By Jameson Quinn
1. Intro and disclaimers
This is a summary of the discussion thread on the post by Kevin Standlee discussing three proposals for expanding the Hugo nominations process in order to help avoid problems like the current list of Hugo finalists.
In summarizing a thread that’s over 500 comments long, and that refers extensively to two other threads with hundreds of comments, I am of course going to simplify matters. In particular, I’m going to overemphasize the points of agreement, without listing every qualification, caveat, quibble, or outright objection that was brought up. Obviously you can read the thread yourself, but if you don’t, please imagine it to have all the disagreement and misunderstandings (as well as off-topic filk, execrable puns, cute references, hastily-constructed codes, etc.) that you’d expect.
2. Initial options: A+2, DN, and 3SV
Of the three initial proposals by Kevin, one of them (nicknamed “+2” or “A+2”) relied on giving new discretionary powers to Hugo administrators. In the discussion thread this idea encountered significant opposition, so it will not be discussed further here.
The other two proposals would both create a new intermediate round of voting, in which the initial votes have been used to create a “longlist” of 15 works which is publicized and voted on in some fashion in order to get the list of 5 finalists. In the Double Nomination with Approval Voting (“DN”) proposal, nominators would vote for (“approve”) the longlist items they liked the best; and in the 3-Stage Voting (“3SV”) proposal, a majority of nominators would be able to disqualify some of the 15 works, without affecting the ordering of the remaining works from the nominations phase.
3. Consensus: 3SV (+1?)
Many of the participants in the discussion began with a preference for DN; they felt better about voting for the longlist works they liked than about voting to reject the ones they felt were illegitimate. However, as the thread progressed, and the strengths and weaknesses of the two proposals were analyzed in more depth, the consensus shifted, and by the end of the thread proposals based primarily on 3SV were the clear winners. Many supported a proposal nicknamed 3SV+1, described below, which integrated some aspects of DN onto the base of 3SV.
4. Why 3SV and not DN?
Why did people’s preferences shift from DN to 3SV? Several reasons:
A. Under DN, voters would have just weeks to assimilate and vote on a list of 255 longlisted items. Many of the most careful nominators would barely vote for any; while the most prolific voters would probably be going mostly by kneejerk reactions. This is true for 3SV, too, but it is less of an issue as explained below.
B. DN conflates two questions: “Do I like this work and feel it may deserve a Hugo?” with “Do I feel that this work’s presence on the longlist or in the list of finalists would be a legitimate result of honest fan preference?” In 3SV, those questions are separate, and votes to disqualify a work are based on the second question alone — one which does not require fully reading/reviewing every longlist work.
C. Unlike DN, 3SV would deal decisively with the issue of “troll finalists”: that is, works promoted by slates explicitly in order that their shocking and/or offensive nature might cast discredit on the awards.
D. 3SV would be similar in spirit to the “no award” option, except that works thus eliminated would not take up space on the list of finalists, and awkward moments at the awards themselves would be minimized.
E. DN would open up new kinds of attacks on the list of finalists, such as actually increasing slate voter’s capacity to act as “kingmakers” and/or perform “area defense” against certain kinds of works. All they’d have to do was to have enough voting power to reverse the gap between two works which both have significant organic (non-slate) support. But under 3SV, actually eliminating a work would not be possible without a relatively high “quorum”* of voters, and we hope that community pressure would lead to a low background level of organic rejection votes, so a minority of slate voters would be unable to use rejection as a weapon.
So, tell me more about how 3SV would work
The details are still up for discussion, but the basic idea is as follows:
3-Stage Voting (3SV) adds a new round of voting to the Hugo Award process, called “semi-finals,” between the existing nominating ballot and the existing final ballot. In 3SV, the “longlist” of top 15 nominees (as selected by the same process as the finalists will be selected; that is, EPH or EPH+ if those have passed) are listed in a way that doesn’t show how many nominations they received. Eligibility for this voting is being debated (see below), but the original proposal is that it would be restricted to members (supporting and attending) of the current Worldcon (not the previous and following Worldcons). Eligible voters presented with this list, with a question on each of the fifteen semi-finalists in each category: “Is this work worthy of being on the Final Hugo Award Ballot?” with the choices being YES, NO, and ABSTAIN.
If a work gets more than a “quorum” of no votes, it is not eligible to become a finalist. There are several proposals for how to calculate the quorum. The formula may involve such things as the number of eligible voters, the number of “YES” and/or “ABSTAIN” votes, the turnout in round 1 or in previous years, etc. The idea is that the quorum should be high enough so that a minority of slate voters will be unable to reach it, but low enough that a clear majority of fans can pass it, even given reasonable turnout assumptions.
During the “semi-final” voting period, admins would also be checking the eligibility of the works on the longlist, and accepting withdrawals from the author (or other responsible party; henceforth, we’ll just say “author”) of those works. The admins would make a good-faith attempt to contact authors, but note that since the longlist is public, the admins may assume that non-responsive authors have heard of their presence on the longlist, and thus that any authors who do not explicitly withdraw their works would accept becoming finalists.
