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.
“Transparency in Hugo Administration” would add to the existing requirement for a report of Hugo voting statistics a requirement to account for any withdrawals, and explain any moves (between categories) or disqualifications.
SHORT TITLE: TRANSPARENCY IN HUGO ADMINISTRATION
Moved, to amend the Constitution to require a public accounting of any withdrawals or disqualifications of potential Hugo nominees.
Text to be removed shown in strikethrough, text to be added in underline.
3.8.2: The Worldcon Committee shall determine the eligibility of nominees and assignment to the proper category of works nominated in more than one category. Any moves or disqualifications conducted under this section shall be published and explained with the statistics published as required in section 3.12.3 of this document.
[…]
3.8.6: If there are more than two works in the same category that are episodes of the same dramatic presentation series or that are written works that have an author for single author works, or two or more authors for co-authored works, in common, only the two works in each category that have the most nominations shall appear on the final ballot. The Worldcon Committee shall make reasonable efforts to notify those who would have been finalists in the absence of this subsection to provide them an opportunity to withdraw. For the purpose of this exclusion, works withdrawn shall be Ignored. All such withdrawals shall be published with the statistics published as required in section of 3.12.3 of this document.
SPONSORS: Kate Secor, Kevin Sonney
DISCUSSION: This is a pretty simple request that all disqualifications and withdrawals be listed and explained when the statistics are published, to improve transparency.
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It took forever for Chengdu to do this so this requirement is needed
Essential.
Excellent step.
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This update is simple, straightforward, and needed.
Dave McCarty had an Ask Me Anything and an interview to explain the 2023 Hugos, and his explanations were along the lines of “They were clearly not eligible” without pointing to a specific provision, and that the disqualifications were in his purview as Hugo Administration. In this amendment, “explained” could be technically fulfilled with the same sort of non-answer. Were I a member of Glasgow, I’d vote against this motion as being mostly useless, unless amended to require specifying the most specific section number from the WSFS Constitution and quoting the specific part of it. (Along the lines of “3.3.4; the word count was 9,177 words, exceeding the limit of ‘(7,500) words’.)
I should add: the most specific sections must be in [such-and-so a range]. I think Dave McCarty also used as justification that he was Hugo Administrator, which allowed him to disqualify works on whatever grounds he wanted. So, for example, I would want to exclude 2.1 “provide for … administering the Hugo Awards” as a valid explanation, and any other general term.
I’ve expressed my objections off the cuff. Obviously they would have to be language-lawyered extensively to be usable.