kevin_standlee

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.

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."

I'll quote the Hugo rules, as they appear online.

3.2.10: The Worldcon Committee may relocate a dramatic presentation work into a more appropriate category if it feels that it is necessary, provided that the length of the work is within twenty percent (20%) of the new category boundary.

There's no mention in these rules of accepting nominees that are ineligigible when nominated. Reading the rules makes it seem that a UK double episode can only be moved to the short form category if it is correctly nominated in the long form category. I might be wrong as you say, but by the rules available, I am right.

My point being there should be a definition of short form that includes, or excludes, long arc television series. What is short form? Will the "Game of Thrones" series be categorised as one arc (,following the definition of story in the novel category that allows novels split into two to be counted as one story). Or will nominations of single episodes be counted? What about a three episode miniseries? It would be a little over two hours if it was US, where do the Hugos stand on that, short or long?

There's no mention in these rules of accepting nominees that are ineligigible when nominated.

Actually, there is. Section 3.8 of the WSFS Constitution has rules regarding the tallying of nominations, including what to do when someone nominates in the "wrong" category.

I might be wrong as you say, but by the rules available, I am right.

Only because you're reading the rules every woodenly, out of context, and with a pre-defined destination: You appear to want rules that make everything prohibited except for specifically permitted functions, whereas our rules are primarily written to allow anything not prohibited. But it's very fannish (and not in a good way) to try and treat rules as if they were a computer program, even though that's not possible in the real world.

To put it very bluntly, I see the Hugos as a convention award. And I have no problem with that. But since the Hugos are a prestigious SFF award, and its fans think that it should continue to be so, that is not enough.

And I stand by what I said about Hugo fandom being a separate thing from SFF fandom. Of course Hugo fandom is composed of SFF fans, but they are not exactly seeking out and interacting with other SFF fans, and I think (, I'll specify that this is my personal opinion, even though it is the opinion I see voiced by far more SFF fans than the number of voters for the Hugos,) that is a valid criticism of the Hugos. If you are a part of Hugo fandom and want the Hugos to be relevant to SFF fans generally, you should listen to them. By focusing on how "good" fans you are instead of answering my criticism of Hugo rules you are just proving that you are not a part of SFF fandom as it exist today, and that the criticism of the Hugos as being voted by a closed group is correct.

And I'll be even more precise when it comes to my opinion of Hugo fandom. I think they are dedicated SFF fans. But they are a smaller and smaller percentage of SFF fans, and it seems that they are refusing to accept that by their reactions to the much larger group of online SFF fans criticisms of their award as being irrelevant to what their opinion is.

So, can you give me an answer to as why the Hugo rules are not in synch with what is actualy nominated? I'll myself from a comment I did on my post: "I think that if you have rules, you should stick to them."

That should be "I'll quote myself", not "I'll myself".

My point being there should be a definition of short form that includes, or excludes, long arc television series. What is short form?

In effect, any dramatic work less than 108 minutes long that the voters consider "short," generally including any "two part" or shorter television episode, but not including shorter theatrical motion pictures, and also including other shorter dramatic works not easily characterized as either television shows or theatrical motion pictures.

Will the "Game of Thrones" series be categorised as one arc (,following the definition of story in the novel category that allows novels split into two to be counted as one story).

It's not just novels, but any multi-part work of any length, but yes, that's the rule that almost certainly will be applied. People griped about Blackout/All Clear being allowed onto the ballot as a single work. I wonder if they would have complained if it had instead been published a long serialized novel in the pages of one of the SF/F magazines?

But to answer your question, I expect Game of Thrones to be treated as one long work, because I can't see many people nominating it any other way.

Or will nominations of single episodes be counted?

If most of the voters nominated only single episodes, then I expect that the administrator would count those. But since this is highly unlikely, it hardly matters. Outliers aren't that important. Lots of strange stuff gets one or two nominations, and administrators don't bother ruling on cases that don't matter.

What about a three episode miniseries? It would be a little over two hours if it was US, where do the Hugos stand on that, short or long?

Assuming the episodes are "one hour," such as a three part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation to give a concrete example, then the total running time would exceed 108 minutes and therefore the only category in which it would be eligible would be Long Form. If a lot of people nominated it in Short Form, the administrator would (if possible) probably exercise the section 3.8 authority to move nominations to the other category.

This isn't really a difficult problem the way you seem to think there is, and there's even precedent: an entire season of Heroes was treated as one long multi-part story and thus nominated as a single long-form dramatic work. And the full run of Game of Thrones is obviously more than 108 minutes long, so it can't be short form. This isn't a difficult question, because it's not in the gray zone at all. (Nor is your hypothetical example.)