The finalists will be the top 5 works from the longlist that have not been declared ineligible by vote, found ineligible by the admins, or withdrawn by the authors. EPH or EPH+ would not be re-run after ineligible works or withdrawals.
After the Hugos are awarded, admins would publish the usual statistics (that is, for EPH, the votes and points-when-eliminated for each of the members of the longlist). They would also publish the reason for ineligiblity (voted out, ineligible, or withdrawn) for any work that otherwise would have been a finalist. They would also publish the anonymized set of vote totals for each longlist item in each category, where “anonymized” means that they would not indicate which title was associated with which vote total.
What’s this “3SV+1” you mentioned earlier?
The “+1” means that, in addition to 3SV, all voters who were eligible for round 1 may add a single nomination per category, for something from the longlist they did not already nominate, to their existing ballot, during the same “semi-final” voting period. These combined ballots would then be counted by the usual process (that is, the current system, EPH, or EPH+) to find the finalists.
How would all of this interact with EPH, EPH+, 4/6, and/or 5/6?
The short version is that without EPH a realistically-sized, well managed slate could hope to entirely take over the longlist in many categories; with EPH, it could take about 2/3 (around 10 slots); and with EPH+, it could take over about half (6-8 slots), or possibly a bit more with cleverer strategies (but not as much as EPH, even then). 4/6 or 5/6 don’t change that story by much, though they help a bit in keeping organic slots among the finalists in spite of “kingmaker” slates. And +1 helps push slates towards around 1-2 finalist slots; hurting them in the common case that they had been going to get more, but actually helping them if they had miscalculated and were heading for less than that.
Here’s a graph of how many slots slate nominators could have gotten in 2014, as a function of number of slate nominators, if they’d split 3 ways and had the same level of coordination as they did in 2015. Note that 2016 had many more nominators than 2014 so it would have taken more slate nominators to get the same effect.
Here’s a similar graph, but assuming the slate nominators are better coordinated:
Here’s yet another graph, but assuming the slate voters split only 2 ways. In theory, this is better for them if there are fewer of them, but worse if there are more, because they max out at 10 slots. However, as you can see from the graph, it’s really not that much better even for small numbers; the random “bootstrap sampling” effects almost overwhelm any advantage:
Have you thought of any downsides? What about…
Yes, kinda. We have people (both honest supporters and honest opponents) thinking of attacks. And there’s always room for more on this “red team”. So far, here are the criticisms we’ve come up with. First, for “3SV” (we’ll talk about “+1” below):
Couldn’t slate voters take over the shortlist? As you can see in the graphs “take over 6-10 slots of the longlist” is the only one that we think is a concern if (as we expect) EPH or EPH+ is in place.
Wouldn’t this just increase negativity? There are several safeguards against this becoming merely an excuse for people to campaign against works they happen not to like. First and most important is social pressure; it should be clear from the outset that this is a just safeguard against outright bad faith, not a chance to express differences in taste, and I believe that any Worldcon members who promote disqualifying a work just because they don’t like it will not get much support. Second, there’s eligibility. Various rules, discussed below in “open issues”, have been proposed to prevent a campaign to bring in Worldcon outsiders after the longlist is public. Third, there’s the quorum; if participation in the second-round voting is low, it will not be enough to pass the threshold to eliminate any work. Fourth, there’s the relatively short period of the semifinals, also discussed below. And fifth, there’s the fact that elimination votes for a specific work would never be publicized; only anonymized distributions of votes for each category. (In some cases, of course, the identity of which work got a certain vote total would be easy to guess, but that would still be just a guess.)
Wouldn’t this fundamentally change the nature of the Hugos? They have already been changed by the slate. Many of the people in the discussion felt that this change, though it would not go back to exactly as before, would still be a change in the right direction.
Would this be more work for the administrators? In some ways, yes, of course. However, in at least one important way, it would actually simplify their lives. Since the longlist would be public, it would be much easier for them to contact authors. On a related note, authors could not leak their status as finalists, because until the list of finalists came out, they would know no more than the public at large.
Would this allow some unanticipated downside? Obviously, we can never rule that out 100%. However, we do think we’ve been pretty thorough at exploring all the angles. Again, you can read the thread and decide for yourself.
And, downsides for the +1 addition:
Would this be tough to administrate? Not if EPH or EPH+ were in place, since any program capable of doing either of these would already be able to associate multiple nominations with the same nominator and make sure that invalid votes, such as a single nominator nominating a given work multiple times, were not counted. It has been suggested that a proposal to institute +1 should say that this change will sunset (require re-approval) if EPH or EPH+ ever does.
What are the open questions/issues?
Eligibility: who should be eligible to vote on the semifinal round, and who should be able to add +1? The former question is more fraught. Several people said that they would want eligibility to be restricted enough that outsiders can’t come in and get memberships after the longlist is published. Others said that it is important to let the community respond and that if membership spikes on seeing the longlist that could be a healthy thing. One compromise proposal (suggested by yours truly) was that in order to be eligible, you would need to be a current member (attending or supporting) of this year’s Worldcon, AND also have been eligible to nominate (whether or not you actually did so). So if you were a member of the prior or following year’s worldcon, you could sign up after seeing the longlist; but not if you weren’t.
