Worldcon Open Comments

I’m still on the sidelines but improving. Meantime I thought it a good idea to create a space to leave comments on MidAmameriCon this week for those who are checking here.

480 thoughts on “Worldcon Open Comments

  1. Universal Suffrage: 6 minutes debate time
    (any full adult membership gets voting rights)
    Non-transferability of Voting Rights: 8 minutes debate time
    (currently, Attending and Supporting memberships can be transferred with nominating and voting rights; this would eliminate transfer of rights when Supporting memberships are transferred).
    Young Adult Award: 14 minutes debate time

  2. Alexandra Erin said:

    This is my first con outside of WisCon

    Wow, that’s quite a jump! I hope it continues to go well for you!

  3. Doctor Science: I am not. Combination of late planning and wanting to be untethered for my first time. Maybe 2017. I always enjoy program participation at WisCon, though I am frequently nervous going in.

  4. Manga panel recs: K. craft: Mƶbius
    Paul Starr: dreamland Japan, Schott; yom & mu cat
    Jenna rapaport: Emma; bride story
    Ada Palmer: a drifting life; 5p essay in back of serafin; shoah; a silent voice; doro ha doro sp. Feminist take on ultramuscle grngepunk
    Several: Pluto, need to read vol3 of Astro boy

  5. The con is great so far. The convention center is huge! Stopped by the park before some panels, good book selection! I don’t think I’ll make the meet up tonight, but hopefully will run into people at the park.

  6. What’s Defining North America about? What places stand to change worldcon continents if it passes?

    (For that matter, if there was a Worldcon Hawaii, would there be a NASFIC bid that year? Is that the issue being contended?)

  7. I got the first Acks link to work, but couldn’t open the second one, either. TooManyJens’ works fine for me as well.

  8. Jeff R – the possibility of WorldCon Hawaii is one reason for defining North America, actually. Because Hawaii is – technically – not in North America. Would a Hawaiian WorldCon then trigger NASFIC?

    As currently structured: Yes.

    An argument can (according to the 73-page agenda book) also be made for Western Iceland.

    So by defining North America as including the US (including Alaska and Hawaii), that minefield is dodged before we step into it.

  9. Alexandra: Are you coming to the Filer meetup? 17:00 at The Flying Saucer today.

  10. Nicholas Whyte: Interesting. My feeling is:

    a. I’d say the changes to the 2014 and RetroHugo results are not great enough to be a serious problem. I think it would be a problem if EPH massively perturbed the results in a normal year – if we did not think the Hugo system had on the whole worked well, we would not be trying to save it – but we can’t expect that it will make no change at all. Indeed there was one change in the 1983 results, against which it was tested, and this wasn’t generally seen as a problem.

    b. The changes to the 2015 results are clearly a good thing, but confirm what we knew, that EPH is not a complete solution, as slates still have a disproportionate influence. (I don’t think any of the the current proposals plug this gap, either.)

    c. Like you, I’m wondering whether EPH would be so effective with this year’s figures. I think its partial success last year may have been due to the relative lack of overlap between slate votes and organic votes; this year there will be more overlap, which may reduce its effectiveness. If slaters went the full kingmaking route, simply backing five plausible candidates to the exclusion of another five plausible candidates, I think the difference EPH made to the result might be quite small. (And such a result would still be a bad thing, and give slaters unfair influence.)

  11. PS: It’s annoying they don’t give results for the dramatic presentations, because while it’s clearly true that they aren’t indicative of whether EPH is effective in the way it normally works, its effect on those categories is surely relevant to the question whether it should be adopted. (In Short Form it might well have a beneficial effect, penalising the clumping of fans of a particular show: but in Long Form I’m worried it might penalise convergence on excellence.)

  12. Jeff R. asked:

    Whatā€™s Defining North America about? What places stand to change worldcon continents if it passes?

    The WSFS constitution used to explicitly define North America, but that was removed when taking out some old rules regarding geographical zones. The idea is to bring back an explicit definition to stave off any arguments about things like whether a Worldcon in Hawaii would trigger a NASFiC. (Under the proposed new rule, Hawaii is deemed to be part of North America, along with a few other things that don’t meet a strict geographer’s definition.)

    If anyone is curious about any other proposals, the BM Agenda is available online (as a PDF) and includes the text of all business submitted in advance.

  13. @Alexander Erin
    Hampus is planning the filer meetup. That was your invite. No RSVP necessary says the not attending filer. Pictures are good. Taking pictures, sharing them. On Twitter check out #File770 I think a picture or two from the earlier meetup is posted – Hampus is in it. šŸ˜‰

  14. Universal Suffrage: 6 minutes debate time
    (any full adult membership gets voting rights)

    More precisely, any full adult attendiing membership (which, as I understand it, is the case now, but they want to rule out the possibility of any Worldcon changing it).

  15. Alexandra: Of course you’re welcome! We have a booking, so just ask for us and you should find us. By the stools near the bar.

  16. I think I’m voting for New Orleans…but selfishly because I can easily drive there…

  17. Very pleased to see all the bus mtg comments. For Aug 19 I will set up a post where comments can go.

  18. Very glad to see you posting, Mike!

    (Pay no attention to rumors of shoggoths in the “Getting Better” thread…)

  19. Andrew,

    I’ve been reflecting on this a bit more. You are right, the only change EPH would have made in 1984 would have been to drop a woman (Sherri S Tepper) from the Campbell ballot.

    The changes it would have made in 2014 would have been to drop a woman in favour of a man for Best Editor Short Form, to drop a woman and a man and bring in a different man for Best Professional Artist, and to drop both the actual winner and another podcast run by a woman and a man from Best Fancast.

