474 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/28/16 All My Hugos”

1. Putting Kukuruyo on his slate kind of puts the lie to the “no, the Pups aren’t connected to GamerGate” claims, doesn’t it?

   The Puppy/Gamergate connection has been a movable feast from the start, a stagey contrived set of overdramatised pronouncements and reactions.

   Waiting For Gamergot

   Cozzeia: Gamergot will be along any minute now, you’ll see!

   Uncle Lucky: How dare you associate us with Gamergot! Now you will make Gamergot angry and he will come and join us!

   Voxdimar: I am a Lord Of Gamergot! I summon Gamergot hence! You’ll all be sorry when Gamergot gets here!

   Testostergon: I heard you have associated Gamergot with a thing and made us angry therefore me and all the other Gamergotters will this time be here doing the thing! Eh? Eh? Guys?

   Gamergot: …

   Voxdimar: We’ll go on. And on. And on.

2. @JJ:

   I am greatly dismayed by the number of people advocating for downvoting and for selective elimination of ballots. These are wrong, wrong, wrong — they are so antithetical to the spirit and intent of the Hugos that they make me feel sick to my stomach. Please do NOT try to go down this road.

   Are you making this as an argument against Kevin Standlee’s 3SV proposal? If so, recognize that people have been treating Mary Frances’ objections respectfully because she has been careful to express them as her personal, emotional viewpoint. Don’t confuse that with a willingness to be lectured to about it being “wrong, wrong, wrong” or “antithetical to the spirit of the Hugos.”

3. @Laura Resnick:

   I would say that’s entirely why he does this.

   Verbally attacking John Scalzi doesn’t get him attention anymore, since Scalzi ignores him. Disrupting SFWA got him attention, but couldn’t continue once SFWA expelled him. Threatening to sue SFWA got him attention for a while, but the clock has run out on that ludicrous threat.

   So now he’s getting attention by gaming the Hugos. It’s got more scope than attacking Scalzi, since many more people are invested in the integrity of the Hugos than in what one drooling jackass with no credibility bleats about Scalzi; and he can carry on this scheme, logistically, longer than he was able to carry on disrupting SFWA or pretending he might sue the org.

   As long as he can attract enough attention (whatever “enough” means for him) this way, he’ll keep doing it.

   I think this is worth some reconsideration.

   1. No fewer than two of the works the LEB placed on this year’s Hugo ballot contain extensive attacks on John Scalzi. So Scalzi deciding to ignore the LEB did not stop the attacks from happening.

   2. Nor did SFWA “stop feeding the troll.” SFWA acted to deprive him of a platform. Had the organization chosen to ignore the griefer’s misconduct with their Twitter account, he would likely still be using it to attack people he dislikes.

   3. At this point, not giving the LEB attention means not giving the Hugos themselves attention. That’s not practical. He will carry on until the WSFS finds a way to shut him down, like SFWA did. The organizations are different, so the available tools will be different, but the problem is not one that can be ignored until it goes away.

4. You know one of the frustrating things about civil discussions on file770 is they can change ones mind. I’m tentatively coming around to 3SV*. I’m still concerned about it turning into a down-voting problem over the years where we down vote things based on ideology which we wouldn’t have NAed. For that reason I would like a sunset clause although the problem likely won’t show up until this kerfuffle has been forgotten by enough newbies. Can a sunset clause be set for 10 years instead of 5?

   My biggest problem with limiting nominating to current year only is the number of people who we’ve recently reached out to and are going to disenfranchise. I understand by limiting it we may solve the 5% issues cropping up in a number of categories as well as possibly limit the vandals. But I suspect the vandals have more money than many supporting fans and I’m not sure any of us truly understand VDs followers motivations.

   GamerGate is still going strong it’s just not making the news anymore. Ask women on Twitter, who play games, who are vocal online if they are still getting harassed and threatened online. From the articles I read the answer is yes. The fact Twitter has finally started taking the issue seriously by consulting with groups and people who are experts tells me it’s gotten worse not better.

   I think some of you underestimate how long these guys will keep at it. Between being able to slate stuff onto the longlist and then be able to down vote stuff during the 3SV** I suspect there is enough whatever to keep them going for many, many years to come. These are the rabids not the sads.

