2015 Hugo Award winners

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Prove the Hugos are meaningless.

Because of this thread, I'm going to at least start The Three-Body Problem. I guess that indicates some kind of meaning.

Should readers pay more attention to any of these Hugo alternatives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlin...fiction_awards

[Ajax]

Originally Posted by HarryT

So what effect did the supposed ballot rigging have in the end?

Proved that the best way to protest slate voting, is to...

slate vote for "No Award"

[kennyc]

Looks like the short-forms took it in the shorts. Too bad. This whole episode is to me a serious black mark on the award. Seems there should be some serious thought about revision to how the nominating and voting works.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I think that one thing we can all agree on is that something needs to be done about the nomination process. As far as the awards are concerned, they've always been a popularity contest. That said, for the most part the contest actually produced some very fine pieces of work. After three years of SP/RP manipulation, that's getting harder to do. I did try to read some of the SP/RP nominations and for the most part they just weren't that good.

This.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by BenG

Sounds like Noah Ward had a good night.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Ajax

Proved that the best way to protest slate voting, is to...

slate vote for "No Award"

When handed a shit sandwich, is it wrong to say "No thanks"? It was the nomination process that was hijacked, and nothing after that could make things right again in my view.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Ajax

Proved that the best way to protest slate voting, is to...

slate vote for "No Award"

It's more like "Proved the best way to protest slate nominations which picked a bunch of mediocre-to-poor candidates, is to slate vote for "No Award".

IMHO, the only categories where I felt they had legitimate nominations were the editor categories (and I question whether Toni Weiskipof and Jim Mintz should deserve an individual editor award when all of the Baen works are "team-edited"). If it had been up to my votes, the fan writer and best novellette categories would have been no award too.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Looks like the short-forms took it in the shorts. Too bad. This whole episode is to me a serious black mark on the award. Seems there should be some serious thought about revision to how the nominating and voting works.

At the WSFS business meeting today, they passed two constitutional amendments to change the nominating process, which need to be ratified next year before they will take effect for works published in 2016. I think that if they are amended next year, ratification would be delayed a year, and if they are not ratified, the amendment is cancelled, and a new amendment would need to be proposed in 2017, ratified in 2018, and take effect in 2019.

The 4 of 6 amendment would change nominations so that each member can nominate 4 works, and each category would have 6 finalists. That would only make it slightly harder to do a slate, but it would be easy for a dedicated slate to have half the members vote for slate A and the other half vote for slate B and have the same effect the rabid puppies had this year.

The E Pluribus Hugo amendment changes the nominating so that for each category, the member gets one point that's split between all of their nominations. The elimination goes through a series of rounds where the nominee with the least number of points is eliminated (a tie eliminates the work with the least number of nominations), and when a member's nominee is eliminated, the member's point is then split between the remaining nominees. If you have a large number of members nominating by slate, and the rest of the members nominating randomly, the slate nominators choices will essentially be competing among themselves and only one choice will remain in competition with the other choices. I haven't tried to implement and test this personally, but I suspect that this might be susceptible to slate manipulation if you had separate subslates for each final nomination slot in the category. Still, you'd probably need 3-5 times the number of slate members than the rabid puppies had to be successful, and the rule to eliminate the nominee with the least number of nominators might not be in the slate nominee's favor.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

(I picked up the non-Puppy novel nominees - and indeed one of the withdrawn Puppy nominees - myself.)

I find it sad that you picked your reading on this basis.

[Ginwen]

Originally Posted by Ajax

Proved that the best way to protest slate voting, is to...

slate vote for "No Award"

I guess that would be true if that's what happened, but I'm sure a lot of people are like me and still didn't want to vote for no award even though the slates were annoying (especially Rabid Puppies, because he specifically told his followers they didn't need to bother reading any of it, just vote exactly as he said, and many of them did).

So I read everything (even that awful Kevin J Anderson book which was a struggle), and voted everything where I thought it belonged, which means in some cases No Award was first. As long as I keep voting, I'll still try to read everything, however it gets on there, and vote how I see it. I just hope that if there are slates they look a little bit more at quality because I realize tastes differ (the rabid bunch actually seems to like the John C Wright stuff that was nominated, unbelievable as that is to me after reading it), but some of that stuff no way anyone thought it was actually good (try reading the Michael Z Williamson nominee or the Kevin J Anderson book if you don't believe me).

