(1) TALKIN’ ABOUT MY REGENERATION. The Doctor Who Christmas Special 2017 trailer is online.
(2) A PREVIOUS GENERATION. Meanwhile, at Comic-Con, Harrison Ford still doesn’t know whether he was a replicant: “Blade Runner 2049: Harrison Ford responds to Deckard replicant mystery”.
Moderator Chris Hardwicke couldn’t help but ask Ford if Blade Runner 2049 would address the lingering questions about Deckard’s identity – human or replicant?
After a long pause, the star responded: “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
So that clears that up then.
(3) ACTUAL COMICS NEWS FROM COMIC-CON. NPR observes “Yes, Some Comics Are For Kids — And They’re Big Business”.
Before I left for San Diego Comic-Con this week, I checked in with Lucy Strother, a fourth grade teacher in Philadelphia whose students just love comics. “We have like a comics and graphic novels bin in the library and it’s perpetually empty because the kids are so obsessed with comics and graphic novels,” she says.
Strother says graphic novels are an important way to get kids used to reading longer chapter books with more mature ideas. And for her students, there’s one author who reigns supreme. “The queen of my classroom is Raina Telgemeier.”
“My name does mean queen,” Telgemeier laughs. She’s here at Comic-Con to talk comics and meet young readers; her latest graphic novel, Ghosts, is a gentle, lovely story for middle grade readers, about a girl coming to terms with her little sister’s serious illness.
(4) OPEN FOR CLICKS. The Westercon 72 (and aspiring 2019 NASFiC bid) website has gone live. The con will be in Layton, UT.
(5) OUT OF THE SHADOWS. Clarke Awards administrator Tom Hunter sent out the links himself:
Adrian Tchaikovsky has also been busy reviewing all six books on this year’s shortlist, splitting his reviews into three equal parts.
- Part one: Faith In The Future covers A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers and Central Station by Lavie Tidhar.
I want to wave a flag for Chambers’ aliens?—?while there is a definite Trek-like philanthropic principle going on, the species are all well defined, and then the individuals are separately defined so that you don’t get the common problem of “all of X species are like this”, and furthermore “X species are basically humans with this hang up and a narrowed emotional range”. Like Planet, Orbit makes a virtue of telling the stories of ordinary people in a multispecies galactic community, with plenty of digressions and diversions that only add to the verisimilitude of the world and the characters.
- Part two: The Evil That Men Do discusses The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and After Atlas by Emma Newman.
Where this book crosses from the historical into Clarkes territory is the railroad of the title. Now I have a confession here, because my knowledge of this period is limited and my first introduction to the phrase ‘underground railroad’ was in Babylon 5, which utterly baffled me because I thought they were talking about a literal one. And in Whitehead’s book, there is. Instead of the loose network of sympathisers and rescuers, white and black, there is a genuine railroad under the ground smuggling slaves from place to place, constantly in danger of being discovered by the slavers. In this way, Whitehead gives us the southern US as a series of “stations” (3) where different scenarios play out between black and white, slave and free.
- Part three: Sufficiently Advanced Mathematics deals with Occupy Me?by Tricia Sullivan and Ninefox Gambit?by Yoon Ha Lee.
Tricia Sullivan is a SF author of considerable repute, with Occupy Me her fourth visit to the Clarkes shortlist (having, I believe, won it in 1999 with Dreaming in Smoke). This is a book about time, space, energy and angels, and it’s going to be relatively difficult to talk about because finding out what is actually going on is one of the chief pleasures of the book. The plot effectively starts in the middle and then unfolds towards the beginning and the end simultaneously, and that is entirely appropriate for the sort of physics that is flying around in the plot. Flying, in fact, is a major theme.
