buried somewhere and not easy to verify and/or locate.

3. HUGO LOVE:

   @Jameson Quinn: Great to hear you got the data and what your initial findings are, thanks. But yeah, as @JJ said. I’m skeptical you were given the data for your paper only, and there, shall we say, very interested parties who would love more details. Pretty please with sugar on top.

   @ULTRAGOTHA: Yeah, I suspect we’ll get more people nominating. For one thing, a lot of people were not just blindsided by the Puppy near-sweep, but some joined to No Award them into oblivion. It doesn’t seem like @Greg Hullender is taking them into account.

   @Greg Hullender: I doubt the Sads will have zero effect, but I suspect, less of an effect (unless they just pile on with Beale, which seems possible but unlikely???). That’s my impression from their overall apathy of late – SP4 is a snoozer. Probably I’m underestimating them.

   Re. what to do – thanks for elaborating. Unsurprisingly, nothing unexpected; that’s mostly what I was thinking. I don’t know a lot of Worldcon folks, and my other half is, let’s say, not interested in the Hugos. So all I can do really is nominate and preach to the choir here. 😉

   Still, I think you’re overestimating Hugo Armageddon. Beale wants people to think like that, however; it’s one of his 500 “win” conditions, keeping you (specifically and generically) up late at night.

   @Guess: Best Editor is not a lifetime achievement award, so I hope people don’t vote for her for that reason. For work in 2015, though, cool. (I don’t read “Wheel of Time,” so I can’t nominate her based on that, and I haven’t, methinks, read any of her other 2015 books.)

   Anyway, like you, I’d like an editor list. I think you just have to look at books – the occasional ones that list the editor, and the acknowledgement pages (most authors mention their editor). ;-( It gets easier in the final vote, since most editors list what they’ve edited in the Hugo packet.

4. Kevin Standlee on February 7, 2016 at 3:00 pm said:

   Not always the case. The team behind Galaxy Quest accepted in person and were delighted to win it. There were two actors from The Lord of the Rings in San Jose to accept the award that year. And it’s wrong to say that they don’t care. Orphan Black will have their Hugo Award trophy appear in an episode next season. (They wrote to The Hugo Awards to get permission, which they didn’t need, but we were happy to tell them, “Yes, yes, and tell us which episode and when it will air and we’ll promote it.”)

   We must not forget that Babylon 5’s put their Hugo award on screen too. (On Ivanova’s desk in the series finale)

5. Whoops, I meant “there are, shall we say, very interested parties.” Someone distracted me, so I didn’t get to add the missing word.

6. I wrote to ask for my PIN, and got a reply email within about half an hour. And yes, I have tested it, with some things I’m reasonably sure I want to nominate. (We have until the deadline to add to or change our nominating ballots.) Right now, for Retro Hugo I have exactly one item, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges.

7. @Kurt and everyone:

   I JUST sent an email for my PIN and got a reply literally within a minute! They must be through with the football game there. 🙂

8. Thank you for the email info, Kurt. I sent them a note but haven’t heard back, although maybe you didn’t mean THAT swiftly. Or perhaps everyone at Midamericon is busy watching football. Or my info is buried somewhere and not easy to verify and/or locate.

   I e-mailed them shortly before 4PM Pacific Time and heard back in less than an hour. But yeah, they mighta gone home or something after that.

9. I got a reply and my PIN in two minutes.

10. 2) FROZEN IN CARBONITE
    Not feeling depressed I can’t eat dairy.

    8) RABID PUPPIES
    I believe we are going to see much higher nomination numbers than usual this year. I’m seeing many more people talking about nominating and more resources have been created this year to help find eligible works and people. I suspect many of the people who got memberships after the puppy slates were surprisingly effective last year will be nominating this year.

    9) GRRM RECOMMENDS. George R.R. Martin book editors
    Keeping a list of editors mentioned by authors last year and this thanked in books by authors means I’m feeling I can nominate this year. Not sure if I’ll have a full list of 5 but I have 4 solids at the moment

11. My Hugo PIN was in the spam folder this afternoon. Does anyone have the email address for the cabal?

12. Kurt Busiek: I e-mailed them shortly before 4PM Pacific Time and heard back in less than an hour.

    My friend e-mailed them a little bit ago and got a PIN e-mail 6 minutes later! So yay, MAC II, way to be on-the-ball!