Quorum size/formula: There’s been various discussion of this issue.
+1 as attached or separate: The overall consensus seems to be that, if we propose +1, it should be in a separate proposal from 3SV, even though they share certain aspects (such as the concept of a semi-final round). However, there are varying opinions on whether +1 is a good idea, either in general or as a proposal for this year in particular.
Whether to try EPH+ this year: I’ll talk about this more in comments.
The admin discretion 14-18 longlist thing: I was thinking that, if the time between closing round 1 nominations and announcing the longlist is short, admins might have a hard time cleaning the data perfectly. In that case, it helps them be more certain of the list they publish if the next work below the list was not a near-tie with the lowest work on the list. To allow them to avoid such near-ties, especially in cases where they aren’t 100% sure they’ve cleaned the data perfectly, I suggested allowing them discretion to decide how long the longlist for each category would be, between 14 and 18 works.
https://file770.com/?p=29020&cpage=14#comment-436327: Define “nominating membership” in a way that legally allows for the possibility of a code of conduct that could lead to one year’s worldcon revoking voting privileges from a member of the prior year’s; in other words, closes the loophole whereby prior-year members are immune from any consequences for their actions.
Moderated Shortlist for Member Consideration: https://file770.com/?p=29020&cpage=16#comment-436437 This is an alternative to 3SV, where an administrative committee would tentatively suggest eliminating or adding certain works, and that suggestion would have to be ratified by an up-or-down vote of the members of the current Worldcon.
Where do we go from here?
A group led by Colin Harris that includes Kevin Standlee is writing up a proposal are writing up a proposal and are surely watching these threads. When that proposal is ready, we could write up +1 as an amendment or as a standalone proposal. Decide about EPH+ and deal with that. Anything else?
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How about you try to think about what you said, and say it again in a form that means something specific (if in fact there is any specific potential problem you’re thinking of)?
I don’t see a way to preemptively downcheck bad actors without empowering a person or small group to designate those bad actors.
And I don’t see the Business Meeting accepting that.
Actually, Greg, under the “top up to 5” system, slate voters would probably get one or two additional nominations, because I would expect EPH to knock one or two of their choices off the longlist. (That quibble aside, I agree that Jameson’s objection was not well taken.)
@Steven desJardins
Hmm. Good point. Looking at my spreadsheet, I estimate they’d get one additional nomination in Best novella and BELF, two additional nominations in BDPLF and BESF, and three in Best Novel. +1 gives them one extra nomination in all categories.
So I think it’s still a win.
I’d estimate that would only be true in 5 categories, but those are important ones. However, we really can’t stop them from kingmaking on the final ballot either.
@Kevin said:
WSFS has on the whole been extremely reluctant to vest anyone but the membership as a whole with the right to determine whether a nominee is award-worthy. If you allow the Committee to throw out ballots for any non-technical reason, you effectively allow them to decide who wins the award, regardless of how people voted. It’s a “trust no one” form of governance. Even the limited amount of trust we give Administrators is tempered by requiring certain statistics be published so we can check up on how they did after the fact.
I think that while Jim Henley has effectively stated that the “character of the Hugos” will change – that ship has already sailed – Kevin makes it clear that any modification that gives a small group discretion in modifying the ballot will constitute the biggest change of all, and therefore should be a last resort.
The whole argument against a slate (a general one, not the specific Puppies slates) is that it gives a minority too much influence on the process. How can Juries and super-powered administrators not be subject to the same criticism? Two wrongs don’t make a right, do they?
Another concern that I haven’t seen discussed is:
Right now, anyone who is unhappy with how a particular Hugo was awarded has only the process and the membership as a whole to complain about – there are no specific overt targets who can be blamed. Once the Hugo Award Administration Subcommittee, or a Jury, or any other small group starts deleting works from the ballot, then VD and his followers have specific people to hate – and that’s a hell of a situation for those people to be in. See what happened to Zoë Quinn, Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian once Gamergaters took an interest in them. Is it appropriate to put the relevant administrators into a position where they might be doxed, swatted, or get rape and death threats? Giving the admins these powers changes the job from a semi-anonymous accountant to being the front face of what griefers view as a culture war.
Awards administrators from Loncon 3 and Sasquan are listed here and here. I hope that any business meeting that considers giving future committees this authority has input from some of these people – would they have wanted the power? What would Sasquan administrators have done with the power if it had been available last year – would they have deleted RP works from the ballot, or abstained and let No Award win (in the face of aggressive RP harassment, how does the Worldcon membership compel the HAAS to wield its veto power)? Would they have even volunteered at all, in such a situation? (and my assumption is that they are all upright and ethical people who want what is best for the awards — I mean no disrespect to them at all by asking rhetorical questions).
@ Stoic Cynic
Let’s empower admins to handle the problem. As an out of band solution it can’t be gamed
Griefers may not be able to game the system within the “band” (i.e., you may be able to come up with a nomination process that yields a ballot that has minimal griefer input), but they can game it out of band. Remember, their goal isn’t to win Hugos – it is to screw with the system.
