Hugos 2014 - countdown to the vote

[Darth Richard II]

Oh, well, the search function isn't exactly the most reliable thing here.

Also I thought you meant this one anyway.

La la la I am bored la la la

[RedEyedGhost]

Oh, well, the search function isn't exactly the most reliable thing here.

It is if you use it right. :cool4:

[Seli]

Seli,

Well supporting memberships are still not cheap particularly for younger readers. My idea is a nominal fee $10 or less to encourage people to participate in the nomination process. They can upgrade to supporting if they want to vote. It's the "gateway" drug to further participation.

;)

Ah, of course.

Perhaps with the move away from hard copy programmes etc that I believe passed in this year's busines meeting that could be easier now.

[mormont]

Vote splitting is not an issue with the ballot system used for the Hugos.

In theory, this is true. In practice, it's only true if people who vote for, say, The Name of The Doctor fill out the ballot completely and list the other Who episodes as their lower preferences. Many don't, for various reasons. Looking at the voting figures, 6 of the 83 people who had 'Name' as their first preference, listed no other preference: 2 went to 'No Award', 5 to Orphan Black and 8 to Game of Thrones. So only 75% of Who votes transferred in that instance. It's even less when the other episodes go out. When 'An Adventure In Space and Time' is eliminated, only 90 of its 391 votes switch to 'Day of the Doctor'. 76 go to Game of Thrones, 68 to Orphan Black and 157 have no more preferences.

[Maltaran]

Scot may have to overcome a lot of inertia with the nominating membership idea, especially since the business meeting approved the amendment banning cons from selling memberships with voting rights for less than the cost of a supporting membership.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Malt,

Understood. But I can distingish this. It is the creation of a new class of membership. What will be really difficult to overcome are the people who want the Hugos to be an "in crowd" award. Because they'll never admit that's what they want.

[mormont]

Scot: no, you can't easily distinguish it, I'm afraid. Creating a new class of membership with a lower price is exactly what the business meeting banned.

And I can see why, because you really won't sell many vote-only memberships without cannibalising existing supporting membership sales. Outside of a hard core of WorldCon regulars, people who buy supporting memberships do it to get the voter package and vote: that's why we sold 3,000 this time out. Though few of them actually voted. Most just wanted the voter package.

Which in itself is telling. There is not a huge market of fans desperate to vote for the Hugos. That's just a fact. Heck, you can barely get people who can effectively vote for free, ie attending members, to vote for them. The majority of attending members - about two thirds, I think - didn't bother. I've said it before and I'm saying it again: come back and talk about selling $10 voting memberships when Hugo turnouts are over 70%. Until then, it's wasting energy that's better used trying to increase participation in existing voters.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Mormont,

Not vote only. Nominate only.

[mormont]

Still covered, though. And to be frank, again, this is not going to work. Who is going to buy your 'gateway drug'? A few hundred people worldwide, is my guess.

[Darth Richard II]

So, basically, the Hugos don't matter?

[mormont]

Oh, the Hugos do matter. They matter a great deal. Ask anyone who's ever been nominated for one, at any time, in any category. They're prestigious. They're special. They're a Big Deal.

They're not as special as they once were, of course. Nobody can deny that. They were once the most prominent award in the field: they once had the ability to make a career. These days, for various reasons, that's less true. There are competing awards, but more than that, there are alternative avenues, career paths, sources of information and recommendation for fans and professionals. We don't need any award or imprimatur as much as we used to. That's just the nature of the world today. It's rare for any award to make a book a hit, if only because by the time a shortlist is announced, we already know if it's a hit.

But, we should remember, the Hugos used to be the biggest thing in the genre: and we should also remember that every problem, every criticism of the Hugos was just as true then, or worse. Fewer people voted for the Hugos in the days when it mattered, and those voters were every bit as susceptible to partiality and conservatism. People overlook this when attacking the current Hugos. If you'd sold nominating memberships in those days, you wouldn't have sold even a few hundred worldwide.

Saying that there isn't a clamour from fans to pay to vote in the Hugos is just recognition of reality. There isn't a clamour to pay to vote for any award, really.

[felice]

In theory, this is true. In practice, it's only true if people who vote for, say, The Name of The Doctor fill out the ballot completely and list the other Who episodes as their lower preferences. Many don't, for various reasons. Looking at the voting figures, 6 of the 83 people who had 'Name' as their first preference, listed no other preference: 2 went to 'No Award', 5 to Orphan Black and 8 to Game of Thrones. So only 75% of Who votes transferred in that instance.

Anyone who ranked Orphan Black or Game of Thrones ahead of Day is highly unlikely to have voted Day first if Name, Adventure, and Fiveish hadn't been on the ballot. Some of the "no other preference" voters might have, but there aren't anywhere near enough of them to make a difference to the results in this case. If anything, the excessive number of DW nominees on the ballot worked in DW's favour by keeping out potential competition, rather than hurting it by virtually non-existent vote splitting; eg somebody might have liked Day more than Orphan or Game, but would have preferred Sleepy Hollow, Fringe, or Korra over any of them.

[mormont]

Anyone who ranked Orphan Black or Game of Thrones ahead of Day is highly unlikely to have voted Day first if Name, Adventure, and Fiveish hadn't been on the ballot.

It's hard to say, definitively, whether they would or not. I find it very credible that someone might be a Who fan and put their favourite Who episode first, wanting to see the programme win, but they might also like Orphan Black and thus list that second. Unless they really like Who, they are not going to put every Who episode before anything else. They'd perceive that as expressing a much stronger preference for Who than simply picking their favourite Who that appears on the ballot and putting that first.

This is not necessarily logically true, but speaking as someone who deals with elections under this same system every year, people are not always logical about their second preferences - that was my point.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Mormont,

My idea is to increase participation in the nomination process, at least, and hopefully increase participation as a whole in the full process. The only way to make it easier would be to open up nominations to everyone for free and that would never fly.

I cannot say how many more people would take advantage of a nominal "nominating membership" but when I posed the possiblity before several indicacted, Wert and Datepalm for example, that it seemed like a decent idea to widen the participation base for the Hugos and hopefully bring some works to the attention of which people had been unaware.