Hugos V: E Paucibus Drama

[denstorebog]

For the victory to be complete, the next nomination needs to pretty much shut out the puppy slate. That should demoralize a sufficient number of puppies from repeatedly throwing money at future slates. If they keep dominating the nominations, that's enough to incentivize them and practically make the award meaningless.

[Maltaran]

A non-Puppy query, did the Best YA Hugo proposal get ratified?

[Clueless Northman]

Haven't commented on that topic until now, because I don't care that much about awards. With books, movies and games, I don't rely on any award to see what's good, I rely on word-of-mouth and on the test of time (a book that's considered good after 5 decades is probably decent at worst).
Still a damn shame and a big waste, imho...

Whatever, I wonder what's the Puppies' opinion on Laura Mixon getting a Hugo. Because, as far as I can see, they should be quite happy that the person who took down the rabid "SJW" Requires Hate" got rewarded for it - whatever Mixon's personal opinions could be. Being quite neutral and never having bothered to dive into this mess - not bothering reading sites and forums of either sides, just reading some of the topics here -, I'd assume people who are upset at "SJWs" would be quite thankful for Mixon's work. Or rather, that she (like, say, Guardians of the Galaxy) would be one of the few nominations everyone could vote for without wondering what "the other side" would think and do.
(on the other hand, I probably shouldn't ask for this, for my sanity)

Well then, hyperventilate away! But the Hugo's have always been a political process and always will be a political process. It always has been subject to manipulation and always will be subject to manipulation. Hugo winners always have been crap and always will be crap; with maybe an exception here and there. (Admittedly, DUNE was rather enjoyable.) And voting as flag-waving will always be simpler and easier and attract more votes than thoughtful reading, appreciation and judgment.

Well, in the early decades, there were giants who were fated to win, whatever riggable the Hugos could be. Heinlein, Clark or Asimov can't be dismissed easily.
Now, SciFi hasn't so many towering giants around, and the whole field is even more fragmented, so you don't have an undisputed winner. Meaning politics will have more influence when picking a winner.

 

Whatever they were trying to do, both Puppies campaigns only succeeded in making the awards this year a hundred times as political as they ever had been in the past. There's an element of politics to any award: it would be naive to deny that. But the Hugos, prior to this year, were no better and no worse than any other in that regard.

Alas, you're right. And I don't see how it can be toned down and how you can get them to be less politicized than they are now. A shame for the Hugos, and something worrying for anyone who cares about them, because:

 

Well I suspect not many people are going to keep shelling out over $40 to play the Sad Puppies game. I think they'll try again next year and if they lose again (save for Marvel blockbusters lol) the whole thing will be dismantled.

Problem is, this goes for both sides.
When you look at the result, it's obvious there were more NA voters than puppies voters, and the bulk of these No Awards / anti-puppies were just as recent members than puppies. Raw amount of votes this year compared to, say, 2013, shows this.
So it can well become an attrition war: which side will have the most devoted members, ready to waste $$ for years until their side fully control the Hugos while people on the other side get demotivated and stop shilling money to rig the contest.
I'm not sure which side would win in the long run, actually.
But the real big problem is that it doesn't matter. If such bickering and butchering of the selection process (odds are that some in the No Award side could begin their own slate next year, since the whole process is now ultra-politicized - denstorebog's comment seems quite spot on in this regard, you have to get your own slate if you want to effectively shut down the othe slate), botched voting (with the extremes on both sides voting not on merit but on who nominated who), and results drama, the Hugos will only survive a couple of years before being wholly discredited.

There's been a lot of discussion about how to improve the nomination process, and that's sorely needed if the shenanigans are to stop, or at least to go down to a reasonable level.
But really, if it's some kind of popularity contest in principle and everyone can vote, but people have to pay for it (which reduces the "popularity contest" aspect to an extent), the awfully low number of nominating/voting people, at least until this year, ensured the Hugos could be rigged.
I'm not sure what's the best way to improve/change the process, but I'm pretty convinced that if it goes on, it's over in a few years. The process has always been prone to rigging and abuse, it's just that until now, no one was so blatant about it. But it was only a matter of time, alas, because the system itself was deeply flawed since day one - and only the existence of awesome authors in the past made sure they weren't rigged from the get go.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Malt,

A non-Puppy query, did the Best YA Hugo proposal get ratified?

The commitee reported on its discussions for the last year and advised it will be exploring the fesibility of creating a "non-Hugo" YA award and brought in several new members for the coming years discussions.

[David Selig]

 

Well, in the early decades, there were giants who were fated to win, whatever riggable the Hugos could be. Heinlein, Clark or Asimov can't be dismissed easily.