It's only when something in in the gray zone between 72 and 108 minutes where you have to make a judgment call, and the long-standing precedent, reinforced by many WSFS business meeting actions, is that you follow the voice of the voters unless it's impossible for you to do so. Anytime an administrator overrides the voters on anything other than a very clear technical issue (a work published in the wrong year, or clearly outside of the gray zone), the business meeting has stepped in and passed new rules that say, in effect, "You shouldn't have done that, and we're going to change the rules to make sure you can't do it again."

Okay, look, it would be possible to include thousands of additional words on the Hugo Awards ballot encapsulating the years of debate that went into adopting the current rules, but nobody would read it and it wouldn't do any good.

The reason I'm so exasperated is that you appear to be thinking that you've discovered something brand new that nobody in the history of the universe has ever noticed before, when in fact all you are doing is rehashing arguments that have been going on for more than a decade. I know they're new to you, but from the point of view of WSFS, they're pretty much settled law.

I contend again that you don't have the right to speak for "fandom," nor does anyone else. Nobody can't plausibly claim to be the Voice of Fandom.

If you think you are the Voice of Fandom, then go out and set up your own awards to be decided by Real Fans and see how many people pay attention to you.

can you give me an answer to as why the Hugo rules are not in synch with what is actualy nominated?

They are, but you don't realize it because you want to take things out of context to support your pre-defined conclusion. You're not allowed to take rules out of context (which you're doing by only looking at a few of them). You have to include the entire rules, and generally speaking precedents are going to influence how the administrators rule on things.

As I said earlier, it would be possible to include thousands of words of discussion on interpretation, history, and precedent with the ballot, but since nobody would read it, it is a waste of time and paper. WSFS isn't going to add thousands of words to the ballot to please one person who isn't even a member of the organization.

Writing constitutional rules is much more difficult than you think it is. I commonly use the toothpaste-tube analogy: The harder you squeeze, the messier it gets.

Why don't you try writing rules that don't amount to, "Do what I personally say, since I know better than everyone else, and nobody would ever question my judgment. Just submit every work to me and I'll tell you whether it's eligible or not." Since that's obviously silly, what we actually do is let every individual make his or her mind up about whether he or she thinks the work is eligible, and then only have the administrators get involved in clearly out-of-bounds situations.

To put it very bluntly, I see the Hugos as a convention award. And I have no problem with that. But since the Hugos are a prestigious SFF award, and its fans think that it should continue to be so, that is not enough.

So you're saying that an organization of which you aren't even a member must be forced to change to suit you because You Say So. Very funny.

As I said in my earlier comment, you're welcome to go set up your own awards for Real Fans. Just don't call them "Hugo Awards" or give out rocket-shaped trophies. Who knows, maybe your Real Fandom Awards will be such a hit that nobody will ever pay any attention to the Hugo Awards ever again. But somehow I doubt that you'll go to the effort, since it's easier to complain that other people should change to suit you.

"The reason I'm so exasperated is that you appear to be thinking that you've discovered something brand new that nobody in the history of the universe has ever noticed before, when in fact all you are doing is rehashing arguments that have been going on for more than a decade. I know they're new to you, but from the point of view of WSFS, they're pretty much settled law."

Again you are discarding my point that it is NOT law when the rules don't reflect it. I tried to highlight the discrepancy between the written rules and reality. Your point about the committee, from what you say, being able to set the written rules aside is just proof that the criticism of the Hugos as being "out of touch" is correct.

And you are reading the rules out of context and ignoring the rest of the WSFS Constitution, including the section that explicitly allows administrators to count nominations in what you would consider the "wrong" category.

But you've picked out a few words and decided that's all there is, and of course you know better than anyone else, so none of the rest of the WSFS Constitution matters, nor does years of precedent. All that matters is that one sentence you found, nothing else.

I challenge you again to come up with something that cannot possibly be misinterpreted, especially by someone like you, who wants to find a misinterpretation.

If you don't see the discrepancy between the prestige of a Hugo and their relevance to the majority of fans you are an idiot.

I have nor said the Hugos should change, but I say that if they want to continue to be relevant they must.

And thank you for confirming that Hugo fans are a bunch of close minded elitists that are more worried about being important than being inclusive with your comments.

Saying I'm out of context by quoting the actual rules that someone who has paid $50 to vote has to go by is really idiotic. If you have a committee that can discard the rules you can just as well have that committe decide the winners and drop all pretence of it being a vote.

Now look here: You're not allowed to quote just one sentence if you're going to insist that the rules are broken. You have the read the entire document. And there are rules that allow the administrators to count the ballots of people who vote in the "wrong" category under certain circumstances. But you're so focused on that one sentence that you're ignoring everything else. That's what I mean about being out of context. The WSFS Constitution is not one sentence. It's an entire document, and you're not allowed to quote single rules when there are other, general rules that override that specific one.

You're so convinced that you know better than everyone else: how would you write the rule? Remember, you have to write it in such a way that NOBODY can misinterpret it, take it out of context, or twist it in a way that you never intended. You have to be perfect. Good luck.

