Today the Sasquan Business Meeting will consider 4/6, E Pluribus Hugo plus other unfinished business and whatever shennanigans people have left in their deck at this point.
Livebloggers welcome.
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86 to 82 4/6 passes.
Adopted! Whew that was close.
86 for, 82 against, 4/6 is adopted and will be up for ratification next year at MidAmericon in Kansas City.
Rick Moen is mistaken. Amendments require simple majority
Hampus, I think Hoyt and Brian Z helped prompt a level of discussion about EPH that contrary to their aims actually increased support for it as EPH’s proponents were more than able to counter the FUD and b.s. with really good arguments about why EPH was both necessary and effective. Given that some BNFs at today’s business meeting weren’t in favor of EPH, that could have made a difference if EPH had not been exhaustively talked about by a lot of fans, some of whom were in today’s meeting.
@David W.: LOL!
It’s a drag that they didn’t get a sunset clause in. And wow, what a close vote; so a lot of people abstained? There were 248 votes for EPH, but only 168 for 4/6. Hmm, 4/6, which is kinda impossible to tell from past data what it would’ve done – unlike EPH (given the data). Well, it may fail next year – that was a very, very close vote. But I’m really surprised at so many folks abstaining – or did 80 people leave between the EPH vote and this one?
Lots of people left the room after the EPH vote.
SO now I guess we put EPH and 4/6 in an arena, and the anti-slate proposal that ends up standing is the winner? :’)
Warren Buff moves to send Best Series to committee for reconsideration next year. Standlee goofs and says “last year” and everyone votes for Time Travel.
@Morris Keesan: Thanks; that’s unfortunate, but understandable, as it seems more people were invested and interested in EPH.
Best Series sent to committee
Thanks to the Maker for these excellent results, and to the humans doing the legwork so that maths-challenged people like me understood both proposals, not to mention turning up to do the actual voting. I’d sure like to be part of the move to buy Kevin Standlee and Sasquan staff a drink …
Kevin Standlee is going to need either a nice long vacation or a TARDIS. (He accidentally talked about sending a motion to MAC2 ‘last year’, to much laughter.)
@Morris Keesan: Mea culpa. Up too late last night, and the coffee here is/was weak sauce. (I also made the noble sacrifice and brought the last of it to my wife, while the evil decaf mocked me.)
I am not at the Business Meeting and have no way of knowing, but it certainly seems to me that widespread efforts to spread the word about EPH and explain how it works online to multiple groups of people multiple times may have helped.
I also note that the careful efforts of EPH developers and supporters to come up with the clearest explanations they could, and to title it and introduce it well probably also helped.
In the absence of those things I think the opposition of a couple of big name fans with well established reputations might have killed the whole thing.
Thanks to the attendees for passing EPH.
Tonight we shall feast upon puppy-flesh!
Proposed Constitutional Amendment B.1.6: Nominee Diversity
(10 minutes allocated for debate
Donald Westlake speaking for, says this is needed for recent increase in number of finalists on the ballot where authors/shows have numerous slots. Says unlike EPH, this would prevent majority of nominators from monopolizing Dramatic categories with one TV series, or Fiction categories with numerous entries by one author.
So please enlighten us; which big name fans opposed EPH?
@Stevie,
At least at one point on his blog, GRRM said that it would be overhasty to change the nomination process to reduce the impact of slates. I don’t remember if he called out EPH by name, but it would certainly fall under that rubric.
Also at least one former(?) Hugo Administrator spoke against EPH at this meeting saying it would add hours more work to counting the nominations.
ETA
@Microtherion
Speaking for myself I have no desire to feast on Puppy flesh. I simply desire to keep Puppies from locking everyone else out of the ballot. EPH does not “destroy” puppies, it simply limits them to representation roughly proportional to their numbers.
I’m heartened by EPH’s support from other “big name fans.” 😀
I’m not sure I like B.1.6, especially with EPH in play. But I suspect B.1.6 will pass by a wider margin than 4/6 did. /prognostication
@Cally: “Woo-Hoo! I couldn’t be a co-sponsor, since I’m not a member of this year’s Worldcon, but I did help work on EPH in my own small way. I’m wearing my E Pluribus Hugo ribbon with pride.”
