Sad

[kevin_standlee]

Cheryl's withdrawal from many of her current projects saddens me, although it doesn't surprise me.

If there is anyone out there who wants to continue to insinuate that the Hugo Awards are somehow "corrupt," and who has any better evidence than "I didn't win" or "The things I wanted to win didn't," I want them to actually come forward and produce it.

I've said this before and I'll keep saying it: The failure of works/people to win the Hugo Award that you want to win is not a failure of process. Why is it so difficult for people to get it through their heads that not everyone thinks exactly the same way they do? Is it so important to you to consider yourself The Standard Person?

Comments

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

And having her withdraw from all public SF life is a blow to all of us - she's damn good at what she does and that things are so out of whack that she's considering "what to do with" Wizard's Books - HER OWN STORE - is an abomination.

Dammit.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Without disagreeing that quite a few people have said things in the range from unwise to unpardonable, I still think she's over-reacting. But it's her life and time and work.

(I'm unhappy about _Chicks Dig Time Lords_ because I don't like TV SF and particularly dislike Dr. Who in particular, but I hear it's actually got a lot of good stuff in it. In any case, I don't feel there's anything the slightest bit illegitimate about it winning.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It's a very fannish, perhaps even faanish, book, and that might be part of its appeal.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I am finding a lot of the blood letting a little weird myself. I think the wrong book won the Best Novel, but mostly because, compared to, say, The Dervish House, it was an inferior book. But it seems that a lot of people attending the con disagreed with me so heh, that happened.

Corrupt? Bollocks to that, as we say. I thought most of the other awards seemed to fall directly into my swathe of fandom, and it's agreeable to see friends or friends of friends win a Hugo.

This seems mild to me compared to, say, the blood letting I was seeing over the rank audacity of John Scalzi to dare to win Dave Langford's Hugo!

[jcbemis.livejournal.com]

I found The Dervish House almost unreadable, but it takes many opinions to make what we are.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not an easy read. But I'm not sure that the Best Novel should be...

[flick.livejournal.com]

Personally, I found it more (but not much more) readable than 100,000 Sequels Kingdoms.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Generally I don't like to encourage people to cut off their nose to spite their face, which is what Cheryl seems to be doing here. Sad, indeed. But, knowing her, she'd probably consider my comment on Clarkesworld's Semiprozine win, which was "Tough choice, and they're all good. I voted [first place] for Interzone, which I consider the classiest," to be one of those unpardonable slams.

[jeff-morris.livejournal.com]

After reading her post, my impression is that it's less "cut off nose to spite face" and more "bugger this for a larke" and FTS. Which I completely understand from personal experience.

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

"bugger this for a larke" - in American please? I think I'm language impaired :>

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I might believe that were the act performed with a significantly different tone.

[pwilkinson.livejournal.com]

I agree almost entirely with everything you say - at least before the final two questions - but:

Shortly after the Hugos were announced, I spotted this post (http://weirdmage.blogspot.com/2011/08/hugo-scandal-ineligible-doctor-who.html) from someone enraged that a double Doctor Who episode had won Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form when its total running length was quite a few minutes over the specified 90 minutes. I started composing an explanation of why this was quite OK but rapidly realised I was writing an article (which I will probably try to complete some time) when I didn't have time for more than a short comment (and anything longer would probably not have been easy to read there anyway).

But I also realised that when you are trying to explain that not only does rule 3.2.10 allow for variation of rule 3.3.8 by the Worldcon Committee (which, to be fair, the complainant realised) but that (as the complainant didn't) rule 3.12 allows (and in practice strongly encourages) this power to be delegated to a subcommittee, which in practice (as I think the rules don't state) means to an awards administrator, with other subcommittee members only intervening if something appears to be going seriously wrong, but that awards administrators are almost always intelligent, honest, hard-working people who abide not only by the letter of the rules but also established custom and practice, and if they don't, at least some of the people attending the Business Meeting at Worldcon will almost certainly pull them up on it (which anyone attending Worldcon who is willing to spend their mornings there sitting through meetings is welcome to attend)...

Well, I realised that the type of person who wants an explanation in no more than three bullet points (which is actually most of us most of the time) would immediately assume that I was trying to pull the wool over their eyes. And if I then had to plunge into another explanation of the historical reasons why the rules are this way...