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad: one of the arguments for the split of Dramatic Presentation into short and long form was the the Hugo Awards must "continue to be relevant." But of course you'd not know that, would you?

And you confirm all I have heard of Hugo fandom's tendency to not give a shit about criticism with your answers. I thought my view of people associated with the Hugos was prejudiced by the vocal haters of my online friends, but you have confirmed they are right. Any criticism of the Hugos is really met with a reaction that is basically "you are not one of us, so shut up".

I guess it would hurt to actually take note of my point that the Hugo rules are just guidelines, and that it is up to the committee to abide by them. But I guess being part of the "Hugo crowd" is more important to you than being part of the discussions that SFF fans want about them. I don't expect you to give me any more answers, because you have already made it clear that I'm not part of the people who matters as I only have the written Hugo rules to go by and is not part of any decision that is taken by a small group who doesn't think their decisions should be made public (aka the Hugo committee).

No, what I'm saying is that "If you think you can do it better, then do so." That's not the same thing.

Yes, you have the written Hugo rules to go by. And you're ignoring most of them. You're taking a single sentence of a long document without reading the rest of the document. I'm angry because you can't see that it's not possible to write rules so that every sentence is completely self contained and impossible to misinterpret.

I'm trying to answer your questions, but you're so convinced of the Deep Dark Conspiracies that you're ignoring my answers.

I've spent more than twenty years working with WSFS, trying to refine the rules, and it frustrates me when someone comes in, finds one sentence he dislikes, ignores the rest of the document, and decides that everything is broken.

"It would be funny if it wasn't so sad: one of the arguments for the split of Dramatic Presentation into short and long form was the the Hugo Awards must "continue to be relevant." But of course you'd not know that, would you?"

Of course I wouldn't know that, since it is not part of either the Hugo rules or the Hugo facs (that I have checked).

And I have never said I know better than anyone, I am just highlighting a discrepancy between what can be found out about the Hugos by anyone looking online and what seems to be Hugo reality.

As for what is cnsidered long form and short form dramatic presentation, I don't see the problem in adding to the rules that a UK double episode (,that will always be over 90 mins as opposed to a US double episode that is always under 90 mins,) is defined as short form. And I do think that a TV series with a long arc should be defined in the Hugo rules as to which category it belongs to. -As an example, if the end of season five of Doctor Who was a three episode story, would that still be short form, or would it be defined as long form?

And back to the original post on my blog; couldn't the Hugo committe just have stated that The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang was accepted as short form? That would at least remove any problem I had with it winning.

And I have to also say that a rule will always be open to misinterpretation, but that does not excuse a written rule being at odds with reality.

So far you haven't given me any rules language. You've only discussed what effect you want to see, which isn't a bad thing. (It is usually best to start with the desired effect and then work toward rules language from there.) But note that you are making an assumption that isn't always true, as as two-part US "hour long" television episode may very well have slightly more than 90 minutes of total running time. (90 minutes is a known soft point; that's why there's a gray zone around it.)

Discussing generalities is easy. Writing rules is hard Write a rule. You've seen the WSFS Constitution. Now write a rule in the proper parliamentary form that codes the rules the way you think they should be written.

Edited 2011-09-02 18:38 (UTC)

I actually understand your frustration with a "newbie" coming in and thinking he knows better than you. But I don't see the rules you are speking of here http://www.renovationsf.org/wsfs-constitution-2010.php. Rule 3.8.2 never mentions ineligible nominees being accepted because there is a lot of nominations. And rule 3.2.10 does not mention it either.

I have absolutely no problem with not agreeing with the Hugo rules, but I have a problem with what seems to be the Hugo committee not being obliged to follow the writtenm Hugo rules. Rule 3.3.8 seems to exclude the Doctor Who double episode, and the rules don't seem to accept ineligible nominees. Rule 3.2.10 seems to be only for moving eligible nominees to another category, not allowing an ineligible nominee on the final ballot. I might be missing something here, but not being on any committee I have only the written rules to go by, and I can't see why they should be twisted if they exist. From your explenation it seems that there should be only one rule: 1.1 The committe makes the rules, you are irrelevant and should shut up!

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?

The net effect of all of the rules in section 3.8 is that administrators can move works between categories if the rules don't prohibit it, and that whenever possible, the administrator should follow the will of the voters.

What this means is that you, the voter, should nominate a work in the category you think it should fit. Within some specific restrictions, the administrator will attempt to count your vote. In practice, it means "If the voters think it's a short form dramatic work and it's less than 108 minutes long, leave it there."

This is not "the committee makes the rules" — if anything, it is "the committee follows what the voters tell us to do unless we're explicitly prohibited from doing so."