Because what they do is remove the influence of the slate, not add their own. Of course, they will be attacked by slaters. But slaters will always be on attack, regardless what happens. Unless we give them the awards and close shop.
Re Jameson “-A clean 3SV proposal.
-An MSMC amendment to the 3SV proposal, which states that a panel (chosen by the previous WorldCon?) has the power to cancel the 3SV election for any or all works if it determines that there is no legitimate doubt that they were nominated in good faith and {whatever language we want to include about being free of grossly offensive/libelous/whatever content}.
If both of these passed, then next year’s Worldcon could clearly choose to ratify 3SV alone, as a “lesser change” than the amended MSMC version of 3SV actually passed.”
I’m not in a position to rule definitively on the subject (I’m not a lawer or parlimentarian, but I -am- a very effective rules lawyer, and the first thing I ever did in the BM involved a lesser change), but…this isn’t how a lesser change -works-.
Fundamentally, a lesser change, by BM lights, is what happens when the ratifying BM chooses to only ratify -part- of a change. That’s it.
This isn’t just limited to amending the original change via strikeout because it’s possible to remove part of a change by other means (for instance, amending “4 and 6” to either “5 and 6” or “4 and 5” would be a lesser change specifically because either change would strike one of the two changes embedded in the proposal and restore that section to a status quo). But it doesn’t take into account any changes made to an amendment as part of adoption; instead, the BM has to examine any given proposed metamendment and determine whether that amendment purely and only restores some section of the amendment under consideration to status quo (ie, a “lesser change”), or whether it is in fact in any way more substantial than that. So while it’s hard to imagine a MSMC version of 3SV that would be removable via a lesser change, the process it was added with wouldn’t be in any way relevant.
As a matter of opinion, I do think that 3SV is a good idea (but like Jameson, I’d prefer to have Accept/Reject/Abstain with the default (and the default ballot for all eligible voters who do not submit one) being Abstain, with the purpose of Accept being that if a work got more Accept votes than Reject votes, it would not be Rejected even if it passed the threshold that would normally cause a Reject). I don’t like 3SV+1; it seems to me that any such measure is subject to gamability, as it allows a work to be added to the process at a point where it cannot be rejected via 3SV — and thus is too easy as a vehicle for strategy.
I also don’t like any of the moderation proposals. Of course, the Hugo administrators -can- reject ballots in the case of gross fraud; the rules do still specfiy that each ballot has to be associated with a single, specific person. But unlike MTV, we don’t have a single trusted governing board, but instead a government of the willing, which is not well suited to giving people arbitary judgemental responsibilities.
Where was EPH+ described? I keep seeing references to it, but without links or descriptions of the changes between it and EPH.
There is something about this process of trying to figure out how to thwart griefers that reminds me of Person of Interest, or the last few seasons at least. Hopefully without evoking too much of a spoiler, the problem here seems to be what to do when one side has ethical lines they aren’t willing to cross (or just feel there are certain actions that go against the original goal) and the other side doesn’t appear to have such restrictions, in the absence of any kind of bigger governing body with the ability to enforce playing by “the rules”. How do you win such a scenario? Hopefully it won’t take the playing out of a hundred million scenarios to figure it out @_@
@ Hampus
Because what they do is remove the influence of the slate, not add their own.
In the special case of RP, one would hope so. But they have power to do more (or less) than that. I can see a utilitarian argument for super-administrators, but if what you really want is admins that are a shortcut to getting to what the membership wants, it is better to come up with a way where it is the membership actually doing it.
Joshua, could you explain this? It sounds like you may be under the impression that +1 allows write-ins, which it doesn’t: it simply allows voters to add up to one work from the longlist to their existing ballot. All of the works on the longlist can be rejected via 3SV.
@Joshua Kronengold:From the previous thread, EPH+ refers to EPH with different divisors as in:
Joshua Kronengold on May 24, 2016 at 12:40 pm said:
EPH uses weights of 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/5. EPH+ would uses weights of 1, 1/3, 1/5, 1/7, and 1/9. It’s similar to the Sainte-Laguë voting method. You can think of the current system as being equivalent to EPH with weights of 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.
Attacks on the integrity of the admins from Puppies both Sad and Rabid have been a feature of the campaigns for some time now. Allegations of conspiracy and secret dealings have been thrown at them by Dave Freer and Larry Correia for example. Now, from the other direction, we have the likes of Damien Walters saying that the Admins should just ban the rabids and that by not doing so they are effectively permitting the attacks. In short the admins are already getting a heap of crap piled on their heads because of the actions of the griefers. Griefers know this, they love that sort of thing because it makes people not want to do the job. It’s why angry yobs attack referees at amateur sports matches.
Yes, whoever was on a moderating panel etc would be, in the short term, a target for abuse by girefers. That is a *reason* to have a panel so that the abuse, which will happen, will be aimed by the girefers at that group rather than admins in general. The people on that panel (assuming anybody is willing to volunteer)* will be sticking their head above the parapet.
*[Yes, that is an obvious issue with trying to having a panel. If it is a job that nobody trustworthy wants then the idea of a panel is moot]
@Bill:
That’s a good point I hadn’t considered.