13. I emailed them for my PIN and discovered that the PIN was inside my heart all along.

14. Well, it’s been an hour and NO PIN FOR ME. I am apparently extremely easy to overlook and too, too hard to find.

15. @Camestros: Ha.

16. Got my pin in under a minute but it doesn’t work. I think I’ll wait until later in the week to contact anyone.

    This appears to match your email to your registration email and automatically send information based on that. If you use multiple emails make sure for the hugopin email you use your Hugo registered email.

17. Back when Serenity was up for the Hugo as well as the SFWA Script award, I was in charge of the Nebulas that year. The best script had Serenity and a Battlestar Galactica script nominated. The Galactica writers were excited to be nominated and came out for the awards. We were never able to get ANY response from Joss Whedon (although Universal did send some posters and other stuff for the charity auction). I felt bad for the Galactica writers not winning. I did get a professional photo of me in my rented tux holding Joss’ Nebula award. By the time of the WorldCon, they did get through to Whedon and did send one of the actors, though.

18. David Tenant was at the Hugo Ceremony at LonCon3, but Dr Who didn’t win.

19. Tasha Turner: Got my pin in under a minute but it doesn’t work. I think I’ll wait until later in the week to contact anyone.

    Try putting an “S” or an “A” in front of your membership number, depending on whether you are Supporting or Attending. My member number/PIN combination didn’t work; then I tried that, and it did.

20. Heh. Just got another email from the MidAmericon staffer handling the PINS.

    I didn’t get to watch the Superbowl. I was too busy sending out PIN e-mails.

    😉

    Guess I know where she hangs out.

21. @JJ

    Try putting an “S” or an “A” in front of your membership number, depending on whether you are Supporting or Attending. My member number/PIN combination didn’t work; then I tried that, and it did.

    Tried that, no dice. Tried copying and pasting all info. Tried typing everything. Tried using different names since I payed under one but used a different for member name. Tried reversing first and lasts. Tried different combos of first and last. Nope. It does not like Tasha Turner Lennhoff. No it doesn’t.

    This will be the third year I’ve had Hugo login problems. First year I shrugged and they fixed it in time to vote. Last year I tried once and then didn’t do anything, no nominating, until I couldn’t vote, where we went back and forth 5+ times to settle for “guest of x”. This year I will work with them to fix it early enough to nominate but it’s not urgent.

22. Tasha Turner: Tried that, no dice.

    Well, shit. It was worth a try; I hoped it would work for you as it did for me. I guess you can always create a document and start storing your picks in it, if you haven’t already.

    I’m always surprised every year, when I go to enter my picks, at how long it takes me — even though I usually have a lot of them already decided.

23. I’ve been keeping a “memo” for 6+ months. Some categories are filled up. Others are empty. Others need narrowing down. I’ve been going back over and adding links for people/online categories as well as making sure I have spelling for titles and creators correct.

    I’m looking forward to getting info input as I still don’t know when the gallbladder surgery is going to happen. Currently we are looking at March or April but things could accelerate that to emergency condition. I’d like to know if I end up in emergency that I’ve done what I could.

24. Has anyone been able to find a comprehensive list of SF novels published in 1940? I haven’t found a list I trust. Thanks for your help !

25. @Jameson Quinn: Cool! Thanks for the update! I need to re-read that later when I can sink my teeth into it, but it sounds very encouraging.

    (As always, thanks for the disclaimer. I agree that it needs to be crystal clear that EPH makes the nomination system better, more representative of any and all clusters, rather than just some anti-Puppy mechanism to “fix” the system. That’s a lot of what I love about it.)

    @JJ: That was really a very hostile way to phrase your question. He’s writing a paper, which is pretty much the best way to present the full results in an accurate way. I understood this as being an initial summary of interesting findings; explaining all the results would take, well, a paper.

    I understand your concern, and bristling at the phrase “I don’t want to give all the results away.” It’s worth asking about. But the same concern really could have been phrased better, and particularly it could have been less accusatory.

26. 586 votes that Beale controls? Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t there at least 5,950 valid potential nominators this year? Three times as many as nominated last year? Assuming Beale hasn’t grown his minions (and really, where would he dig up that many corpses?) that just ain’t that much influence.