(6) SURVIVING CHILDHOOD. Here are “9 dangerous toys that prove kids were just tougher before 1990”. John King Tarpinian says he had these —
Clackers
Clackers had a lot of fun nicknames: knockers, click-clacks, bangers, knocker bockers or knicker knackers. But by any name, these 1970s toys were dangerous as heck, especially if you got the original acrylic glass clackers that some kids were either strong enough or intent enough to shatter. It was enough to get the attention of the Society for Prevention of Blindness, who issued their own warning, before a 1973 Consumer Product Safety Commission arrived to deliver the country to the coddling culture that condemned toys like clackers (which are available today in safer wooden, plastic or metal varities) and birthed a generation of nervous parents today.
(7) CARLSON OBIT. SF Site News reports the death of Jeff Carlson:
Author Jeff Carlson (b.1969) died on July 17. Carlson published the short story “Exit” in 1994? and his next story, “Pressure,” appeared in 2001. His first novel, The Plague Year appeared in 2007 and opened a trilogy, including The Plague War and The Plague Zone….
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
- July 23, 1999 — Disney’s Tarzan became the first all-digital film
- July 23, 1995 — The Outer Limits reboot aired “I, Robot” with Leonard Nimoy
(9) WHETHER TO RATIFY. This year’s Hugo administrator Nicholas Whyte, writing as a private individual, gives his take on several rules changes pending at this year’s business meeting: “The 2017 WSFS Business Meeting: Deterring Slates”.
Three Stage Voting
I was one of a number of people last year who put our names to another proposal, Three Stage Voting, which is on the agenda as amendment C.4. This would introduce an extra voting stage. After nominations are made, and the top fifteen candidates identified, Hugo voters (members of that year’s Worldcon) would vote on whether or not to accept the top fifteen as acceptable finalists. Voters would choose “Reject”; “Accept; or “Abstain”. Those rejected by at least 60% of the combined total of “Accept” and “Reject” votes, if and only if the number of “Reject” votes is at least the higher of 600 or 20% of the number of eligible voters, would be barred from the final ballot, which would have the top five (or six) vote-getters from the nominations tally minus any that were rejected by the new process. This was passed by the 2016 Business Meeting and must now be ratified by the 2017 Business meeting to come into effect for next year.
I signed this last year, but I no longer support it, for the following reasons….
Whyte gives four reasons. When it comes to 3SV, Whyte and Dr. Mauser (quoted yesterday) have some common ground.
(10) PUMP UP THE VOLUME, A different kind of Apple Music — “Sing Different: Steve Jobs’ Life Becomes An Opera”. Chip Hitchcock says, “It’s in an appropriately tech location; you can see the lights of Los Alamos from the theater site.”
Even Campbell was initially skeptical of the idea, which came from 40-year-old composer Mason Bates. Bates was convinced that in Jobs’ “complicated and messy” life, he’d found the right subject for his very first opera.
“He had a daughter he didn’t acknowledge for many years; he had cancer — you can’t control that,” Bates says. “He was, while a very charismatic figure, quite a hard-driving boss. And his collisions with the fact that he wanted to make everything sleek and controllable — yet life is not controllable — is a fascinating topic for an opera.”
The (R)evolution Of Steve Jobs shifts back and forth in time over the course of 18 scenes. Its fragmented, non-linear narrative was a deliberate choice by Campbell and Bates, who wanted to reflect Jobs’ personality and psyche. “Steve Jobs did have a mind that just jumped from idea to idea to idea — it was very quick,” Campbell says.
(11) WONDER WOMAN. Marcus Errico of Yahoo! Movies, reporting from Comic-Con, in “WONDER WOMAN II Offiicially Confirmed at Comic-Con, Script ‘In The Works Right Now”, writes DC “to the surprise of no one’ officially green-lit Wonder Woman II, but they’re still working on the script and Patty Jenkins is not yet attached to the project.
Every mention of the film, star Gal Gadot, or images of the Amazonian princess in action during Warners’ Saturday presentation in Hall H was an applause line. And when the simple Wonder Woman II graphic appeared at the end of a sizzle reel, the crowd went wild.
Gadot entered the Hall arm in arm with her Justice League co-star Ben Affleck, joining cast mates Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller, and Ray Fisher onstage to show off a new trailer for the Nov. 17 release.