I’m a moderator at heart, and generally speaking I’d support some form of trusted moderation in a second if there were any hope of it; that’s basically the only reason the good parts of the internet work. But this is an excellent point, which bolsters my support of 3SV, already strong, even higher.
The most prominent awards that seem analogous to the Hugos are the Academy Awards – a large body of members selects from a nominated shortlist the “best” movies, actors, directors, etc.
The rules for the AAs are here.
There are similarities and differences in the Hugos and AAs. Some comments:
1. Different Academy Awards have different nomination processes (some by vote of the Academy, some by Jury or equivalent). Would the Hugos benefit from something similar?
2. I seem to recall that back in the Studio era, slates were very prominent – members of the academy were told how to fill out their ballots by the studios they worked for. It is not obvious that the selections made back then were worse or better than now (presuming current members are more independent in their voting). This may be an argument that counter-slates _can_ work (not an argument that they should be used, though). Current rules that limited campaigning for the awards are here.
3. That same addendum provides that the Academy Board of Governors can take corrective action in response to campaigning or if it is necessary “protect the reputation and integrity of the awards process.” Note that these both refer to the process – there seems to be no provision for removing a work based on its content (harassing, etc).
4. The rules for AA nominating are not as transparent as those for Hugos. See, for example Rule Five #5 “In nominations . . . tabulation of all ballots shall be according to the preferential, weighted average, or reweighted range voting system . . . Tabulation of final ballots shall be according to the plurality or preferential system.” Yet these methods are not well defined (what are the weights used?). (Note that wikipedia says that nominations are done by Single Transferrable Vote, and winners are selected by plurality voting).
5. Films have to be submitted to the Academy for consideration, and the Academy makes a “reminder list” available to its members of eligible works. It occurs to me that this is different from the Hugos, and if the Hugo process was made to be similar (works have to be specifically submitted and declared eligible to be considered), that provides another opportunity to remove problematic works – they are never made eligible to start with. Obviously this is a big accounting change, but possibly worth considering.
6. Somehow (not stated), the number of actors and actresses on the reminder list is reduced to 10 each before the Academy members reduce the list to five nominees. So someone has super-administrative power. Members are told to select nominees in order of preference, but apparently the ballots are counted without respect to this order.
@ Camestros Attacks on the integrity of the admins from Puppies both Sad and Rabid have been a feature of the campaigns for some time now.. . . the admins are already getting a heap of crap piled on their heads because of the actions of the griefers.
Yes, but I fear that if the 2018 award specifically eliminate Vox Day’s most recent short story by name, the intensity of attacks will get much worse.
@Camestros: There’s going to be a big difference between griefing admins with “You administered when a huge portion of WorldCon membership rejected our items” and “You personally chose to reject Work X from the shortlist.” For one thing, the accusations aren’t going to be nearly as specific. And they’d have a much harder time trying to put up a wedge between admins and individual authors.
(Note to Red Team: Putting up a wedge between uninvolved authors and the Hugos is a hypothetical form of attack. Get some hungry authors eager for promotion up on a slate, choose the ones who’ve proved sensitive and none too savvy on netiquette, and you’re going to get a whole new band of people howling at the Hugos. Self-perpetuating outrage ensues.)
(…Damn, I wish I hadn’t thought of that.)
…And that leads me to another thought:
Do the Hugos have anybody doing PR and community management? Particularly with regards to, well, this?
Could they have somebody?
I’m just thinking that being able to have official statements (“NO, WE ARE NOT SAYING YOU ARE NOT REAL FANS.” “NO, NOBODY HAS SAID YOU ARE NOT HUMAN BEINGS”) might be able to nip a fair amount of the outrage cycle in the bud. It’d give us canonical, official sources. It’d give anybody being introduced to the issue some official sources, instead of wading into an internet drama several years in.
Imagine the situation I just described: Griefers deliberately nominate a slate of authors known for going berserk over bad reviews. Yes we’d get a whole internet full of reaction blogposts, and many of them would be excellent, but wouldn’t it be nice to know there was somebody on the administration side of things making sure there was a helpful, clear, official response, ready and waiting, before the shitstorm got too far?
Wouldn’t it be nice to know there was somebody really capable who’d be able to set everything else aside the minute the Rabid Puppy 2016 slate is published, consider, respond, and have that posted to the Hugo blog?
This is a sudden thought for me. I may be way off on this. But… I don’t know. It sounds like something that could make a real difference, without touching the nomination process at all.
@Bill:
Are you referring to this rule?
If so, that’s referring to the producers of a film submitting no more than 20 cast members from their film to be mentioned on their reminder list. So an Oscar reminder list with 300 movies on it could include up to 3,000 actresses and 3,000 actors (although probably fewer than that; some movies have very small casts, or too few cast members of one gender or the other to fill out the 10 entries for that gender, or more likely have only a few performances that could be considered plausibly award-worthy).
@Standback
I know there are different notions of panels knocking around. Personally I wouldn’t want a panel to chuck things out just for because of slates or campaigns. I think +2, EPH, No Award and fan outrage are a sufficient solution to that problem.
My concern is abusive nominations, disruptive ones and flat out cheating.