   The sads are either going to continue with the recommendation list until its indistinguishable from any other or they’re going to find other awards which are a better match. If not the dragons in the end; they’ve now been exposed to the larger world of awards.

   *How did 3SV get a nickname so quickly?

   **I wouldn’t have said this part if someone else hadn’t – we can’t discuss anything about problems we might have without educating VD in how to get around our systems it’s very frustrating being an unwilling part of the sooper geniuses planning team

5. Hampus Eckerman on April 30, 2016 at 12:04 am said:

   Another alternative would be to let the semi-finals be an additional nomination phase. Where you, as in the first phase, have the right to nominate five candidates. It doesn’t mean that you have to nominate five candidates, only that you can at a maximum nominate five candidates. Which candidates that will go to the finals is determined in the same way as it was determined which would go to the semifinals.

   You didn’t explicitly say it as far as I could see, but what you apparently meant is “you can nominate up to five candidates from among the top fifteen candidates. This would, I agree, probably help concentrate the relatively diffuse votes spread over the thousands of nominations. You might call it “Fight Slate With Slate,” in the sense that the Top 15 would a sort of super-slate formed from the accumulated nominations of the entire membership. It seems unlikely to me that a group of less than 20% of the members could actually dominate the top 15 positions the way they demonstratively can dominate the top 5.

   If you wanted to give people the chance to let off steam, you could give people one write-in nomination at this stage. That is, nominate up to five works from the Top 15, or four works from the Top 15 and one additional write-in vote. I think it unlikely that an work would have sufficient staying power to crack this Top 15, but you would at least give members an opportunity to vent a little bit.

   3SV gives the membership the chance to vote against works (which I’m still convinced many people want to be able to do, and I’d rather channel that negative motivation than ignore it). Your Top 15 proposal gives the membership the chance to vote for up to five semi-finalists, with the top five from that round proceeding to the finals. It’s more positive than 3SV; whether it would be preferable is unclear.

   I wouldn’t want a preferential ballot at the top 15 stage, through, inasmuch as it implies than you’ve reviewed all fifteen of them. (Similarly I do not expect most people to have read/viewed all 240 semi-finalists in 3SV.) It’s a supplemental nomination stage, not a final ballot.

   JJ on April 30, 2016 at 12:11 am said:

   Suppose that an anti-slate waits until Step 2 to rear their ugly head, when they come in and downvote 5 of the most popular entries…

   Deal with this by requiring a quorum: a minimum number of votes of any sort (including explicit abstentions) be cast for a disqualification vote in a category to be valid. This presents your hypothetical 400 No | 0 Yes | Nobody else bothered to vote situation, I think. See my more detailed discussion above. What the quorum requirement should be is up for debate.

   Jim Henley on April 30, 2016 at 7:07 am said:

   He will carry on until the WSFS finds a way to shut him down, like SFWA did. The organizations are different, so the available tools will be different, but the problem is not one that can be ignored until it goes away.

   In particular, WSFS doesn’t have a Strong Executive. In fact, it has almost no Executive at all. (The nearest thing WSFS has is me, as Chairman of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee, the only WSFS permanent entity, and I have about as much authority as the President of the Continental Congress of the USA had, which is to say nearly nothing. The Chairs of the various Worldcons are like the governors of the individual states, sovereign within their individual territories, but not outside of them.) Consequently, it has very little ability to take quick and decisive action, which is what people are clamoring for. WSFS is designed to be very diffuse with authority spread out all over the place in little pockets here and there. There are advantages to this. (A single Worldcon going disastrously bankrupt cannot pull down the organization because each entity is legally and financially separate — your house catching fire won’t burn mine down, although it’s still a tragedy.) There are also disadvantages. (When things do go wrong, it’s often difficult to find any specific way of dealing with them, and almost never a fast way to do so.)

   Tasha Turner on April 30, 2016 at 7:53 am said:

   Can a sunset clause be set for 10 years instead of 5?