    [BDP is] an extremely unsatisfying category because the winners can’t be bothered to attend. They just send a thank-you letter.

    And when they do win and show up to accept, somebody cuts the video livestream in the middle of their speech.

27. @Jameson Quinn: But, you left out the most important part of this line!

    In other words: if you want things you vote for to be finalists,

    Yes? If I want that then whaaaat? 🙂

    (If I understand correctly, the statement here is: Better if everybody nominates their edge cases, which will lend support to others who have it as a more solid favorite, than if everybody nominates only the absolute top-tier Hugo-worthiest works, and leaves most of their ballot empty. And that support will kind of circle back round: If your favorite book is a bunch of people’s not-quite-favorite, your book has a much better chance of making the ballot if people nominate leniently than if they nominate Nothing But The Best.

    Which is an interesting claim. Obviously, everybody’s going to have their own cut-off point.

    …but I’ll let Jameson answer what he actually meant before I dwell on this too much :P)

28. @JJ: Thanks! That didn’t work for @Tasha Turner, but it worked for me; I couldn’t login until I put the “A” in front of my membership #. MAC II needs to actually tell people “don’t use your number by itself”; this is unintuitive.

    Anyway, again, thanks.

29. Standback: That was really a very hostile way to phrase your question. He’s writing a paper, which is pretty much the best way to present the full results in an accurate way. I understood this as being an initial summary of interesting findings; explaining all the results would take, well, a paper.

    The reason my response was, shall we say, less than friendly, is this: If he is writing an “academic paper”, that means that he is planning to submit it to an academic journal for publication. Such papers go through a vetting and peer review process which can take months or years, before the paper is finally published in the journal in question.

    If the paper is published elsewhere in the meantime, the academic journal will refuse to publish it. And the scholars who wrote it will not get “official” journal publication credit for it (if you’re not involved in academia, you might not understand that this is a huge, huge thing). Which means that Worldcon members will not have access to the results before MidAmeriCon II.

    So, the question here is, is that what he is really saying? That it’s his intent to submit his paper to a journal for publication, rather than merely that he and Bruce Schneier are writing it up nicely to present to Worldcon members in the next month or so?

    I’d like to believe that is what he is really saying, that he and Bruce are writing it up to present to the Worldcon members. But it does not sound at all as if that is the case.

30. @JJ: As I said, the question and criticism are entirely appropriate. But how you ask it is important.

    Consider:

    @Jameson:

    You say you’re working on an academic paper. That sounds like something that could potentially cause a huge delay in reporting your results to WorldCon. Vetting and review for an academic paper can take ages, and you can’t publish the paper elsewhere in the meantime. That sounds like something that could prevent you from presenting results before MidAmericaCon. Is that a concern?

    In other words, just what you wrote. Except not accusing “you’re withholding information” until after he hypothetically answers”yeah, I might wind up withholding information.” Or, he might answer something entirely different and reassuring.

    I’m sorry to be bagging on you here; I know I’m tone-policing and literally offering revisions to your idle forum posts. The reason I’m doing that is that, well, respect and appreciation are easy to miss until they’re gone. There are so many communities where volunteers putting in a ton of hard work, wind up drawing fire an ire, because there’s always something to criticize, and too often people don’t make the effort to make their criticism constructive and respectful.

    Don’t get me wrong; I am totally in favor of criticism where criticism is due! (Says Standback, while criticising JJ.) But I’m also in favor of appreciation where that’s due, and it’s unfortunately very easy to let that slide in the heat of the moment. And that can foster a sense of hostility and bitterness that just goes nowhere good.

    I hope I’ve been clear here, and not too annoying 😛

    And @Jameson Quinn, I’m sure we’d all be happy to hear whether the points JJ raises are any cause for concern 🙂

31. JJ:

    It’s fairly common for results to circulate via conference presentations, and for draft papers to be published in places like arxiv.org, before a paper enters the peer review process and long before its eventual publication.

32. Standback, my post was made when I was quite taken aback by what it appeared was being said. There are also some related factors which caused me to have extra concern about this which I have not discussed with anyone previously, and which I am not going to post publicly. Of course you are right, and it would have behooved me to take a few minutes to gather my thoughts and phrase them more articulately.