None of which is to say that the process is broken, or indeed that there's anything that would make it much better (rather than roughly as good but different). In fact, the workings of any institution allowing even a degree of popular participation, from the Athenian Agora onwards, could be subjected to similar criticism. But the reason that it's difficult for people to get this kind of thing through their heads is that the full explanation is genuinely complicated, particularly if you are trying to follow a description rather than taking time to watch the whole thing work out in practice.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall a similar tempest-in-a-teapot around Lilo and Stitch, which landed very close to the 90 minute mark. (A quick Wikipedia check says 85m.) I hope future committees will be reasonable in categorizing works in ways that make sense to the voters.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"which, to be fair, the complainant realised" - correction. Complainant didn't realize this at the time of writing the screed, but only added it later, and then defiantly but inexplicably claimed that the double-episode remains ineligible for Short Form.

As a former Hugo administrator who invoked 3.2.10 myself, I can testify that the number of smart people who not only don't get the rule, but are proud of their ignorance and eager to display it in public, is very large.

[ole a. imsen (from livejournal.com)]

Rule 3.2.10 makes no mention of allowing nominations in the wrong category, only moving a nominee to another category.
And since you obviously have read my blog post you should have been able to see that I also criticised that no mention of any use of 3.2.10 has been made. So I'd like you to answer if the Doctor Who double episode was accepted because of rule 3.2.10, and if so why it was not made public?

Yes, I wrote the post you are reffering to.

[ole a. imsen (from livejournal.com)]

I wrote my post to highlight what is the main complaint from SFF fans about the Hugos, that they are inaccessible. Most complaints I see about the Hugos are that they are a prestigous award that has lost its connection to SFF fans. And I don't see Hugo fandom interacting with the internet SFF fandom at any other time than when they do so to state that they are relevant.

I think you are missing my point about the double episode of Doctor Who winning the Hugo. As far as can be found out online any double episode of a UK show is ineligible for a short form Hugo. The rule states that a nominee can be moved to another category of dramatic presentation if it is deemed that it should belong there. So according to the rule all nominations for The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang should have been discarded unless it was made in the long form category.
The problem I have with the award is that this have not been shown to be done. And if a Hugo nominee is declared valid in a committee that does not publicly report what it does, that is a huge problem.

My actual point in writing that post was showing that there is a "glitch" in the Hugo rules when it comes to double TV episodes. I assume that the Hugo rules didn't mean to exclude UK double episodes from the short for category, but it would be nice if this was actually defined in the rules.

To sum up, I tried to highlight something that is a part of the criticism that the Hugos are separate from the majority of SFF fans. And I think that the lack of response from Hugo fandom just shows how true that is.

If I had paid $50 to vote for the Hugos I would assume that the rules I found online were the ones to go by. And not some committee that works without being open about what they do.

A notice on the final ballot that a decision to not discard the votes for the double episode, and defining it as short form would have been enough. I didn't actually think I could change the Hugo rules by writing my post, but I hoped that by showing how the rules are flawed would at least make people think. And maybe even make a change to the rules so that it was made clear what the Hugos see as shorty form.

Re: Yes, I wrote the post you are reffering to.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Short version: You're wrong.

Medium version: Many people want absolute, hard-edged, no-possible-variance rules. It's so much easier to think about things that way. But reality isn't hard-edged; it's fuzzy. So our rules are written with fuzz on the edges and we let the voters decide where edge cases belong whenever possible. They did so, and the administrator followed the voters' instructions, and that's why nobody complained except you.

Long version: The Hugo Administrators will report if they actually move a nominee from one category to another; that is, if the voters nominate it in one category but they move it to another. But they will generally not say anything if a work is nominated somewhere in the gray zone.

Because of the gray zone on dramatic presentation, Short Form works can be as long as 108 minutes, and Long Form works can be as short as 72 minutes. Yes, technically this means that the "Long Form" work could be shorter than the "Short Form" work, such as a two-part Doctor Who episode competing against a relatively short theatrical motion picture. That's okay. (And before you even start: trying to split the category by medium, such as television/motion pictures, ends up reducing the total field, since such a split eliminates all other media such as audio dramas, live plays and similar presentations such as dramatized slide shows, and yes, YouTube videos, all of which have been nominated in the past.)

Had the voters nominated the relevant episode in Long Form and the administrator moved it to Short Form, the administrators would have reported the move; however, since the voters decided that they think it's a short form work and it's legal for it to be in that category (being less that 108 minutes), the administrator left it alone.

