INTRODUCTION. The deadline to submit proposals to the Glasgow 2024 Business Meeting was July 10. The formal agenda will be out soon, but in the meantime the movers of 15 submitted items have provided copies for publication and discussion on File 770.

“Irregular Disqualifications and Rogue Administrators” proposes to cancel a Hugo Award category for the year in the event of any “irregular disqualification”. However, if the category is run despite any “irregular disqualification”, the nominees shall be deemed Finalists in all official publications. Provision is also made for a Retro Hugo to be offered for that year’s category ten years later. The rule does not apply retroactively.

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SHORT TITLE: IRREGULAR DISQUALIFICATIONS AND ROGUE ADMINISTRATORS

Moved, to amend the Constitution as follows by adding text:

Section 3.6: “No Award”.

3.6.1: Lack of Interest. At the discretion of an individual Worldcon Committee, if the lack of nominations or final votes in a specific category shows a marked lack of interest in that category on the part of the voters, the Award in that category shall be cancelled for that year.

3.6.2: Irregular Disqualification. If one or more nominees who have received sufficient nominating ballots to qualify as finalists are removed from the ballot without either (1) citing a clause of this constitution or (2) evidence of fraud or misconduct with respect to the Hugo Award Finalist selection process, then the Award in that category shall be not be run in that year.

3.6.3: Category Run Irregularly.  In the event that a category with irregular disqualifications is run regardless of other restrictions, any nominees irregularly disqualified shall be deemed to be Finalists.  The category shall have its irregular nature indicated in all official publications without prejudice to the Finalists and Winner.  The category shall be eligible for being run as a Retro Hugo category ten years afterwards.

3.6.4: Non-Retroactivity.  3.6.3. Shall not operate retroactively, though this shall not prejudice the ability of WSFS to otherwise make similar provisions for events in years prior to passage.

SPONSORS: Cliff Dunn, Kristina Forsyth, Erica Frank

DISCUSSION: This proposal would divide Section 3.6 into three sections.  The first is existing language in the Constitution and is not altered in any functional manner.  The second, “Irregular Disqualification”, is new, as is the third, “Category Run Irregularly”.

While there is a long history of “dubious” nominating ballots being set aside from consideration for the Hugo Awards, dating back to the late 1950s or early 1960s, prior to 2023 the only grounds which ballots appeared to be excluded were because of fraudulent conduct (e.g. a large number of ballots originating from a small village in England, all nominating only a single author’s work).  Likewise, works were only excluded because of objective disqualification — failing to meet an explicit, objective criteria (e.g. word count, publication date, or performance length) — or if they were withdrawn at the request of the author or creator.  Even in 2015-16, during the “Puppy Affair”, none of the works involved were removed except for the above reasons.

In 2023, an egregious wave of exclusions took place.  Multiple works across multiple categories were simply excluded without explanation beyond “the rules that we must follow”.  Additionally, extreme irregularities emerged where substantial numbers of ballots were thrown out in various categories.  Insinuations that the exclusions were done for the purposes of complying with local laws or customs were made, but nothing was ever explicitly stated.

Additionally, at least one Hugo Administrator has allegedly asserted the right to exclude ballots or works at their discretion.  If the fallout from 2023 has shown anything, it is that we do not want them to have the ability to exercise such discretion.

Our objective here is to implement a clear standard: Either a category shall be run “cleanly” (that is with the qualifying finalists being placed on the ballot unless disqualified under our rules or withdrawn by the finalist themselves) or it shall not be run at all.  We consider a failure to run a given category in a given year to be a lesser “offense” against the participants of a given Worldcon than running a category with seat-of-the-pants adjustments and exclusions.

There is a good deal of concern about “awards being taken away”.  We’ve decided not to do that, but we feel that adding an “asterisk” to the awards is both proportionate and necessary: It is likely that any such situation will be well-known even without such an indication, and automatically re-adding irregularly removed finalists is effectively in line the precedent we seem likely to set this year. 

Authorizing a Retro Hugo in the event of a category being run irregularly is something we acknowledge as controversial.  Frankly, we are torn — as of the drafting of this amendment, there are various transparency initiatives being moved forward and we don’t know what the structural efforts to avoid a repeat of 2023 will look like in final form.  The position we take is that this should be allowed but not compelled — there is no right answer and most of the damage will have been done, but at the same time a sufficiently corrupted process must have some avenue for being re-run, and “the Hugo Administrator covered it up until after the ceremony so we can’t do anything” feels like a cop-out.  If the consensus within fandom is that the category shouldn’t be re-run, we believe that it shouldn’t, but if the problems were manifest enough (e.g. multiple finalists being disqualified or it being obvious that the results were wholly fabricated) that the consensus is that the category should be re-run, we want to open the door to that.

At the same time, these rules weren’t in place in 2023, so we’re not applying them retroactively.  We are comfortable that that way lies madness, but if these rules are in place going forward then we’re at least not explicitly trying to “change history”.

We acknowledge that another proposal we are submitting uses a five-year timeline for the Retro Hugo Awards in question.  We initially proposed five years for this as well, but we wish to have a discussion on the merits of five versus ten.  That being said, we are also prepared to cooperate with other proposals to produce a coherent outcome at either value.