From the minutes of the Sasquan Business Meeting:
Thank you, Mike 🙂
I’d be glad to hear thoughts and responses from the Filers, but the Marketing Committee definitely seems like the right place to ask. Thanks!
On the topic of outrage. I spent awhile going through the archives at Vox Popoli. Prior, during and in the immediate aftermath of VDs expulsion from the SFWA there were a plethora of outraged and lengthy posts by VD on the perfidious nature of the SFWA. Then the volume drops precipitously. Why? Because shouting was all he could do by that point – and he switches to the Hugos instead.
Shut down the capacity to do mischief and the griefers move on (aside from sporadic complaints).
…in case I’ve gone and buried the lede again, I’d love thoughts on my “Note to Red Team” above.
Call it the Hornets’ Nest Attack…
@Bill
I won’t discount your concerns about harassment. At that point though the griefers have crossed into criminal activity and possibly criminal conspiracy. If we’re taking the possibility of illegal actions into consideration we might as well shut WorldCon down. There’s a high likelihood of No Award in multiple categories this year. It might upset someone. Griefers might call in bomb threats. Crazies might actually bring bombs. There could be an active shooter at the first sign of an asterisk. Do we call the whole thing off?
To change the Hugo rules to do anything similar to what the Oscars do seems unworkable in multiple ways to me.
1. If a film is eligible for the Oscar for Best Picture, then normally it’s eligible in many of the other Oscar categories too: Best Directing, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, etc. By contrast, most works that are eligible for a Hugo are eligible only in a single category. Thus, the total number of different works that can be considered for an Oscar in a given year is much more limited than the number that can be considered at the Hugos.
2. The Oscars have fairly restrictive criteria regarding what films are eligible. In the mainstream film categories, the film must have been released in Los Angeles County during the calendar year, in a theater, for at least seven consecutive days, without having been released on television, DVD, or the Internet in the United States before the theatrical release.
By contrast, the Hugos tend to avoid medium-dependent eligibility restrictions. In the fiction categories, a work can be eligible if released in print, or on the Internet, or in audio format. Eligible works in the dramatic presentations can be theatrical films, or television productions, or direct-to-DVD or direct-to-Internet productions, or radio dramas, or stage presentations, or whatever else we can think of. Furthermore, the Hugos are open to works published anywhere in the world, unlike the Oscars. So making eligibility judgments before people start sending in their Hugo nominations would be difficult.
3. Requiring works to be submitted for Hugo eligibility could be problematic in at least two ways: (a) the creators of some worthy works, especially in the Dramatic Presentation categories, might not care enough about the Hugos to submit them in advance of the nominations period (even if they might take an interest in the Hugos later upon being nominated); and (b) some fans might consider it egotistical to actively submit oneself for Hugo consideration in categories such as Fanzine, Fan Writer, and Fan Artist.
@Standback
The Hornet’s Nest Attack is certainly possible. I can’t think of any system at all to prevent it though (including the current one). Best option to mitigate that type of attack is adding something like Camestros’ suggestion for Rocket Review: automatically extending eligibility for disqualified candidates. It would give disqualified authors and works a chance to make their case if a moderation panel or the members made a mistake. With a possible second bite at the apple it might also give some cooling off time for down voted works creators. Something like that wouldn’t be a bad fit for any of the systems proposed whether 3SV, Trust But Verify, or Rocket Review.
I think the concerns about harassment are overblown. To date, none of the puppies has bitten anyone. They bark, and they whine; they chew up the furniture and they pee on the rug. But they do not bite.
Their idea of harassment seems to be limited to words. Words which are mostly posted on their own web sites. That, and actions that are within the letter of the rules (e.g. slate voting, nominating unserious works) even though they violate the spirit of them.
@Standback
Maybe, but maybe not. I would think works like that would be unlikely to be voted off the semifinalist list. They’d end up under No Award on the final ballot, most likely. Howling worth listening to would only occur if someone had reason to believe that he or she had written an award-worthy work. I think there’s only one work like that this year, and the author appears to be philosophical about it. I’m guessing that this would prove an unsatisfying strategy for griefers.
That assumes that big name authors don’t meet the “hungry” test. They’re hostages, not hornets, right? 🙂
Ok, EPH+ seems viable and somewhat resistant to attacks (it can be attacked by dividing a slate, but that’s risky if they potentially drop below a threshold of volume, and it’s more work for the slate-runners).
Yes, I’d missed that the +1 comes from the shortlist. That’s a nice way of norming, but at that point I’m not sure why we wouldn’t make it +2 instead. 2 items is probably a good limit for norming, and would let people collapse more organically at this stage. Too many more than +2 and it becomes a true secondary nomination stage, which is a reason to avoid that.
sez greg hullander: “I think the concerns about harassment are overblown. To date, none of the puppies has bitten anyone. They bark, and they whine; they chew up the furniture and they pee on the rug. But they do not bite.”
Are you overlooking Larry Correia’s attempt at SWATting David Gerrold, and the Tor Books boycott?