(12) AND YOU THINK YOUR CON HAS TECH PROBLEMS. Pokemon Go event overloads: “Refunds as Pokemon fest beset by glitches”.
As many as 20,000 attendees at a Pokemon Go festival in Chicago are being offered refunds after technical glitches meant fans were mostly unable to catch anything – let alone “them all”.
Disappointed fans will also be offered $100 in the form of the app’s in-game currency, Pokecoins.
The event on Saturday had been touted as a chance for fans to come together and catch some of the rarest monsters on the hugely successful app.
But fans booed and chanted “fix our game!” and “we can’t play!” as executives from Niantic, the game’s creator, attempted to explain the problems.
At one point a bottle was thrown at a presenter on stage – it missed.
(13) FLORIDA MAN. The Orlando Sentinel reports a hometown fan (and File 770 reader) is headed for Helsinki.
Juan Sanmiguel’s affinity for intergalactic storytelling has taken him around the globe.
Next month he’ll check off a new country as he’s off to Finland for the annual Worldcon and Hugo Awards — which are known as the most prestigious for the science-fiction genre. The awards are scheduled for Aug. 11 in Helsinki.
For the past 25 years, he’s made the annual trek to the convention in countries such as Australia, Scotland, Canada and England.
“I haven’t missed one since [1992],” said Sanmiguel, who has attended the convention a total of 27 times. “It’s still prestigious … the biggest one so far was the one in London three years ago.”
Also president of the Orlando Area Science Fiction Society, Sanmiguel briefed members of the club Sunday on this year’s nominees, which include mainstream filmed works such as “Stranger Things,” “Deadpool,” “Ghostbusters” and two episodes of the acclaimed “Game of Thrones” series.
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Nicholas Whyte, JJ, and Tom Hunter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Barrett.]
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First?
Fake First!
“Talkin’ About My Regeneration” aptly enough by the Who.
(I first posted this to the wrong thread. Sorry.)
7) Sad. I liked Carlson’s Plague books.
1) Excited for the final go for Capaldi to be a team up with the first Doctor (who is still the only Doctor to have been portrayed by multiple actors, and with this, will be on its third actor in the role).
I wonder myself–are there any actors up to the challenge of reportraying other Doctors. And should it even be tried?
5th
Coveted Second Fifth!
(I guess the shoggoth left again with the time machine; it’s back to 2017)
I look forward to a week of Scroll Titles inspired by my ubiquitous username.
Tomorrow’s Title:
J.J. Abrams Apologizes for Pixelwashing in File Trek: Into Scrollness
(12) AND YOU THINK YOUR CON HAS TECH PROBLEMS.
Yeah, I was playing along (it was a global event) with local players & keeping tabs on events in Chicago. It was not pretty.
Niantic has had a good go at making amends, including activating a bunch of bonuses that players would have had to unlock in Chicago by catching sufficient Pokemon.
(It’s kinda hard to catch Pokemon when you can’t connect to the server…)
[click]
#7) Crap. I enjoyed his Frozen Sky series and he’s not much older than me.
9) Hmmm, disappointed to see one of the people behind 3SV last year is now against it. While this year’s ballot was much better, I could do without the dinosaur p0rn and remaining puppy poo.
Laura: disappointed to see one of the people behind 3SV last year is now against it. While this year’s ballot was much better, I could do without the dinosaur p0rn and remaining puppy poo.
I’ve got really mixed feelings about 3SV. Yes, it would be nice not to have any more pr0n entries or sadistic JCW pedophile fantasies in the official Hugo history.
But on the other hand, I agree that it is entirely antithetical to the spirit of fandom and the Hugos for people to be voting things down.
AND I think it is open to abuse as a way to quash a legitimate work by an author who is not popular in some quarters. Can I see a work by a person of color or a LGBTQ being voted off by a large-enough number of people who are racist or homophobic? Or even a work by a white man being voted off by people trying to get even for past wrongs? Absolutely.
Clickity
(9) I’ve also got doubts about 3SV but I’ve got to cogitate more on them.