There were fated to win because they had way too many fanboys voting for them no matter how mediocre their work was, especially Heinlein and Asimov, not because they were all that good as writers. Foundation's Edge, the mediocre continuation of the Foundation, which most people today pretend doesn't exist, won the Hugo. The Gods Themselves beat Dying Inside.

[Sci-2]

For the victory to be complete, the next nomination needs to pretty much shut out the puppy slate. That should demoralize a sufficient number of puppies from repeatedly throwing money at future slates. If they keep dominating the nominations, that's enough to incentivize them and practically make the award meaningless.

 

Eh, the award is largely meaningless precisely because of the nomination process.

 

There's been a lot of discussion about how to improve the nomination process, and that's sorely needed if the shenanigans are to stop, or at least to go down to a reasonable level.
But really, if it's some kind of popularity contest in principle and everyone can vote, but people have to pay for it (which reduces the "popularity contest" aspect to an extent), the awfully low number of nominating/voting people, at least until this year, ensured the Hugos could be rigged.
I'm not sure what's the best way to improve/change the process, but I'm pretty convinced that if it goes on, it's over in a few years. The process has always been prone to rigging and abuse, it's just that until now, no one was so blatant about it. But it was only a matter of time, alas, because the system itself was deeply flawed since day one - and only the existence of awesome authors in the past made sure they weren't rigged from the get go.

 

I agree on its flaws. I've said a few times I think the award is worthless because it's basically a voting system designed to pay for an annual party with some other arguable perks for the clubhouse.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sci,

Would you prefer a juried nomination with open balloting?

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

If I'm reading those numbers correctly, less than 6,000 people in total voted for the Hugo Awards. Is that right? Because this whole thing looks like a giant tempest in a tiny teapot. 

[Clueless Northman]

The very wannabe Marxist in me would probably suspect that every system has so many inner flaws that it's going to collapse sooner or later, which makes it difficult to come up with a fail-proof one. I'm not sure if a more open one, which allows for far more voters than we currently have, would be better, or if a more controlled fomr of jury is the way to go - both have their issues. Still, I fear the current system is doomed.

Maybe some fixes, for instance restricting nominations to 1 per person, for each category, could help against slates. Though of course a very organized group can still game such a system by carefully dividing nominations amont its members. Might be worth a try, possibly. And then, if there's no take-over of nominees - as happened in a few categories this year -, passions would be less heated when it comes to voting, people will vote on merit instead of slate or political bias, and won't rely too much on No Award. Yet odds are that this won't help much...

[Commodore]

only fix it is to eliminate fan voting

 

need an elite academy to choose nominations

[Sci-2]

Sci,

Would you prefer a juried nomination with open balloting?

 

Honestly at this point I'm not sure what direction the Hugos can go in. Make it free to vote and people will complain, make it juried and people will complain.

 

I like Clueless Northman's suggestion that you can only nominate 1 person in each category. That might at least allow for less forcing of a slate.

 

It's just a weird award to me - neither popular vote nor critical nomination.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sci,

That's sort of the view 4/6 takes.

EPH is being taken up by the BM right now.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Kilo Watt is explaining EPH

[Sci-2]

Sorry Scott, you've lost me with those acronyms.

[mormont]

4/6 - a proposal limiting nominators to 4 nominees per category while at the same time increasing the final list to 6, making slate nominations harder to co-ordinate.

 

EPH - E Pluribus Hugo, a way of making the nominations process much more complicated and considerably less transparent for no particularly good reason. (Seriously, the results last night should kill this idea dead. They probably won't, because geeks love complicated formulae.)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Hugo Admin pointing out the complexity is serious concern that "variations" in the names offered for the works nominated already makes this difficult EPH squares the difficulty.

[Sci-2]

Thanks Mormont, probably my fault for missing some prior posts on this subject.

 

4/6 seems interesting. Not sure it's THE solution to the Hugos having genuine relevance as a metric of quality, but it might at the least keep slates from being as much of a problem.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Mormont,

They're saying "let's approve it to see how it works". Hugo admin says this will add an additional 50 hours of work and make the results incredibly difficult to explain.

[Kat]

If they could clap us in shackles, put us into the boxcars, and send us to the icy wastes to die, they would do it in a heartbeat.

Good thing Helsinki won then. Step 1 to icy wastes, unlocked.

[Seli]

If I'm reading those numbers correctly, less than 6,000 people in total voted for the Hugo Awards. Is that right? Because this whole thing looks like a giant tempest in a tiny teapot. 

That is probably the largest number of voters ever :)

 

only fix it is to eliminate fan voting

 

need an elite academy to choose nominations

There are awards already that work that way, or use a hybrid approach. One difficulty is finding the people to judge every single year. And the locus award shows that the fan voting system works perfectly well, as long as no-one is trying to game it. But then it is impossible to get people to follow the spirit of the rules if they don't feel like cooperating.