Same here. I’m amused to see the precise 3:1 vote split, and I want to know more about the sunset provision and whether the 5% threshold will be affected, but overall… I’m pleased.
Speaker against, this is not at all democratic and is unfair.
Kate Secor moves to change wording from “an author in common” to “an author for single author works or two or more authors for co-authored works in common”.
Kronengold asks, if amended wording passed, how would a single author work and a co-authored work with that author in common?
Standlee says one criteria for single author works, another for multi-author works.
Eastlake? Or a ghost, perhaps? (Or am I so far out of touch that there *is* a person named Donald Westlake at the con?)
I’m betting there will be a sunset clause added to 4 and 6 when it comes up for ratification next year.
Kate Secor’s very wise – that’s a very good suggestion!
@Wildcat: That can be done? Groovy – if so, then hopefully it is added. It makes sense for the same reasons as I believe folks wanted one for EPH (which IMHO didn’t really need a sunset clause anyway).
Also massively opposed to EPH was Ben Yalow, who won the Bigheart Fan Award last night.
Ben Yalow has been opposing every change?
@Stevie: John Lorentz (2015 Hugo Administrator), Warren Buff, Todd Dashoff, Glenn Glazer, John Pomeranz, Mark Olson, Rick Kovalcik. However, with great respect to the awesome job Rachael Acks (sitting two seats to my left) has been doing with liveblogging), please do these very thoughtful people the favour of seeing the YouTube video so you hear what they said in full. All of these people are legitimately in favour of WSFS democracy and raise real concerns.
Edited to add: Above list is those who spoke in opposition to EPH during today’s session. There were were others before.
Yesterday’s Big Heart award winner Ben Yallow was against EPH. My guess is that there were more than a dozen SMOFs against EPH because of concerns about complexity, difficulty to implement, or that EPH is undemocratic.
Susan: Eastlake? Or a ghost, perhaps? (Or am I so far out of touch that there *is* a person named Donald Westlake at the con?)
Probably, I’m trying to type really fast and listen at the same time, and it’s actually difficult to try to catch everything new while still typing the previous sentences.
Yet another serpentine.
@Soon Lee: Ben’s a classic conservative — he seems to resist most changes, from what I’ve seen at the several Worldcon business meetings I’ve attended. His support of 4/6 sounds tepid (from the liveblogging) and not well thought out. Mark Olson strikes me as similar in being resistant-to-change.
@Bruce: That’s hilarious, because to me EPH is more democratic. I’m guessing some of these folks don’t like the final voting method, either, though, and would just prefer first-past-the-post for everything. . . . /snark
Yay, it sounds like Secor’s change passed!
Nominee diversity, serpentine vote. 71 for, 60 against. Motion passes
Didn’t mean to be critical, JJ, and if it sounded that way I apologize. I did want to be sure it was Donald Eastlake, since he has such a fannish history.
Thanks for the quick update, @Morris Keesan! I agree with a commenter at the mtg that it’s undemocratic, but I understand the two reasons folks may like it (#1 JCW; #2 Dr. Who).
I’m gone.
Motion to adjourn sine die in memory of Bobbie DuFault and Peggy Rae Sapienza, which would kill the remaining proposal and end the Business Meeting for this year.
Rick Kovalchik against, would like to present committee report first, even though everyone is tired.
Terry Neal, Electronic Signature proposal creator, asks for just a little time.
Motion fails.
Thanks for the liveblogging, @Morris (and others – just shouting out to Morris since he’s leaving)!
There’s obviously quite a bit of diversity of opinion among well-respected fen over EPH–I didn’t mean to present this as BNF-opposed or anything.
But I think of GRRM has having a big audience that seriously considers what he has to say and I was a bit worried when he seemed (to me) to come out against it.
