Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
A secret-ballot election does not preclude the concept of trying to persuade people to vote for your preferred choice of candidate.
Don't get me wrong: I dislike the concept of attempting to "stack the deck" when it comes to the Hugos as much as anyone else does. All I'm saying is that, as I understand it, what's being done is entirely in accordance with the rules of the nominating process. If the process is flawed, then perhaps the process needs to be changed, but you really can't (IMHO) blame people who are using the existing process to get their preferred books nominated.
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The background is in fact political of the american culture wars variety though both sides like to pretend it is only the other camp that is using political criteria to promote candidates. And the intent is the shout down the other sides viewpoint. Nobody has clean hands or pure heart.
Bear in mind that, despite all the online noise, the catfight involves but a few thousand individuals total. (Look to the raw numbers of the "elections".) Many of which are peripheral to the SF&F mainstream on both the reader and author side. Neither camp is anywhere on the radar of the vast majority of people going to Amazon, B&N, or Kobo to actually buy and read SF&F.
Before the catfight hit here, I for one, had never heard (or cared about the issues) of the Sad Puppies or the Social Justice Warriors. Most readers don't.
If you poll any random real world readers, 99 out of 100 would blink and say "Who's that?"
The whole mess is not unlike two street gangs fighting over a lightly trafficked corner with the rest of the city shrugging and crossing the street to get out of the crossfire. Instead of wasting time picking sides or trying to mediate, I would suggest bringing out the water cannon to separate and cool down the two gangs.
Also note that the bone of contention is a phallic symbol named after a rather sleazy magazine publisher who routinely stiffed his authors.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_...cience_fiction
Try this report:
http://io9.com/the-hugo-awards-were-...nly-1695721604