    I am not going to speculate further on this until Mr Quinn has had the opportunity to respond.

33. PIN requested about an hour ago. Nothing yet.

34. @JJ: ::appreciation::

35. JJ: I am sharing this data in this forum because I believe Worldcon members deserve to know. I believe that the process of writing it out carefully in the form of an academic paper is the appropriate way to explore it in depth, for our own understanding and that of others. The paper is not 100% finished, though it’s close to it. We will make sure that Worldcon members have access to our analysis; perhaps not in a form identical to the paper, but in something close enough.
    Basically, I want to be transparent here. I also think publishing it as a paper is good for the Hugos.
    Yes, I did say “I don’t want to give all the results away”. Some of that is “saying exactly how many puppy voters there were in which category could be seen as a violation of privacy, and could be encouraging and/or aiding future strategic voters”. Some of that is “I’m being really careful to explain my methods and conclusions in the paper, and I am simply not able to take that same care in a blog comment”. And yes, some of that is “I may not just share the full paper draft in a public forum if I want it to be publishable”, which I realize sucks, but I think there’s benefits for the Worldcon community, not just for me, in having a published paper on this.
    Basically: putting information out there is irrevocable, and I have been entrusted with private data. I think it was appropriate to try to share key conclusions, but also to err on the side of caution in the first post I made on this.

36. Thanks, Jameson, I totally understand — and agree with — not releasing any information which might violate the privacy of individuals, be they Puppy or otherwise. However, I am concerned about Worldcon members getting a thorough analysis well in advance of MidAmeriCon II so that any questions and concerns can be addressed. Which is why I am asking when you think it will be released to us.

    Jameson Quinn: And yes, some of that is “I may not just share the full paper draft in a public forum if I want it to be publishable”, which I realize sucks, but I think there’s benefits for the Worldcon community, not just for me, in having a published paper on this.

    No, that does not “suck”, that is a contravention of the reason you were given the data. You weren’t given the data so you could publish an academic paper. You were given the data so that Worldcon members could be fully informed as to how EPH would have changed the nomination results in 2015.

    I have no problem with you getting an academic paper out of it. I do, however, have a great deal of problem with you withholding pertinent information from Worldcon members because it will make your paper more academically “special”.

37. I literally have no idea what JJ’s “extra factors of additional concern” are. Of course my first thought is, “is that some kind of coded insult to me personally”, and then my second thought is “that’s just being paranoid, I have absolutely no reason to believe that”. JJ, you have my email, if it’s something you want to share with me. If you don’t, I’ll assume it’s not about me, and try to clamp down on my brain’s wild speculations.

38. Jameson, I’ve expressed my concerns above, and I’d appreciate it if you’d respond to them.

39. “We will make sure that Worldcon members have access to our analysis; perhaps not in a form identical to the paper, but in something close enough.”

    That’s why I’m here, to begin to share this analysis. The paper is not done. I posted here and shared information without having asked my co-author, because I believed I was exercising reasonable caution, and I thought that since nominations are open it’s time that some of this information was out there. But honestly right now I’m regretting I did that. I don’t want this to become a battle.

    JJ, You mentioned “extra factors” that you didn’t want to air here, and as I said above, my mind jumped to paranoia. But now I’m thinking of “extra factors” that I’m not sure I should air publicly, that should not be grounds for anybody to be paranoid. Basically, I have reason believe that, not only will the analysis Bruce Schneier and I are doing for this paper be available in some form to the Worldcon community before nominations close, there may be other relevant info coming out from other parties, and I will do what I can to encourage that to happen. And I hope I won’t regret saying that too, and the feeling of that hope makes me empathize with your reluctance to say everything you’re thinking, and so I apologize for being paranoid.

    And now, I have to go. There’s a front page post on this, which I think would be better for this discussion. I’ll check back there when I can, but perhaps not today.

40. Jameson, my one and only concern here is that Worldcon members get as much information as possible without violating anyone’s individual privacy, as early as possible, to enable a solid evaluation of EPH and any issues that may arise, well in advance of Worldcon. When I say “well in advance”, I don’t mean a few days ahead of Worldcon, I mean months ahead of Worldcon — which is why I have expressed concern about timing.