To be sure, neither of those… activities… was particularly successful, but both of said activities strike me as evidence that the pups damn well want to bite people. And while both of said activities were, as a matter of historical fact, of decidedly limited effect, I am unsure that it would be wise to presume that the pups’ future activities will be similarly ineffectual.
@Standback
Hornets Nest attack is really not unlike what actually happened with Larry C. If he’d never have been nominated I suspect things would have been different. In the imaginary origin story, it is the unsidious voices in his ear saying of course he’d never win because “they” would never let him win that then fuels his righteous anger.
So, yup, weaponising that is a thing that could be done by griefers. I assume at least some of the Rabid nominees this year have that idea in mind*
Excluding slated ballots or downvoting may help outrage the target but the current system is even more vulnerable to this kind of attack – as the Legend of Sad** Larry & the League of Pups attests.
*[I wont spell out which ones because that would unfairly defame the nominees – who might actually react stoically to losing or losing to No Award.]
**[or Straw Larry – we don’t actually know what was going on in his head or who said what to him. We only have the disparity between his two accounts of his experiences at Worldcon to go on.]
That was Lou Antonelli.
I guess if people really, really feel that there needs to be a way to have more REJECT than ACCEPT votes, we have to return to a more complicated version, thus:
[REJECT] [ACCEPT] [ABSTAIN] Work 1
[REJECT] [ACCEPT] [ABSTAIN] Work 2
[REJECT] [ACCEPT] [ABSTAIN] Work 3
Etc
[REJECT] [ACCEPT] [ABSTAIN] Work 15
With an overarching quorum requirement:
1. At least 20% of the eligible membership returns a ballot marked in any way (including leaving every choice blank or marking every choice ABSTAIN).
And in order to reject a nominee:
2. At least 20% of the eligible membership mark the nominee REJECT. (Conceivably this would be 100% of a bare quorum voting, with every ballot marked REJECT.)
3. More ballots for that nominee are marked REJECT than ACCEPT. (Blanks/Abstentions/members not casting ballots do not count at all for this purpose.)
4. More ballots for that nominee are marked REJECT than the nominee received in the first round. (As I’ve said before, I think it highly unlikely this condition would ever fail, but it it mathematically possible and seems to make people feel better.)
The advantage of this version is that nobody who wants to vote ACCEPT need worry that they’re helping the REJECT side make a quorum, because the REJECT side still needs to poll at least 20% of the eligible electorate no matter how many other people vote, and that’s really a very substantial hill to climb. I’m really not concerned about 5% of the electorate voting REJECT all of the time. There were people who voted NO AWARD as their first choice in categories every year in past years anyway, and they aren’t significant.
I fear that a version like this adds complexity to no good cause other than making people feel slightly more confident in the results. However, people must feel confident in whatever they’re doing in order to pass it. A straight REJECT-only ballot is much easier to administer, but if it makes people uneasy or if they feel it’s excessively gameable, they’ll refuse to vote for it at the Business Meeting.
Maybe. If You Were an Award… is nasty and the Eness piece is nasty to some specific individuals (eg Scalzi). The Declan Finn parody didn’t get nominated but it could have been and that has some very nasty elements. More importantly VDs minions have form in terms of doxxing and harassment that goes beyond what we’ve seen so far. VD is overt in prescribing tactics of escalation when dealing with “SJWs”.
VD overtly asks his minions to dox people who give one star reviews and then harass their employers.
More generally I think he is more than willing to push works that overtly defame groups for the sole purpose of generating outrage. They’d never win but the aim would be to dominate the discussion. Basically classic trolling designed to make some groups feel under assault.
I think, on balance, there is enough cause to consider contingencies.
@Kevin Standlee
Did anyone express a strong objection to a REJECT-only ballot? I thought most people were supportive and a couple of people were confused, but I didn’t notice any strong objection. Did I just miss it?
Ah. Yes. Antonelli was the wannabe-SWATter, not Correia. My bad.
Nevertheless, regardless of the identity of the specific pup who tried to SWAT Gerrold, it remains a fact that a pup did try to SWAT Gerrold. So I, for one, would not be comfortable assuming that the pups are (as the saying goes) ‘all bark and no bite’.
@Cubist
Except that’s not what Antonelli actually did. He wrote a stupid letter to the police, yes, but he didn’t make a fake 911 call triggering an emergency response.
However, if you like, I’ll count that as a feeble bite that didn’t break the skin. The Tor boycott, on the other hand, is a perfectly legitimate action. Nothing criminal about that at all. Dumb, yes, ineffective, yes, but not at all in the same league as harassing individuals.
@Camestros Felapton
You follow his site more closely than I do, so I’ll defer to your expertise here. However, everything you cited except for the doxxing amounted to him writing stuff and posting it on his own sites. I can see how the threat of doxxing would bother people, though.
Kevin: your set of rules amounts to the same thing as mine, and I think that mine is simpler to understand. Mine is:
Ballot options are “Accept”, “Reject”, “Abstain”, with “Accept” as default.
A work is rejected if it gets both of the following:
-#”Reject” is more than 20% of eligible voters.
-#”Reject” is more than #”Accept”.