Proposed Constitutional Amendment B.1.8: Electronic Signature
(12 minutes allocated for debate)
Add sections to allow Worldcons to offer electronic signature for site selection if all site bids agree. Worldcons must offer the option to receive a paper site selection ballot, but may also charge a fee for associated costs.
I gather from one or two of the statements againt the proposal their perception is that if you can’t explain EPH in as few words as the current selection process of “the nominees with the most votes”, it will be seen as undemocratic.
Last one. We are pretty exhausted here.
@JJ: Thanks for summarizing the proposal; I’d forgotten just what it was about (was going to check on sasquan.org). And good grief, yes; site selection needs to modernize – it’s just silly it requires mailing in specially-origami’d paper (they messed up the PDF this year and their corrected version wasn’t posted when claimed, when I was printing/mailing).
Kate Secor is speaking to introduce the revised, compromise-version Electronic Signature motion. Describes problems people had with voting in site selection from remote in the 2015 election. ‘We are not mandating any [specific] technical means. We’re leaving [methods] up to each Committee….’
Judy Beamis, admin ifor the 2015 vote, speaking against, saying she thinks it should be sent to committee to ensure that practical concerns are all addressed.
Me too. I think I would make a terrible parliamentarian.
Thank you for all of the updates on the Business meeting! I appreciate it very much, and all of the talk about it as well.
I am finding it fairly surrealistic that, since I generally avoid Worldcon Business Meetings like a plague, I have spent most of the afternoon in front of the computer reading live blogs of today’s Business Meeting (much thanks to Rachel Acks and Mike Glyer and company).
Ooh, got heated. Speaker ruled out of order by the chair. Again, we’re all pretty tired here.
What about, instead of a Hugo for “Best Series”, a Hugo for “Best Entry In An Ongoing Series”? Because what holds back books in a series from getting the Big One is the high bar for new readers to get involved, so why not have a Hugo just for series works? Said books would also be eligible for the regular Hugo if they were so outstanding they were the favorite of series and non-series fans alike.
That way, instead of voting for the worth of the entire series in one year, people would vote for things like A Dance With Dragons, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Skin Game, or the latest Monster Hunter International offering if that’s their cup of Puppy Kibble, without having to deal with the bias against them in the main novel category. You’d vote for the actual book, not for “A Song of Ice And Fire” or “Harry Potter” or “The Dresden Files.” That would relieve the bias against series novels when placed against one-off novels or series starters like Ancillary Justice and Three Body Problem.
Yes, I know that this would have to be refined and the definitions clarified — Are the Ancillary books part of an ongoing series? How about Three Body Problem, which has a sequel? — but I see it as far more workable than a vote for “Best Series” overall. And since few authors put out a new series novel every year (with the possible exception of CJ “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop” Cherryh) there wouldn’t be one series locking up the Hugo every year, a la Doctor Who in Short Drama, or Girl Genius for the first three years of the Graphic Novel vote.
@Cat, I entirely agree with your assessment of what EPH will and will not do, and I’m perfectly happy with that outcome. My admittedly intemperate bit of gloating was aimed at the puppies’ plans to destroy/dominate the Hugos. Yesterday’s results limited the damage created by this year’s nominations a bit, and with today’s passage of EPH against all the tactics & rhetoric deployed against it, there is the prospect of a foreseeable end to slate tactics.
For me, reason enough to let my inner orc off the leash for a minute.
More from proponent of the original motion Terry Neill, stressing that this is a recommendation from the Business Meeting, not a set of requirements.
Jared Dashoff: Seems to be saying this isn’t going to change much as revised, so we shouldn’t be taking the time to do it(?).
Joni Dashoff (who along with Bemis handled incoming ballots): Started in, cut off by Chair Standlee on grounds that her debating the substance was not in order at this time, as we’re only considering whether or not to put the revised motion on the table in substitute for the original motion to then be considered.
Rick Kovalcik made some point. (Sorry, I’m falling behind.)
Then Kevin re-clarified what the motion currently on the floor is. Request for clarification from the floor about the difference between the original and the proposed revision. Motion related to that. Fails. Back to whether to replace the original motion with the proposed revision, which then would be considered. Passes.