2015 Hugo Award winners

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not every change to an organisation's rules is a good one, and this (IMHO) would not be if it restricted the freedom of Worldcon supporters to nominate and campaign for their preferred choice of book.

I suggest that you should read the actual proposed (& passed) rule changes before commenting about them.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not every change to an organisation's rules is a good one, and this (IMHO) would not be if it restricted the freedom of Worldcon supporters to nominate and campaign for their preferred choice of book. It's not the legality or otherwise of it that I was commenting on. I don't believe anyone's suggested that anyone's done anything which is against the rules.

I realise that not every change to rules is a good one, just as not every motivation for voting or method of campaigning is a good one. In the rest of this discussion, you have repeated over and over and over that people have a "right" to slavishly vote the Rabid Puppy slate for whatever reasons they have, something I never disputed. Well, here it is: Worldcon members also have a right to change the rules of their award. The method of changing them was written into the system, and that method is being followed, slow as it may be to actually enact the changes. But suddenly now you have an issue with distinguishing between good and bad/ethical and unethical, rather than allowed and now allowed.

Have you read the proposed rule changes? What exactly do you object to?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by meeera

Have you read the proposed rule changes? What exactly do you object to?

Please read my post more carefully. I didn't say that I objected to anything. I made a general comment that IF (and please note the word "if"!) a rule change restricted people's freedom to vote for what they wished to, that would not be a good change.

Do you have a link to the proposed changes? I would like to read them.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I suggest that you should read the actual proposed (& passed) rule changes before commenting about them.

That's what I intend to do when someone posts a link to them. I haven't seen one, unless I've overlooked it?

[meeera]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Please read my post more carefully. I didn't say that I objected to anything. I made a general comment that IF (and please note the word "if"!) a rule change restricted people's freedom to vote for what they wished to, that would not be a good change.

Do you have a link to the proposed changes? I would like to read them.

Members of the current Worldcon should already know about the changes. (As for non-members, I don't understand why any of them should care.) 4/6 and EPH passed this initial round.

http://sasquan.org/business-meeting/agenda/

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by meeera

Members of the current Worldcon should already know about the changes. (As for non-members, I don't understand why any of them should care.) 4/6 and EPH passed this initial round.

http://sasquan.org/business-meeting/agenda/

Many thanks!

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

@bgalbrecht: so in other words what you are trying to say is that the Hugo has always been pretty much predetermined from the beginning. Unless a book had already been on one of those reading recommendations it never had a chance of a nomination let alone a win. No wonder that so many point fingers to the bad wolf (puppy) for disrupting the pattern. It has been tradition to only associate award worthy to those few books that made the shortlist of them reading recommendations. It is not really that far fetched to imagine a master puppeteer (or a group) that secretely pulls the strings to influence those more successful reading lists.

You have it backward. It is recommended because it is very good. There is no conspiracy here.

And before the net people did not see recommended books unless they subscribed on Locus and saw the result of the Locus award.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by tompe

I am not implying anything of the sort. I wanted to understand the opinion. And I am sure that people nominated books and other work without reading them. Or for just political reasons.

If you think voting with the intention to destroy an award is OK I think you have a disgusting opinion. Refusing to state that you think this kind of voting is wrong is just for me confirmation that you have this kind of opinion.

tompe, you keep repeating "voting with the intention to destroy an award", that isn't what the Sad Puppies were doing, they were attempting to get what they classed as more entertaining works nominated and that works were getting nominated more on diversity checkboxes than merit. You can easily argue that you didn't like their choices, but it was started because they didn't like the current choices, tastes differ.

Rabid Puppies are a different matter of course, but as far as I know nobody is defending Beale, the only reason they keep getting mentioned is because one (non-puppy) side keeps conflating the 2 groups.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by tompe

You have it backward. It is recommended because it is very good. There is no conspiracy here.

A bit circular that, you can't use the fact that they were recommended as proof against a bias in the recommendations simply by stating that they were good.

Originally Posted by tompe

And before the net people did not see recommended books unless they subscribed on Locus and saw the result of the Locus award.

Before the net is a bit irrelevant here as the (alleged) bias toward diversity over merit is a fairly recent development.

TBH, I suspect there is no conspiracy happening and worldcon voters either have different tastes or are the kind of people who would bend over backwards rather than give some perceived offence to some minority group. While, strangely, going hell-for-leather against the kind of gun nut that hangs around the monster hunter blog. My general rule of thumb is if you are going to throw around unfounded criticisms then do it to the least well armed group, could just be me though,

[DiapDealer]

I think the proposed 4 and 6 rule is a step in the right direction. It does nothing to restrict anyone's ability to nominate and/or campaign/promote/suggest to their hearts content. 4 and 6 makes sure that no one group can ever really dictate the entire shortlist for a category. Everyone can nominate four for any one category and the top six make the shortlist for the big vote.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

tompe, you keep repeating "voting with the intention to destroy an award", that isn't what the Sad Puppies were doing,

No but it was what the rabid puppies were doing.

But here I just wanted people to say that is is wrong to vote with the intention of destroying the award regardless of if anybody have done it. The question if anybody has done it we can discus if people think it is wrong. But since people refuse to admit that it is wrong it is not necessary to discus if it has happened.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Rabid Puppies are a different matter of course, but as far as I know nobody is defending Beale, the only reason they keep getting mentioned is because one (non-puppy) side keeps conflating the 2 groups.

HarryT is defending anybody that follows the rules it seems.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I think the proposed 4 and 6 rule is a step in the right direction. It does nothing to restrict anyone's ability to nominate and/or campaign/promote/suggest to their hearts content. 4 and 6 makes sure that no one group can ever really dictate the entire shortlist for a category. Everyone can nominate four for any one category and the top six make the shortlist for the big vote.

Would it prevent it? Could it not still be achieved by having two slates, with three of their favourites on each one? You'd need twice as many people to achieve the same goal, with 50% submitting one slate, and 50% the other, but it could still be done, couldn't it?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Would it prevent it? Could it not still be achieved by having two slates, with three of their favourites on each one? You'd need twice as many people to achieve the same goal, with 50% submitting one slate, and 50% the other, but it could still be done, couldn't it?

It could. Which is why the other proposal is so much better.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by tompe

No but it was what the rabid puppies were doing.

But here I just wanted people to say that is is wrong to vote with the intention of destroying the award regardless of if anybody have done it. The question if anybody has done it we can discus if people think it is wrong. But since people refuse to admit that it is wrong it is not necessary to discus if it has happened.

I have admitted it. What I won't let you do though is allow you to back me up into a corner with a black and white answer to a grey problem. What the RP have done is a step up from SP - ignore quality for a second, that is a rather subjective topic that is hard to discuss without starting some kind of flame war. What has happened is that many more nominators will nominate next year. Maybe enough to dilute the results down enough from merely copycatting a different award.