   Inasmuch as sunset clauses are specific to each proposal, yes. In fact, you could add an annual sunset clause, that would require the Business Meeting to re-ratify the proposal every year or else it would lapse. There is some discussion elsewhere (on Facebook) about adding an annual re-ratification clause to EPH that would require it be re-ratified every year for the next three years. That would be a lesser change and could be added immediately without requiring an extra year before it first took effect.

6. @JJ

   FWIW: I agree with you about 3SV. Sadly just a few weeks ago so did the majority of posters. The last time down voting was floated here the majority recognized it as fundamentally changing the nature of Hugo voting. I think folks are in shock at the Rabid sweep. Shocked folks are more willing to make extreme decisions ( look at say the US Congress after 9/11). It’s months to the business meeting though and hopefully that time gives room for more reasoned consideration than a knee jerk reaction.

   To recap the arguments against a down voting system: Hugo votes are currently about love. A down vote system changes this. There will not be time to properly evaluate works in the down vote period which means voting on limited information and an uninformed, possibly prejudiced, vote. I also suspect it’s a step wide open to gaming and abuse though I haven’t had time to really evaluate it.

   Waiting with extreme interest on the results of EPH testing.

7. @Stoic Cynic:

   To recap the arguments against a down voting system: Hugo votes are currently about love. A down vote system changes this.

   No, the Hugos are about finding worthy winners. That’s why NA has been in the toolkit, and why voters have the responsibility to use it where necessary, as in last year and against Black Genesis. All 3SV does is enable the members to use their veto power at a stage before it becomes impossible to recognize a worthy winner, as happened last year.

   Designing the specifics of 3SV to proof it as much as possible against gaming will be important work. But it in no sense violates some notional “spirit of love” animating the Hugo tradition.

8. Kevin Standlee:

   ” You might call it “Fight Slate With Slate,” in the sense that the Top 15 would a sort of super-slate formed from the accumulated nominations of the entire membership. It seems unlikely to me that a group of less than 20% of the members could actually dominate the top 15 positions the way they demonstratively can dominate the top 5.”

   Exactly so. But the nice thing here is that no one is voting against someone. All are doing as they have done before, voting for their top candidates. Voting against things fosters a kind of culture that is negative as shown in studies regarding forums and reviews up and down voting. I think it also might be easier to get people to vote if it is voting for their favourites rather than against others.

   I like your idea with a write-in choice, but it makes the stage a bit more complicated and not sure that would be a good thing if I wanted the idea to pass.

   And for those speaking against 3SV: Read my proposal again. Because this would be taking Kevins proposal and making it into voting in a positive way, making it again about love and nominating your favourites. Letting the second phase again be a phase of nominating your best five works.

9. @Kevin Standlee
   Thanks. I’m not sure I like 1 year re-ratifications. But I know how much Worldcon dislikes change. I’m not sure 1 year lets you see how something is going to work; 2-5 makes more sense to me. For 3SV I think 10 years because I’d want to see long-term whether it turns into a down-voting fest but then the members attending the meeting wouldn’t want that right taken away. Democracy is hard.

   @Stoic Cynic
   I’d like to think I’ve changed my mind based on thinking it over. I’m still stating my initial concerns with it. Kevin Standlee has made changes to the initial wording which make it more acceptable to me. A sunset clause would help. I’m torn as to whether it should require more yes votes than no votes or if total votes including abstain works for me. I’m trying to figure out which is more likely to encourage voters to only use the no for things they believe should never have gotten on the ballot.

   For me that’s really the deal breaker – can this be worded so it’s used as rarely as NA by most voters most years? If so, I’m comfortable with it. If not, then no.

   Right from the start I’ve been against the loss of privacy and rights we’ve given away due to 9/11.

10. @Hampus Eckerman
    I do like your proposal better for the very reason: it’s about what you love. We’ve got 6 weeks to look over 240 works. In many cases one is familiar with some number of them or the people already. One can get a superficial feel on others. I have some of Kevin Standlee’s reservations but it feels less icky to me.