    I have no problem if you end up with an academic publishing credit out of this. Collaborating on a published paper with someone of Bruce Schneier’s accomplishments and reputation would certainly be a feather in your cap. That’s fine. But not if it comes at the expense of withholding critical information from the members of Worldcon, in order to make your paper more “publishable”.

    I don’t know how many people knew you had been given this data. Not many, I’m guessing. And I understand that there are some good reasons for that.

    But if the fact that it’s been handled in this way prevents Worldcon members from getting the information they need in the time frame they need it, then there are a great many people who will be raising holy hell, and I will be one of them.

41. I don’t know how many people knew you had been given this data. Not many, I’m guessing. And I understand that there are some good reasons for that.

    Pathetic.

42. Um. FWIW my limited experience with papers is that you can still publish even if you present a poster or a talk that includes data from the paper beforehand.

    Part of Sasquan Programming was a presentation on voting systems and how EPH would work and what the probable results would be. While EPH was hashed out publicly on Making Light threads that anyone with an internet connection could access, I think that talk still reached a lot of people who had not followed those (admittedly quite lengthy) threads.

    Presenting a similar talk at MidAmericon would be a great idea (in my opinion) and would help bring potential EPH ratifiers up to speed on the capabilities and limitations of EPH.

    And frankly, while I am anxious to know more, I think the most important group to inform as quickly as possible are the business meeting attendees, whether or not that includes me. They are the ones who need this information to make good choices about EPH and 4/6. While it would be better if they have more time to think about it, I think a pre-business meeting presentation at MidAmericon would be sufficient if that is what can be managed.

    I don’t know if a poster could be made available on the internet, without compromising Jameson and Bruce’s ability to publish, though I would be very interested in seeing such a thing if it is possible. Jameson and Bruce have put in a lot of time on this–time that they were not (as far as I know) compensated for in other ways–and (for those among this thread’s readers who are not familiar with academia, since logically there will be a few) publication is a Big Deal for academics, and especially for younger ones like Jameson. I think it is quite reasonable if they are concerned about preserving their ability to publish.

    If what is wanted is the anonymized data from Sasquan, it’s reasonable to ask Sasquan for it. If what is wanted is Jameson and Bruce’s analysis of that data, it is reasonable to wait until Jameson and Bruce finish their analysis and come up with a presentation option and time that works for them. I certainly hope this will also work for the rest of us.

43. I’d also like to add that the “previews” Jameson’s already been able to give us look extremely substantial. If that’s the kind of conclusions he can present freely, I’m not really terribly worried about critical information being missing. I don’t think he’ll be specifically hiding some huge game-changer just to surprise the academia reviewers 😛

44. If what is wanted is the anonymized data from Sasquan, it’s reasonable to ask Sasquan for it. If what is wanted is Jameson and Bruce’s analysis of that data, it is reasonable to wait until Jameson and Bruce finish their analysis and come up with a presentation option and time that works for them.

    This. I’d be extremely interested to hear how the data release has been handled (who to, under what restrictions, in what state, etc), but I’d like to hear that from the source, not one of the recipients.

45. I’d be extremely interested to hear how the data release has been handled, but I’d like to hear that from the source, not one of the recipients.

    STOLEN, IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT

    😛

46. All cat burglers are SJWs, of course.

47. Of course! After all, we have the cats, including, like mine, the cats that bark.

48. As I mention on the front page article in many places vote is used where it should be nominate. As a reminder EPH only applies to nominations which happen pre-ballot/finalist/vote.

    The more people eligible to nominate who care who do so the better. Whether there are slates in play or not. Whether it’s one thing in a single category or 5 things in all categories or something in between.

    As many of us have found out this is a bit more work than it looks like as determining if a work or person is eligible isn’t always simple. Which might explain why so many voters have relied on a small number of nominators for years. Hopefully a number of the tools/lists/websites popping up to help with eligibility questions this year will remain active or be taken on by groups over the upcoming years.

49. @RedWombat: I have now read the unicorn story twice and loved it each time. I want to get coffee and talk science with the narrator. It’s the best thing in the issue, although I am pleased to say that MZ #2 overall is even better than #1.

50. Glancing over recent comments here on yesterday’s Pixel Scroll, I quickly read the title as “A Man, A Plan, A Cabal…”. Thought that was mildly amusing and decided to share.

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