The only thing I'll do differently this year is I'm going to nominate, which I've never bothered doing before.

The thing I'm actually more disappointed about then the No Awards (because they suck but in most cases based on what was nominated were deserved) is that there was a proposal to allow all members, supporting and attending, a chance to vote on things that were ratified at the business meetings (so it would take 3 years instead of 2, but you could vote even if you weren't there). I think if not for the events of this year, it might have passed, but it lost I think 69-47, and I think that was due to this year's mess.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by darryl

I find it sad that you picked your reading on this basis.

Choosing the works actually recommended on their merits by fans of the genre? Absurd!

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Ginwen

The thing I'm actually more disappointed about then the No Awards (because they suck but in most cases based on what was nominated were deserved) is that there was a proposal to allow all members, supporting and attending, a chance to vote on things that were ratified at the business meetings (so it would take 3 years instead of 2, but you could vote even if you weren't there). I think if not for the events of this year, it might have passed, but it lost I think 69-47, and I think that was due to this year's mess.

I think it was a case of bad timing. While passage would not have affected any of the amendments up for consideration this year, I think there was concern that someone coordinating a scorched earth attack on the Hugo Awards in the future could continue the attack for an additional year, and possibly sow enough doubt in the general membership that any complicated modifications to the constitution would get voted down. It's easier to create a pithy comment to cause doubt than it is to explain why something complicated is a good idea. Politicians do the former every day, and rarely succeed at the latter.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by darryl

I find it sad that you picked your reading on this basis.

I don't. I pick the books I think I might like and buy them. (In fact I'd already read the withdrawn Marko Kloos book before the shortlist came out.)

Since I had read all of the Hugo novel winners I want to try and keep that record, so I would probably have read the winner no matter what, and I do like to see what people actually think is good when they're not trying to make a political point.

Also the Butcher and Anderson books are both late entries in long series (the Anderson is the first in a sequel series, I understand) of which I have read the first book and decided not to continue.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by HarryT

So what effect did the supposed ballot rigging have in the end?

"Rigging" is a difficult word to use when the slate nominators' actions were, strictly, within the written rules of the award. What they did was dishonourable and unethical, but not against the rules.

Yes, they proved the Hugo nominations can be gamed by a relatively small number of nominators. So? We always knew that. It's inherent in the way the process works. The fact is, the vast majority of voters choose not to take part in that; not because it's difficult, but because it's a shitty, childish thing to do. So they proved that they can set out to achieve an easy, shitty thing, and then achieve it? Ooookay then.

To answer your question: the ultimate effect was to push a whole lot of very award-worthy works off the ballot, unfortunately. Including a number of works/authors that I suspect would be within the Puppies publicly stated remit, if not their unstated one, and were of vastly higher quality than their nominations.

They're claiming victory - but they were always going to, regardless of the outcome of the final vote, so that's pretty irrelevant. All they have actually achieved is to deprive excellent work of well-deserved awards.

*world's slowest clap*

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by meeera

"Rigging" is a difficult word to use when the slate nominators' actions were, strictly, within the written rules of the award. What they did was dishonourable and unethical, but not against the rules.

Yes, they proved the Hugo nominations can be gamed by a relatively small number of nominators. So? We always knew that. It's inherent in the way the process works. The fact is, the vast majority of voters choose not to take part in that; not because it's difficult, but because it's a shitty, childish thing to do. So they proved that they can set out to achieve an easy, shitty thing, and then achieve it? Ooookay then.

I'm afraid I strongly disagree with you. Campaigning for your favoured candidate is a standard - and entirely legitimate - part of any electoral process. It's not "dishonourable", "unethical", "shitty" or "childish". If you dislike the nominations that someone else is urging you to make, you are entirely free to ignore them or, even better, promote the nominees that you think should be considered for the award.

To change the democratic process when people - shock! horror! - actually start using it in an entirely legitimate way seems to me to be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I do not agree with the aims of this particular group, but I 100% support their right to take the actions they took.