11. I’ve been dithering over whether I’m going to follow Hugo-related discussions as diligently this year as last (beyond sufficient information to make wise choices in voting and when I show up for the WSFS business meeting). Most of us learned back in pre-school that it’s much easier to destroy something than it is to build it. And in the internet age, we’ve learned how quickly malevolent actors can adapt to get around protections. There is one sense in which we can never “win”, if winning is defined as returning to some mythical age where Hugo awards represented choosing the best and the brightest and few had to worry about the forces and mechanics that underlay the choice.

    Um…right.

    It is natural to spend a lot of time, energy, and emotions around addressing an obvious and immediate injury. The body addresses a traumatic injury with clotting and immune response and scabbing and scar tissue while organs untouched continue on their way unnoticed. But it is not good for a body to focus so completely on that injury. The stomach must be fed; lungs must draw in air; the heart must pump; even down to the functioning of each mitochondrion[*] in each cell. Our scars should not define us–we are a vast mass of living tissue.

    As thinking creatures, we are drawn to the solving of puzzles–I certainly am!–and the question of how to re-route the body’s functions around the wound and scar of our present situation is compelling. But the body as a whole must be strong to survive. And just as we may wonder at the stories that could have been produced if the work of destruction hadn’t diverted some writers’ energy, I wonder at the positive, creative work that may go unrecognized and neglected when people focus so strongly on healing and smoothing away this one scar.

    We cannot lose so long as “winning” is defined as recognizing, rewarding, and celebrating the works and the people we love. That is entirely within our own control and always has been. It’s what drew me to join the community here and what will sustain me. Let us remember that even as we organize the sutures and antiseptic.

    [*] Yes, I did look up the correct singular for mitochondria.

12. On a more light-hearted note, my analogy has me speculating on whether Twitter is the immune system of the internet.

13. Hi everyone –

    For what it’s worth, I support the idea of some sort of long list. The idea was actually proposed while we were working on EPH, but we decided against it mainly (but not exclusively) because we were told the Hugo admins would never agree to the extra workload of managing a semi-finals.

    I like Kevin’s proposal, but I too fear that the only way you can really justify downvoting a work you haven’t read is by either 1) ideology or 2) disliking someone personally. Is that something we want to hard-code into the Hugos? I agree with Kevin that the negative impulse is there, however.

    There is a difference between No Award and 3SV, however. No Award, for me, is always a painful and regrettable last resort when a work I have read ends up as a finalist and doesn’t deserve to be one. With 3SV, presumably, I haven’t read the work, yet I’m still called upon to make the same decision. And not only that, it’s not a last-resort, rarely-used tool, it’s something I’m expected to use every single year.

    Hampus’ idea does have one additional thing to speak for it that hasn’t been mentioned: It solves the “dispersion” problem EPH has in the short fiction categories that I mentioned up-thread. If the admins were willing to do it, I see a lot of potential for a combination of semi-finals and EPH.

    Kilo

14. Larry doesn’t like block voting but advocated for block nominations??
    He can claim distance from Vox all he wants – doesn’t make it a fact

15. Mary Frances: But I just can’t make myself feel really comfortable about saying, at any point in the process, something like “No. You are wrong to love this piece of fiction.”

    And you should love it. Just consider whether the best way to show love for it is by helping bad actors. Rooting for the Cincinnati Reds does not mean you should support the actions of Joseph J. “Sport” Sullivan, the Black Sox, Pete Rose, or Marge Schott.

    Sportsmanship and honor sometimes demands that you do that sort of thing. Cornell forfeiting the game to Dartmouth. Lutz Long advising Jesse Owens, and taking the silver as a result. Jack Nicklaus conceding the putt to Tony Jacklin, ending the Ryder Cup in a tie. Nate Haasis taking his record-setting game out of the record books because his coach made a deal with the opposing coach. Mallory Holtman carrying opposing player Sara Tucholsky around the field to score a home run.

    Tim Mays, Annie Bellet, and Marko Kloos are going to be remembered for a very long time, and in a much better light than Teddy Beale.