(I do not include a rule about first-round votes, because not only is it unlikely to matter; but also, if it ever looks as if it would matter, all those people are free to vote “accept” if they want to.)
I would not object to +2. I still suspect +1 is closest to the sweet spot, but I defer to fannier voices than mine.
(Yes, I know that the correct wording would be “more fennish”. Forgive me my puerile humor.)
So as far as I can see it, there are 4 “voting structure” proposals to write:
3SV
“Good cop panel” to allow skipping the rejection vote on clearly untainted works.
+1 (or +2? Or, +1 for most categories but +2 for BSS and BDP:S? Probably better to err on the side of +2 so we can change it to +1 next year if desired)
EPH+
As for other proposals that have been suggested:
Retro-hugos to redo the no-award categories from recent years (without a nomination round; just use the original nomination votes, minus anything that got no-awarded, and increase the number of finalists for each thing that was withdrawn).
…
It’s still not 100% clear to me that EPH+ will be on the agenda. But if it is, I will be fundraising to attend. As with last year, all donations would be tax-deductible, and any extra I got would go to the Center for Election Science (electology.org) a worthy and related cause.
@Greg
Yes, aside from the doxxing it is all stuff that can be seen as empty words. However the capacity of trolls to disrupt a community and lead to more vunerable people departing is real. Reducing participation by women and LGTBI people is a broad political objective of VD.
How much damage he’d actually achieve I don’t know.
Cubist,
You really shouldn’t lie about people comitting crimes. Larry is a big man, both literally and figuratively, and probably won’t respond as the libel invites, but you do yourself and your side no favors.
And if you place any value on the truth, you may want to look up the actual definition of swatting before making accusations.
As someone who in the previous thread posted support for comparing the number of rejections against the initial acceptances, I’d like to say that I find Kevin’s proposal for a reject-only ballot with a 20% threshold to be perfectly acceptable, and certainly simpler than what I was proposing. Simpler is good, here: it makes it less likely that the voters will get confused.
@Kevin Standlee
I’m fine with a reject only ballot. I think we are of mixed minds as well as confused here as to what decision was made when. Maybe we need to take a vote. 😉
@Camestros Felapton
I’m concerned about those tactics. Doxxing is not the only online harassment which hurts people. Being targeted, having articles/stories written about one, being attacked on social media is difficult at the best of times. Some people can shrug it off. Others can’t. For most it depends on what’s being done, by whom, what else is going on in their lives, and whether their support network is their for them. Been attacked, been support, it was not at doxxing or rape/death threat or GG level, it was exhausting and very much awful for months after it ended.
I think combining a reject-only ballot with a “hard-coded” 20% threshold could be a mistake in the long term. We’re science fiction fans; I’m sure we can all imagine scenarios where the voting technology has changed enough that turnout above 40% of eligible voters could become normal, and in that case there should be a way to oppose rejection.
How about: the ballot consists of one “REJECT” checkbox per work. A work is rejected if it gets “REJECT” from over 20% of eligible voters AND from over 50% of those who submitted a vote.
(You could change those “over”s to “at least”s if you preferred.)
This keeps the simpler ballot format, but still allows fans to mobilize to protect a work, at least in theory.
Drat, I wanted to edit the prior comment to include speculation about personalized quasi-self-upload AI agents preparing ballots for people… but mere 21st-century internet tubes failed me.
Drat, I wanted to edit the prior comment to include speculation about personalized quasi-self-upload AI agents preparing ballots for people… but mere 21st-century internet tubes prevented me.
Some comments from GRRM. First, here:
And then, later:
Greg Hullender on May 24, 2016 at 4:11 pm said:
I saw preferences upthread for some way to vote in favor of candidates. In addition, other venues in which I’ve been participating have a number of people whose opinions are likely to be influential wanting to have some way to vote in favor of things. The idea that not voting at all is the same as voting in favor of keeping it is apparently making people uneasy. As simple as a REJECT only election is, apparently a fair number of people have difficulty wrapping their heads around elections that don’t have at least a YES or NO choice, and if you do that, you apparently have to include ABSTAIN, even though leaving the choice blank is the same as ABSTAIN. It’s not the technicalities. It’s about making people feel confident in what they’re doing.
Shorter version: The SMOFS e-mail List has lots of people who come to the Business Meeting and vote. It’s best to have them onside of any proposal.
Jameson Quinn on May 24, 2016 at 4:43 pm said:
I agree, other than having to present it to people who aren’t particularly conversant with how voting rules work. You have to set it out in a very elementary manner. Thus the rule about the election not even being valid unless at least 20% of the electorate participates. You and I and a lot of the people who have been following this know that it’s a redundant rule. (You can’t possibly have less than 20% of the electorate participating and 20% of the electorate voting REJECT at the same time.) Others don’t quite get it and need to have it spoon-fed to them.
I agree that it’s very unlikely to matter, but there seemed to be people on this discussion and the earlier one who thought it important that nothing could ever be eliminated by fewer people than put it on the semi-final ballot in the first place. It’s another “make people feel confident” rules even if in practice it would never apply.
Personally, I prefer a simpler version, but a simple version that fails because people are convinced that there’s a catch hidden in the “simple” version is pointless.