Camestros Felapton: I’ve also got doubts about 3SV but I’ve got to cogitate more on them.
Oh gods, that means more charts and uncanny valley 3D rendered creatures with unlikely moving parts, doesn’t it??? 😯
(1) Looking forward to this!
(6) We’re cleaning out the boxes in the garage, and anything still usable is going to Goodwill. I came across a pair of Clackers, with a chip out of them. Those went into the trash, after those of us old enough to remember had a good laugh. The original ones did work better and make a louder, crisper noise.
I had several of the others on the list, too.
(13) The biggest one so far was L.A. Con 1984.
9) I do not agree with Whyte in one sense. He seems to believe that if the threat has receded now, then we should leave the goal open for further trolling. If not 3SV, then I want to see an alternative.
Lets remember that one of the items in previous years made false rape accusations against a living person. This is not acceptable. There must be some way to remove them. Hugo nominations as tool for harassment is not ok.
12) Over in San Jose, things went well enough. We started late, and around 6:00 gathered with about a dozen other people to take down a legendary critter. My main problem is my phone drains about 2% per minute, and my charger hadn’t gotten charged. But we won, and even though I didn’t catch the critter, it was fun getting together with a bunch of local people I would normally never meet.
We saw KIki’s Delivery Service in the luxury cinema today, and it was breathtaking to see it on the big screen. Like seeing a real Monet for the first time. Every time I see that film I get new details. I am SO looking forward to seeing Laputa next month.
@Rose: My cousin, who lives in Chicago, got married last year. As part of the trip my wife and I visited the Art Institute of Chicago, where we saw a number of Monets. Reproductions do not capture the experience.
I am envious of Rose Embolism’s cinema choices
He seems to believe that…
I will not respond to comments that put words in my mouth.
I could do without the dinosaur p0rn and remaining puppy poo
If we adopt 3SV, we potentially still get that on the long list (with a much much lower threshold), and people will say, “Oh, look, more dinosaur p0rn is up for the Hugos” even if it’s not on the final ballot.
The alternative to 3SV is 5&6, EPH and EPH+.
I think 3SV is poorly conceived. The strong desire for a solution doesn’t make it a good solution.
If 3SV is implemented, I predict that participation in the exclusion round will be low, and that eventually some group of trolls will take advantage of it to force deserving works off the ballot.
3SV makes the Hugo nomination process more cumbersome for everyone. Nothing is perfect, but at least 5&6, EPH and EPH+ make extra work only for the Hugo administrators, and most of that can be handled by software.
12) Was out raiding yesterday. Whole of Stockholm was full of pokemon hunters moving form gym to gym. People were coming from smaller cities too to get a larger chance to catch a legendary. I happened to bump into a group around 11:00 and then followed them around for five hours with people coming and going. I got both legendaries yesterday, so I’m happy.
Nicolas Whyte:
I did not put any words in your mouth. I wrote how I interpreted your argument. If you wanted to mean something else, I’d be happy to hear what.
But they will not be listed at Wikipedia or other such pages as Hugo nominees.
Tom Becker:
They have totally different uses. 5&6, EPH and EPH+ is to ensure that a small group can’t swamp the ballot. 3SV is for removing single works of griefing, harassment and trolling.
If participation in the exclusion round is low, then there will be no exclusion as there is a lower limit of participants for it to take effect.
If you want to interpret my argument, use my actual words. Simple.
@Hampus
I don’t think anyone wants to “leave the goal open for further trolling”. We’re discussing how best not to do that, and there’s room for reasonable disagreement on how to meet that goal. Quite a few reasonable people, myself included, have doubts about whether 3SV is the right instrument given the other options.
Nicholas Whyte:
Not when you seem to mean something else than what you wrote. Let me bold mark the words I reacted to:
First, 3SV is not a solution to slates. It is a solution to harassment, griefing and trolling. Second, this threat has not gone away at all. Several works of griefing were on this years ballot and there is no indication that this won’t be the case for next year, the year after that and so on. And there is nothing that says that next years trolling won’t go back to include works of harassment and stalking of real persons.