16. Glenn Haumann: And you should love it. Just consider whether the best way to show love for it is by helping bad actors

    Glenn, that isn’t the point. I’ve told myself all that, but I’m dealing with an emotional reaction here, and logic doesn’t help. I said I was going to shut up now, and I almost didn’t respond to your kind comment (and I know you meant it kindly). However, I decided to say this: I’m going to pay very close, if silent, attention to S3V (one or two of the suggestions people have made do make even an outlier like me feel a bit easier about the whole business). Something needs to be done to keep works that are actively vicious as well as incompetently written off of the Hugo shortlist, and if people whose opinions I trust say that S3V will help? I’ll do my best to participate, even if only by not getting in the way–i.e., I’ll record my “yes” votes, downvote the works I can make myself downvote (there are already some of those), and go on from there. I admit I still hope S3V isn’t necessary–that EPH will do the job well enough, and I’m really glad that we’ll have at least one year to test EPH out more or less on its own–but if it doesn’t, well. We go on.

17. Keith “Kilo” Watt:

    “Hampus’ idea does have one additional thing to speak for it that hasn’t been mentioned: It solves the “dispersion” problem EPH has in the short fiction categories that I mentioned up-thread. If the admins were willing to do it, I see a lot of potential for a combination of semi-finals and EPH.”

    Yes, my hope was that there would actually be more representative choices in the final if using an extra nomination round.

    I would say that both mine and his has their pro’s and con’s. His is easier in getting rid of bad work in lesser voted categories, but it also makes for a focused group to get rid of undesirables in the same categories if people aren’t vigilant and votes in them. Also, there is the problematic way of voting against what other people like instead of promoting own works. I do think it would make EPH unnecessary which many people would like as the system is complicated to understand.

    Mine will not be a sure fire way to get rid of slaters, in lesser voted categories they will still have high power if nominators still remains few and the voting spread is large. But together with EPH, I think they will get lot less power than they otherwise would have gotten. This would mean that EPH still would have to be in use, an extra complication. There is also the advantage of only voting for what you like, no downvoting, which is what I very much prefer.

18. Tim Mays, Annie Bellet, and Marko Kloos are going to be remembered for a very long time, and in a much better light than Teddy Beale.

    And Juliette Wade, and Dave Creek.

19. Aaron: Dang it.

20. @Jim Henley:

    Rabids were super-pleased to discover that they had kept numerous hated Ess Jay Double-Ewes off the ballot

    If memory serves, didn’t the Rabids (and Sads) keep a bunch of their own favoured authors off, too? And the Heinlein biography?

    The phenomenon, all by itself, is enough to keep them going.

    There’s long been something super-weird in Mr. Beale’s narrative about WSFS. He really does believe that WSFS is under particular undue influence of PNH and Tor to pursue some nefarious SJW agenda. He’s said this, and I have no reason to doubt his sincerity.

    The WSFS I’ve known for decades is under nobody’s undue influence, politically heterodox in the extreme, collectively just not Theo Beale’s enemy at all (but really annoyed by vandalism), and militantly open and democratic. So, when I hear about shadowy SJW control in pursuit of various ideological victories, I boggle. How could that even work? Several WSFS notables even argued against EPH on grounds of it endangering the perception of transparency, and Business Meetings have kept trying to find additional ways to extend the franchise.

    What motivates Theo Beale is a question I find less interesting than what motivates the 360 claimed minions (or is it 205, now?). Perhaps boredom and offhand malice, but that really seems odd in a way I’m probably not articulating properly. Like, spending money and attacking an innocuous volunteer organisation because some guy tells you to? Who does that, really? Do they seriously have nothing better to do? It seems, kind off… really poor return for the entertainment dollar. Unimaginative.

    On another note, I hope Filers try to be wary of the problem of conrunner exhaustion. Just having to sit through the endlessly prolonged Business Meeting over three days of Sasquan was an ordeal (as Kevin knows all too well), and at the end of the convention one longtime SMOF was so dismayed by the parade of hassles that he quit fandom entirely, shortly after the end of Worldcon. And the pool of conrunners willing to be Hugo Administrators is in some danger of shrinking to zero.

    Point is, please consider carefully before loading up the MAC2 Business Meeting with proposals. I’m not sure I can recall instances of the Business Meeting voting Postpone Indefinitely (or Object to Consideration) on a motion merely because they’ve been run totally ragged, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it.