This is completely legal, totally within existing precedent, follows the voters' preferences, and isn't a scandal or a controversy, except to you. The rules aren't flawed, except to you, because you've decided that if something is 89:59 long it's short form, absolutely and completely, and if it's 90:01, it's long form, totally and utterly, and There Shall Be No Divergence From Your Decisions. Well, no, not unless you're the Hugo Award Administrator, which you're unlikely to be, since Hugo Administrators are usually selected with a preference toward people who can see shades of gray. (I speak from experience here.)

There's a 20% gray zone between the two dramatic presentation categories for the same reason that there's a 20% gray zone between the four written fiction categories: works in the boundary region aren't cut and dried. The wording of dramatic presentation strongly suggests that television shows should be in short form unless they exceed 108 minutes (which gets them into "three-parter" or mini-series territory) and that theatrical motion pictures should be in Long Form unless they're shorter than 72 minutes (which makes them "short films" instead). The Administrators didn't do anything wrong; indeed, they followed all existing precedent and legislative history on this category. That that is why not one word was mentioned about this before the WSFS Business Meeting.

But you know, there is a method of redress if you're really convinced that there is some Great Catastrophe going on: Propose amendments to the WSFS Constitution that force administrators to behave the way you think they should behave. This is not unprecedented. The current wording of the Dramatic Presentation categories is the result of an amendment made when a borderline dramatic presentation was moved into Short Form when many (including me) thought it belonged in Long Form despite being only 87 minutes (or so) long. So if you feel strongly enough about it, submit a proposed change to next year's WSFS business meeting. It's not like there's some secret, select board of directors making the rules; every member of Worldcon can propose changes.

What Is A Fan?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Most complaints I see about the Hugos are that they are a prestigous award that has lost its connection to SFF fans.

And thus you're saying that you are an SFF fan, but I am not, yes? What privileges you over me, or either of us over some random fan on the street? What gives you the right to say "I am a fan, but he is not?" Or have you decided that you are The Standard Fan, and anyone different from me is Not a Fan?

Be careful going down that path. You'll discover eventually that there are plenty of people ready to tell you that you're not a fan (nor am I) for any number of reasons. I'll quote a few if you want examples.

Speaking For Fandom

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I tried to highlight something that is a part of the criticism that the Hugos are separate from the majority of SFF fans....

I'm sorry, but you don't have the right to speak for "a majority of SFF fans" any more than I do. Nobody can speak for "a majority of SFF fans." Nor is there any award of any sort, nor will there ever be, that is selected by "a majority of SFF fans." The field is too large. There are too many fans. There's no one single group, and you can't reach everyone, or even a majority. So don't try appealing to "the silent majority."

[wild-patience.livejournal.com]

I think she's wrong in saying that the same people who voted for X also voted for Y. Not everyone votes in all the categories. I only got the short fiction read so those were the only categories I voted in besides the art categories (since there were links to the artists' works on the Renovation web site). Probably many of the people voting on the fanzines did not vote also in the novel category.

[cmdrsuzdal.livejournal.com]

That sucks.

However much I hate to see it happen, I do understand. There are times that dealing with all this stuff (and more besides) makes one look around and say "wait a second, why on Earth am I putting myself through this".

I hope she finds some space to breathe and regroup and we get her back soon.

[twilight2000.livejournal.com]

THIS!

[mkillingworth.livejournal.com]

She is a remarkably intelligent, energetic, talented and productive woman. We don't always agree on things, but that's normal in any group. Frankly my first reaction was to say that I always thought that she was stronger than that. On reflection, however, I can understand that one can only take so much bullshit before the effort is no longer worth the hassle. I hope she reconsiders and we see her back soon.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

I'm sad to see that happen, too.

If you need help with SF Awards Watch, I'm interested. It doesn't seem like it needs gobs of time.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

I do wish Cheryl would stop internalizing fannish feuds that actually have Nothing to Do with Her. All the Hugo Awards sniping is like that. Some times I just want to shake that girl out of her moods.
In fact, not only have I not heard anything bad about Cheryl, Every project she was involved in during WorldCon, admittedly from a distance, was Praised. The fact that Clarkes World won a hugo. The Hugo online coverage. Praise and Praise.
I wish we could do more to get her out of this depressive funk, because I do believe that is what we are seeing. But even that is hard to do at a distance.
Do send Cheryl our love and hugs. I know she won't believe it but it is out here for her.