This means that not voting for 3SV will leave an open door for continuous trolling.
Mark:
And that is why I wrote “if not 3SV, then I want to see an alternative“. 5/6, EPH and EPH+ are not alternatives. They are solutions to a different problem.
5&6, EPH and EPH+ make extra work only for the Hugo administrators, and most of that can be handled by software
In fairness, 5&6 creates very little extra work for the Hugo administrators (just a matter of 20% more finalists to notify), but does create extra work for the conscientious voter, who will have 20% more work to read before casting an informed vote! People seem to be willing to take that hit.
I do think there is a balance between making extra work for voters and administrators and trying to reduce system vulnerability to griefers. Is 5&6 and EPH enough? Is having the potential of a little poo (c.f. this year) a good enough solution?
Hampus does have a point–without something like 3SV, there will always be the door to trolling. Sure, in years past, that wasn’t a problem, because the electorate generally didn’t include enough griefers, but, at the moment it does, and conceivably could again even if the Puppies as currently conceived decline below the “threshold” to consistently get stuff on the ballot.
9) (and @Nicholas Whyte) – The point is taken, and I agree that 3SV is problematic in the ways you describe… but I’d still support it, were I at the business meeting.
EPH and 5/6 have had a significant positive impact, for sure, but they don’t prevent someone with limited but consistent support from bullet-nominating an entry of their choosing, regardless of actual merit – which, essentially, means that a troll with sufficiently deep pockets and a bloody-minded determination can effectively buy himself a slot on the final ballot for as long as they’re willing to keep it up. And, of course, this is not a hypothetical, here – this is what’s actually happening. I have absolutely no doubt that a certain party is going to claim a “Best Editor” slot, even though they manifestly don’t deserve it, until they die of old age.
The argument against allowing this – it seems to me – is that it denies a place on the final ballot to a legitimate candidate. Again, this isn’t a hypothetical case – we’ve seen it happen in the most dramatic way possible, when The Three-Body Problem, which was initially kept off the ballot by the trolls (and made it on when Marko Kloos did the honourable thing, all credit to him) actually won the Best Novel Hugo. If a winning candidate can be frozen out of the ballot by troll actions, we have a problem.
EPH (and EPH+) and 5/6 have addressed, but not solved, that problem. 3SV would be another step in the right direction. I think that step needs, still, to be taken. I’d agree that 3SV has problems of its own – it makes more work for everyone, and it’s got potential for abuse – but I’d still support it, unless someone can come up with a better idea.
3SV represents a very shiny temptation for trolls who have taken against authors like Scalzi and Jemisin. Whether they’d be able to meet the threshold is another matter.
Did that suggestion to add to the ballot instead of subtract go anywhere? (As in, if voters judge one or more nominees to be troll-nominees, a corresponding number of not-troll-nominees are added.)
I wouldn’t like to base decisions on the idea that the Rabids will stay at current levels or decline further. It doesn’t take a genius to think of scaling things down for a year to stifle support for further alterations to the rules. Even if the Pups are on life support, there’s no guarantee that similar slating won’t occur in future.
Finishing below No Award can also be added to wikipedia pages.
Which partly would solve Wikipedia, but not all other pages or news articles. Lets remember what has been on the nominee list and will be listed as final nominees on all public pages that care about the Hugo (wikipedia, SF bookstores, SF book sites and so on):
* A work where a prominent author was accused of being a rapist (shiny temptation it was).
* A work where all members of worldcon were accused of being pedophile apologists.
* A work where homosexuals were likened to those practicing zoophilia and necrophilia.
* A work saying that all homosexuals were pedophiles.
* Dinosaur pr0n.
And so on. EPH/EPH+ and 5/6 will not protect against this kind of works if there is only one work per category. The question is, what happens to the prestige and reputation of the Hugos if this kind of works are put on the ballot every year?
My guess is that it goes down a lot. And already has gone down a lot.
And US goes crazy every election year. We can only hope Worldcon has been forgotten when the next comes around.