21. I like the idea of two rounds of nominations. I’m also not helping admin the award. I suspect those two things go hand-in-hand.

22. @Rick Moen:

    If memory serves, didn’t the Rabids (and Sads) keep a bunch of their own favoured authors off, too? And the Heinlein biography?

    Definitely the Heinlein biography. Maybe some favored authors. But where are you going with this?

23. Honestly, “Heinlein” notwithstanding, I don’t think they held any brief for the Heinlein biography. Most never heard of it, or had any interest in reading it.

24. I made a lengthy post in response to Greg regarding the possible exclusion of women and minorities, but it mysteriously disappeared.

    Briefly: I don’t think the problem Jim raised arises only if women and minorities are likely to come further down the ballot. If slaters control spots 3-5, they can reduce the number of women and minorities likely to be shortlisted, even if they are still getting a fair chance in spots 1-2.

25. I would also just point out that EPH, being geared to dealing with excessive concentrations of votes for a group of works, would have not been effective against Black Genesis (and could possibly have made that situation worse).

26. @Aaron & Glenn Hauman,

    …and Matthew David Surridge…

27. Definitely the Heinlein biography. Maybe some favored authors. But where are you going with this?

    Even if you un-Puppyed last year’s ballot, the Heinlein biography wouldn’t have made the finalist list. They did keep Weir off the Campbell finalists, and a work that Sanderson contributed to would have made it but for their efforts.

28. Rick Moen:

    ” He’s said this, and I have no reason to doubt his sincerity.”

    In the whole debacle, this is the strangest comment yet.

29. Not strange at all. The deranged are often sincere in their delusions.

30. On Heinlien, they also didn’t boost ‘Predestination’ which had a second shot of nomination for BDP-long this year.

31. There was talk of an additional stage in voting last year and I wasn’t keen on the idea. My concern is that a second stage may lead to increased campaigning with all the associated toxicity that can generate. However, that issue is not the problem the Hugos are facing and so the question is whether a vague possibility of negative change in the culture of the awards outweighs the actual fact of a wrecking campaign by a trust-fund troll.

32. I have written up Hampus Eckerman’s alternative second-nominating-round proposal on my LiveJournal, including some of my own takes on it that Hampus might not have intended. I include a write-in space, for example, to let people blow off steam. (I think it unlikely a write-in could sneak through to the final, but it might happen.) As with 3SV, Double Nominations is out there for comment, and should anyone really want to run with it this year, I will help you craft it technically if you want it.

    Double Nominations assumes that griefers can’t dominate all fifteen spaces on the Long List. I think they’d need a lot more votes than they currently seem to be controlling. Assuming they didn’t change their wrecking behavior (not a safe assumption!) the works finishing 6 through 10 are the “natural” final ballot that the existing system would have produced. Surely we could get a pretty decent final ballot out of the Top 15, couldn’t we?

    I find myself warming to a system that involves positive voting for things rather than voting against them. I approached 3SV mainly because I wanted the members to take responsibility for the choices that many of them want Daddy the Administrator to make, which is to say the choice to disqualify works solely because you disapprove of the way in which they made it to the ballot. But maybe a system whereby we continue to say “Vote for things you like, but you have to pick from among this Long List” is a better approach and doesn’t require anyone to make the Hard Choices.

33. I would be willing to support the Double Nominations proposal above, and able to do so in good conscience. It addresses most of my concerns about 3SV. I feel that it is consistent with what I perceive the Hugos to be about, which is “Here is what I love”.

    My main concern is what the tightened deadlines would do to 1) the Administrators, and 2) the level of participation.

34. @Soon Lee: Definitely.

35. Looking at the issue that people have raised about the Rabid nominated Fan-artist kukuruyo (see https://file770.com/?p=28716&cpage=3#comment-426426 ), the issue of nominee or nominated works that would bring the Hugos or the WSFS into disrepute has gone up a level from an already worrying situation.

    I think that tips the balance in favor of another stage. The other alternative would be to grant some power to disqualify works/nominees on the basis of being damaging to the reputation of the WSFS. I think that kind of power would sound to arbitrary to many to pass. However, I assume there must be some capacity to disqualify works that might get the WSFS into legal hotwater (e.g. works that were defamatory or violated some law).

