Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I really don't understand what the issue is. If these guys can push to get their favourite authors on the shortlist, why can't you, or anyone else, do the same? Isn't that what an electoral process is all about? Persuading other people to support your viewpoint?
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No, because the Hugos are not a party-politics election, nor are they primarily about author personality politics, though author popularity has obviously played a role at times (being a popularly-voted award).
The SP folks put forward a slate for nominations, exactly five works in each category, which a fair few people (by the looks of the noms) followed to the letter. Many other folks, myself included, prefer a diverse set of nominated works drawn from the width and depth of the field, with people voting for what the art they had read and loved in that particular year, not for the author someone else persuaded them to vote for (whether or not they loved their work or even chose to read it off their own bat). The latter can be a huge group of nominators without it being able to beat out a slate vote.
The answer to "slate voting is bad" is not "so we'll just put forward our own slate".
And that's leaving aside a whole lot of other stuff best left to the P&R forum.