My fear is that 3SV is a wider door to trolling. The reward for the troll is getting people to engage with what they are doing on some level.
I think that 3SV still would not solve the problem. I think, in fact, that it will make the problem worse.
3SV will move the Pups from: “The Hugos are corrupt because my favorite work is below no award” to “The Hugo Cabal has removed my favorite work from the ballot, preventing anyone from voting for it, because they KNOW it would have won.”
6) Lawn darts were banned. They poked someone’s eye out.
When I was nine, I used to climb up the cliffs that were left behind in an abandoned quarry. It was about three stories. . I used to wander in forests in Germany. I fell into a canal in France.
Clackers? pretty mild stuff.
Can’t ban foolhardiness.
For folks who are mainly worried about posterity and prestige of the Hugos, I’d think it should be possible to remove troll works as part of the second ballot, without requiring a separate third round. Basically, include an extra checkoff on the ballot saying something to the effect of “this entry should not be considered a finalist”. Then you remove entries from the published lists of finalists under some set of suitable conditions (e.g. they have a sufficient number of “not a finalist” checkoffs, and/or they lose to “No Award”.)
Technically speaking, then, each work passing the nomination stage would be considered a semifinalist, each work passing the checkoff test would be considered a finalist, and the winner would be considered the winner as before.
The advantages of this approach is that you don’t have to make extra time for a separate voting stage, which might make the time available for the usual voting rounds too short. Depending on the criteria, it could also make the finalist elimination round less vulnerable to griefer attacks like those that Meredith suggests above.
It does have the disadvantage that sufficiently backed troll submissions are still put up for consideration on the second ballot. But they can still be excluded from the final lists for posterity.
I haven’t been a Hugo voter, so I’m not going to strongly urge adoption or rejection of this plan. But, as I hadn’t seen a proposal like this mentioned earlier, I thought I’d put it out so that folks who do participate in the Hugos can consider it if they wish.
(13) Florida Man, Florida Man, Doing the things a Florida can…
I got a chance to visit the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam a while ago, and what you miss in reproductions of his art is the texture. He used so much paint that his canvasses are like little relief maps. It’s really something to see.
I think one point a lot of people are missing is this:
The threat of 3SV being voted in is largely responsible for the “dropping off” of puppy activity that we’ve seen this past year.
WSFS took action as quickly as the by-laws allowed, which still gave the puppies a window of opportunity; Now that 3SV is on the table, it is perceived by them as the strategy that will render their game ineffective.
Read what they’ve written on the subject. It is very apparent that they are running scared from 3SV. Why?
They KNOW Vox Day will never be on the ballot again; the KNOW that Castalia House publications will have to withstand real scrutiny and compete on an equal basis with all other works to be considered; they KNOW that Related Works will have to be more than just political screeds to make it. In short, they KNOW they’ll have to compete on a level playing field and that their previous track record when doing so has not been all that great.
As far as 3SV being used for future abusive purposes: I doubt it very much. Why? Fans do not play that way (unless they are puppies). They just don’t. The only time we’ll see this used in future is against obviously (OBVIOUSLY) inapropriate works.
Why do I have this “faith” in Fandom? Look at the track record. That’s all you need to do.
You don’t get rid of your police department because there’s been no crime in your town; you don’t stop taking your insulin because you feel good; and you don’t stop implementing effective voting strategies for the Hugos until the puppy nonsense has been ELIMINATED.
John Mark Ockerbloom: I hadn’t seen a proposal like this mentioned earlier, I thought I’d put it out so that folks who do participate in the Hugos can consider it if they wish.
What you’ve just described is the “No Award” option on the final ballot.
And whether it’s called “No Award” or “Remove from Finalists”, it has the same problem: by the time the results are announced, it’s been more than 4 months since the final ballot was announced, and a bunch of authors, artists, editors, publishers, podcasters, and bloggers have all added “Hugo Award Finalist” to the covers of their books, their websites, their official bios, their Amazon book descriptions, etc, etc, etc. And as Kevin Standlee has pointed out, there’s no way to legislate that horse back into the barn.
steve davidson: I think one point a lot of people are missing is this: The threat of 3SV being voted in is largely responsible for the “dropping off” of puppy activity that we’ve seen this past year.