36. Camestros Felapton: The Hugo nominees are a list of names and titles. They are not the work. I don’t see a need for authority to leave stuff off for the reasons you suggested.

    On the other hand, the Hugo Voter Packet is not governed by the WSFS Consitution, and the committee is free to adhere to applicable laws, or follow legal advice, and make the decisions it considers appropriate.

37. All your Hugo are belong to us.

    Sorry. Just when I saw All My Hugos, I somehow was thrown back in time to the year 2000.

    “Somebody set up us the slate.”

38. @Kevin Standlee
    I like the Double Nominations proposal better than 3SV. I would like to hear input from current and past administrators on how they feel it would impact their jobs. I think this would have all the advantages of 3SV although you don’t mention them in detail this time.

39. @Jack Lint – I saw some RP type fella referencing that after the finalist list was announced. So annoying. I swear there was a time when gaming was about more than misogynist man-boys.

40. Double Nominations is something I could vote for with a clear conscience and it looks structurally sound, so yay.

41. I’d be concerned about deadlines for all of the three-vote systems, though. The process is already pretty tight, and this would make it worse.

    Weirdly, I think that limiting nominations to this year’s members would really help with that problem, though — if nominations are only available to people with current Worldcon memberships at the start of the year, then there’s no delay for people to filter out individuals with multiple memberships.

42. LZ: I’d be concerned about deadlines for all of the three-vote systems, though. The process is already pretty tight, and this would make it worse.

    I think that Double Nominations alleviates that, though — in the second round, nominators are allowed 5 choices, one of which may be a write-in. So I think the odds are good that many nominators will have read 4 or 5 of the 15 on the list. (Whether they feel all of them are Hugo-worthy is another question.)

    At this point, I’ve read around 70 of the novels published in 2015 — and because I was selective about what I chose to read, there are at least 20 of them that, while they might not have been my top choice for the Hugo ballot, I could make a case for them appearing there.

    Ancillary Mercy, by Ann Leckie
    The Buried Life, by Carrie Patel
    Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon
    Dark Orbit, by Carolyn Ives Gilman
    Europe at Midnight/Europe in Autumn, by Dave Hutchinson
    The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
    Forgotten Suns, by Judith Tarr
    Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, by Lois McMaster Bujold
    Going Dark/The Trials, by Linda Nagata
    The Invisible Library/The Masked City, by Genevieve Cogman
    Karen Memory, by Elizabeth Bear
    A Key, by an Egg, by an Unfortunate Remark, by Harry Connolly
    The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins
    The Mechanical/The Rising, by Ian Tregillis
    Nova, by Margaret Fortune
    Planetfall, by Emma Newman
    Time Salvager, by Wesley Chu
    Touch, by Claire North
    Twelve Kings in Sharakhai, by Bradley Beaulieu
    Uprooted, by Naomi Novik
    The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, by Natasha Pulley
    Zero World, by Jason M. Hough

43. A possible wrinkle for 3PV — if the voters who handled part 2 weren’t simply all WSFS members that year, but were limited to attending members, you’d still have enough of a varied collection of voices to make that kind of judgment while making the price of messing with it just to be vandals too high for many.

    There might be obvious downsides to it, but maybe it solves the problem some people are pointing out.

44. Kevin Standlee: I find myself warming to a system that involves positive voting for things rather than voting against them.

    I could do this–the Double Nominations thing, I mean. It wouldn’t hurt at all. I’d even maybe appreciate the chance to quick-read a book or two more for the second round. And since I’m someone who has been whimpering pathetically about 3SV, that’s saying something.

    I could do this. It would not only be (relatively) easy, I think it might even be fun!

45. Mary Frances: I’d just like to say I’m really grateful that you’re willing to be the canary* in the coalmine about this, and speak out about what makes you uncomfortable. It’s very important to hear from people who say “I couldn’t do that, and here’s why”; it makes us able to at least try to avoid those metaphorical gas pockets that some of us can’t smell ourselves.

    *In this case, not the literal dropping-dead canary, but the modern electronic alarm “canary”. No dropping dead for you!