    Admittedly it’s a small sample, but I don’t really like what I am seeing of EPH’s effects on the diversity of the ballot in “normal” years. However I have to concede that it would have replaced that embarrassingly bad Ray Bradbury story with one by Helen Simpson on the Retro Hugo ballot.

  20. The estimable Rachael Acks omitted in her liveblogging the debate limit decided for 3SV, which was 20 mins.

    I get the sense that Dave McCarty views the results from running EPH data on real datasets (which he and others were up until 3am doing) as revelatory. I expect we’ll hear a good case presented on Sunday that the high complexity and perceived loss of democratic transparency are too big a problem in light of inadequate benefit. Do study what’s published via MACII’s WSFS page, as I’m sure it will be discussed in-depth on Sunday.

    I can picture Jameson Quinn being annoyed over the way things appear headed. FWIW, I strongly backed EPH but want to see what the dataset results have to say.

    IMO, Business Meeting burnout continues to be a factor, especially after Sasquan’s epic-length sessions. Everyone’s pretty relaxed so far, but don’t be surprised if patience levels fray later.

  21. @Eric Franklin – Are we now debating debate times for ā€¦ debating debate times?

    In a word, yes.

    Welcome to the Business Meeting. Also, Jarod Dashoff for sainthood.

  22. Nicholas: I don’t think that can, with such a small sample, be seen as evidence that EPH generally works against diversity; it could, from what we know so far, just as well replace a man with a woman in other cases (as indeed it does in 1939).

    I have long urged the imperfections of EPH, and I think that, as well as being only a partial solution to the problem, it does have real downsides, loss of transparency being just one of them. But no better answer has yet been presented. (3SV in my view does not at all address the general problem, only the more specific problem of abuse.) It seems to me reasonable to ratify EPH with the annual review provision, so as to buy ourselves time during which we can keep a half-way decent Hugo process, while searching for a lasting solution.

  23. Consideration of 4/6 and EPH has been postponed until Sunday morning. Nominee Diversity will be considered on Friday.

    Which is annoying, given that it’s likely EPH would have a similar effect to Nominee Diversity and remove the need for it. (Though it would help if they told us the EPH results for Dramatic Presentations.)

  24. JJ: In the RetroHugo proposal, what happened to the bit about retrospective category Hugos? (Which would allow them, in 2040, to have RetroHugos for the categories that were no-awarded last year.)

  25. (Pay no attention to rumors of shoggoths in the ā€œGetting Betterā€ threadā€¦)
    – Cassy B

    Ain’t nothing wrong , no how, with a Shoggoth. Like they say: “I could murder a Shoggoth’s”.

    (Glad to see you posting Mike!)

  26. (Re: North America Definition) Interesting. I approve of getting rid of the ambiguity, but would sort of favor the current definition over the proposed one in practice, especially if we create an entirely hypothetical but nonetheless longstanding tradition that in the case of each hypothetical Hawaii Worldcon the NASFIC has to go in a different North American country (Which is to say almost certainly Canada, but possibly somewhere in the Caribbean or Mexico I suppose.)

  27. Nicholas, gender diversity was not part of the reason for EPH, nor was ethnic diversity; there’s no requirement for either in the rules. So I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at.

  28. My reaction to that EPH report is here:
    https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/the-eph-analysis/

    The stuff about the 2014 Fancast changes is making me make grrrrr noises. A three-way tie ends up different when things are different! I start waving my hands in the air and get mad-professor about that! Of course it does! Anything would make that different! Things! Using exactly the same system as was used in 2014 could make that result different! A different result in the site selection ballot at some past Worldcon could have made that result different! Butterflies! Things!

  29. I’m with P J Evans here – EPH has nothing whatsoever to do with gender diversity, just an anti-troll measure (for which it will be shown not to work with this years’ data, the only thing that will is a “strong admin” model, with the power to DQ slate nominees – the 3SV is an impractical mess and will winnow the voters down to a smaller number – remembering to vote 3 times will be a pain (OK, nominate, re-nominate, then vote, but you see what I mean).

  30. P J Evans on August 18, 2016 at 3:47 pm said:

    Nicholas, gender diversity was not part of the reason for EPH, nor was ethnic diversity; thereā€™s no requirement for either in the rules. So Iā€™m not sure what youā€™re trying to get at.

    Two of the examples are due to ties in the results in 2014. Clearly, any impact on gender proportions in those cases are wholly due to chance.

    There is really only one example that could be considered as a possible example that would be the Editor Short swap of Sheila Williams for Bryan Thomas Schmidt.

    However, if we to count all three examples then the result is as likely to occur by pure chance as the occurrence of flipping a coin three times and it coming up heads. Not the most likely of results but a weak basis on which to speculate that the coin has been loaded in favour of coming up heads. And that would be assuming that there was an equal chance of a nominee in the data being male or female. In reality the bias is earlier than that in the gender balance of the long list.

  31. I think Chris S. is probably right about this:

    …the only thing that will [work] is a ā€œstrong adminā€ model, with the power to DQ slate nominees ā€“ the 3SV is an impractical mess and will winnow the voters down to a smaller number ā€“ remembering to vote 3 times will be a pain (OK, nominate, re-nominate, then vote, but you see what I mean).

  32. I agree with those who say that Dave McCarty and Jamison Quinn should have included the Best Dramatic Presentation categories in their analysis. If the results of EPH applied to the BDP categories would have been seen as strange or undesirable, then the Worldcon members ought to know that. Or if there was some other result affecting the BDP categories that would have required commentary by Dave and Jamison, they could have provided that commentary.

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