Yeah, nah, it’s the passage of EPH which has caused the Puppies to mostly give up on griefing attempts; they only ended up with 6 poison pill finalists out of 108 this year (9 if you count the artists who got disqualified, and they were actually all valid artists), and they knew it was going to be a struggle to get any more under EPH.
3SV had nothing to do with the loss of interest on the Puppies’ part this year.
@John Mark Ockerbloom
An even simpler version of that was considered, which was to apply the same to anything finishing below No Award. IIRC the main issue was that sometime could legitimately print their book with “Hugo Finalist” in July and be made a liar in August.
Your suggestion of semi-finalist status does seem to avoid some of that – presumably the full finalists would be announced shortly after voting closes to allow the traditional “I’m a finalist woohoo” period to take place.
@Hampus
Hmmm, I don’t think that 3SV is in a category of its own – the others are all capable of discouraging trolling to the extent that it stops completely, although I admit the argument that they may not do so is a plausible one. 3SV is a valid attempt to strengthen the rules even further, but people questioning it aren’t ignoring anything, they’re disagreeing on the best way to achieve a shared goal.
GSLamb:
Well honestly, do we care about what the puppies say? I care more about what they do.
Mark:
There are different kinds of trolling. Slating is one. Harassment and griefing another. EPH, EPH+ and 3SV works for the first. 3SV for the other. What shall we do when a work again attacking a known author for who knows what is placed on the ballot? Say oops, we had hoped no one would do that again?
This is the internet. A known vulnerability will be exploited sooner or later.
Unless I’m reading the numbers wrong (possible)… Huh, this year there was a much higher minimum nominations to beat in the short fiction categories than there was in 2015. I wonder why.
Tom Becker wrote:
If participation is low (and 20% of the eligible members participating is a higher bar than most people think it is; see the voting numbers from 2015), then it doesn’t matter if every single person voting says No — it won’t be enough to disqualify the potential finalist. It’s not just “more no than yes.” There’s a minimum participation requirement based on the rather large turnout and participation percentage in 2015.
If the WSFS Business Meeting convenes with less than a quorum, it doesn’t matter if it votes unanimously to amend the constitution — the action is void. Similarly, 3SV is deliberately structured to make the “quorum” high enough to discourage the kinds of targeting you and others have suggested. If the minimum vote requirements included in the proposal aren’t high enough, then just about every modern Hugo Award is “invalid” for the same reason, because voter turnout is much lower than most people seem to think it is.
lurkertype wrote:
The 1984 Worldcon in Anaheim had the largest attendance, while the 2014 Worldcon in London had the largest total membership (and the largest attendance outside of the USA).
@Hampus
The non-3SV options cover all of those things, albeit not as directly. No-one is suggesting not tackling those things, they are just disagreeing on the best way.
I disagree strongly that having “manifestly unsuitable” works on the Hugo ballot is “not unacceptable.” It’s completely unacceptable to allow sabotage stunts like Stix Hiscock and the bigoted anti-LGBT Moira Greyland post to reach the ballot. It degrades the value of a Hugo Award for every legitimate nominee to let these trolling efforts continue. It also lets the awards ballot become an opportunity to spread malicious libel.
I’ve been voting in the Hugos for over a decade. If the business meeting has a chance to stop these stunts and decides it isn’t worth the effort, it tells me that voting in the Hugos isn’t worth my effort either. I strongly urge the attendees this year to support 3SV.
It isn’t antithetical to the Hugos to vote a work down. That has been possible for decades since the No Award option was introduced. Because of the puppies stunt and the large number of No Award categories in the 2015 Hugos, voting things down is already perceived as something that we will do to protect the integrity of our awards. 3SV just moves this up in the process.
I am currently battling with the temptation to play the role of Advocatus Diabolicus, so I shall quietly recuse myself from the Hugo nomination/voting method discussion.