46. “I have written up Hampus Eckerman’s alternative second-nominating-round proposal on my LiveJournal, including some of my own takes on it that Hampus might not have intended. I include a write-in space, for example, to let people blow off steam. (I think it unlikely a write-in could sneak through to the final, but it might happen.)”

    Thank you Kevin! I like the idea of a write-in space myself. My only reason for not adding it was thinking it would be harder to get it to pass through a business meeting as it would add even extra work for administrators. A strict nominations system with all candidates from previous rounds would make it possible to have drop down boxes with all candidates, thus bypassing all need for cleanup, making administration of the round very small.

47. (3) LOVE WON’T KEEP US TOGETHER. Good grief, Green! What is this, “Dirty Dancing”? Nobody puts Voxie in a corner! Look, wherever reality-free place you may live, in the real world Fandom did no such thing.

    (4) SPLAT. “Which is why memberships on both right and left, conservative and liberal, have soared this year.” – Citation, please.

    (6) THE CHORF TINGLE ASTERISK. ROFL at Mike’s title here; major eyerolling at Correia’s reality-free living (what is it with SPs and former SPs?!).

    @Rachel Swirsky: Nice breakdown of the three types of entries; I think I’ve seen a similar description, but yours is very clear, with good examples. Re. #3 and what you said about Gaiman having withdrawn before, I hate when creators recuse themselves in general (non-slate years), so IMHO it’s not reasonable for Gaiman to withdraw (never mind that there are several creators involved, not just him). And I, also, don’t wish to give vetos to other people.

48. Double Noms (yum!) looks like a good proposal. I’d back that one, too. Allows the majority of Hugo voters to coalesce around the longlist in a way they can’t during nominations.

    A possible minor disadvantage I see with DN (is that the snappy abbreviation for this one?) versus 3SV is that it requires more voter commitment in the second stage. Instead of judging pass/fail on the 15 works in each category, a voter will have to decide a top five based on preference, which might require more research (and reading) depending what among the longlist they haven’t been exposed to before.

    I mean, people could just vote the favorites they had already, but it seems like a lot of Hugo voters want to make educated preferential votes and possibly seek out superb works that might not have been the stars of the first nomination round. [Could be I’m projecting here.] So perhaps the same squeeze that would come from having 240 finalists to read on the final Hugo ballot, but in the six-week(?) semi-final round instead. It’s not a big deal but something that comes to mind when I compare DN and 3SV.

49. (9) RULES CHANGE PROPOSAL. . . . and all the ensuing discussion here, wow! Still processing. 😉 I’m still against downvoting, for all the reasons discussed days/weeks ago in more more recently. Also, it could be gamed more easily in supposedly-trouble-free years – and could (thus, would) be misused regardless. I shudder to think of anti-buzz building to remove something from the finalists, ugh.

    However, @Hampus Eckerman’s version is a big improvement. I’m not sold yet, but it’s at least 5 😉 times better. I almost suggested the intermediate-list have 10 items, then I realized voting 5 of those up is effectively voting the other five down, while a longer list doesn’t seem to leave the same bad taste in my mouth. And really, how it’s presented (vote for love, not for hate) makes a big difference, emotionally, to me anyway.

    I’m against write-ins for the second stage. I feel nominating rights should remain open to prevoius/next Worldcons, as overall that’s a benefit, slates aside, and the point of this second stage would be to handle slates and other oddities anyway. Please don’t exclude supporting members! This has come up a couple of times, usually as a misstatement, but for example @Kurt Busiek seems to mean it. Gak! If this proposal goes to too many extremes, you don’t even need the guts of it; just remove all non-attending rights and the Hugos are likely “saved,” but IMHO much the poorer for it.

    (Granted, I’m still mulling over the “second nom phase” part. Seems like there should be three: nomnomnom, heh)

50. “As with 3SV, Double Nominations is out there for comment, and should anyone really want to run with it this year, I will help you craft it technically if you want it.”

    For any three round system, I think there needs to be past administrators who give their input or in some way backs the thing up. Any voters needs to be reassured that we are not putting even more workload on them.

Comments are closed.