And this is why I'm so exasperated. You're accusing the Hugo Administrators (which I am not, although I was in the past -- 1993, 1994, and 2002) of ignoring the voters and just doing anything we please when in fact the Administrators bend over backwards to do what the voters want unless it's impossible for them to do so. (Say, when a work published in a prior year is nominated.)

This has been going on not just in dramatic presentation, but also in the four written-fiction categories, forever. I'm sure that if you dug through the hundreds of nominees in the past, you'd find a "short story" that was slightly more than 7500 words long or a novella that was slightly less than 15,000 words long, but in all cases the works were in the gray zone and were there because the voters said they should be there. Indeed, the last time an administrator explicitly moved a novellette to short story (explicitly allowed under the rules), there was a huge hue and cry over ignoring the will of the voters.

Basically, when the administrator does what the voters say they want done, there's rarely any controversy. What would have been controversial, and widely criticized, would have been disqualifying those "too long" Doctor Who episodes or moving them to Long Form. Instead of just one person insisting that there was an ineligible work on the ballot, there would be hundreds of people furious that the Administrator was ignoring the will of the electorate on what would be considered specious technical grounds.

Firstly, an "hour" of US Tv is usually about 42 minutes if you remove the commercials, so two episodes will be under 90 mins.

Secondly, what I'd like to see added to the rules is either a definition at the end of 3.2.8 that includes double episodes (or even triple) or that excludes them. Personally I'd also like a definition in the written rules of whether episodically presented stories are considered long form or short form. I used Game of Thrones as an example, and I think that is relevant for next year. Is it 10 short form presentations or one long form presentation?
I don't see the big problem in making this clear in the written rules. But I can see that there will have to be a discussion as to what is short or long form, and I would like that discussion to be held in public (online) and not being confined to just a meeting.

I'll give a try at re-writing rule 3.2.8, or rather adding to it.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. Any television program or other production, with a complete running time of 90 minutes or less, in any medium of dramatized science fiction, fantasy or related subjects that has been publicly presented for the first time in its present dramatic form during the previous calendar year.

Any story that is presented in episodes of under 90 minutes will be considered as short form, and belongs to this category.

Alternativly:

Two or more episodes of a TV show that are part of a story will be defined as long form if they exceed 90 minutes, and nominations of such story should be done in the long form category.

Personally I'd also like a definition in the written rules of whether episodically presented stories are considered long form or short form.

Not possible, because episodically-presented stories can't be made to fit a single definition. Some shows are series of self-contained stories, while others are a multi-part single story.

The general rule (remember, you have to read the entire document) is:

3.2.6: Works appearing in a series are eligible as individual works, but the series as a whole is not eligible. However, a work appearing in a number of parts shall be eligible for the year of the final part.

This general rule applies to both written fiction and dramatic presentations. Single episodes of ongoing television series are usually going to be short form unless they exceed "three parts." (That's a fuzzy definition, I know, but you can't write a hard-edged one; there are too many variables.) Game of Thrones appears to me to be a single story told in multiple parts — a mini-series — and therefore qualifies as long form.

I don't see the big problem in making this clear in the written rules.

You want hard-edged rules for a fuzzy-edged world. Try writing a set of rules that does what you want and you may get some idea of why it's do hard. I'm dead serious. I helped draft what's there, and I know why it's hard. I don't claim what we have is perfect; I only know it's what we were able to get passed.

Here's the public record of the two WSFS Business Meetings that passed and ratified the split of Dramatic Presentation into two parts:

2001 WSFS Business Meeting

2002 WSFS Business Meeting

If you want to complain that the minutes are difficult to find and should be linked from the WSFS web site, I'll agree with you. The WSFS web site is in desperate need of updating. I have some hope that maybe the project re-launched this year to rebuild wsfs.org will come to fruition and we'll finally get all of these documents in one place.

But one thing I'm hope you get clear here: there was a discussion about these issues, and much of it was in public, not just at a WSFS business meeting, but it happened about ten years ago and you weren't there. Just because you weren't there doesn't mean it didn't happen.

There's a way to get things changed. I know: I've been one of those agents of change. But just complaining isn't enough. You have to have firm, clear, difficult-to-misinterpret proposals and you have to get members of WSFS willing to introduce them. You don't even have to go to the Worldcon to do it (although you do have to be a member, and not being there makes it harder to argue your case).

And, again quite seriously, if you can somehow come up with better wording that I think accomplishes what you want without doing harm elsewhere (say by excluding any non-television, non-theatrical motion picture works, as many proposals aiming to "simplify" the rules have done), I'll introduce it myself and back it before the Business Meeting. You think I like having the rules be difficult to understand? Nope. But as a WSFS politician of long standing, I also think you have to have some concept of what's actually likely to ever get passed.

I have no problem with that, but as I said in my blogpost, it should have been mentioned. Perhaps like this: *Although this exceeds the 90 minutes allowed for short form the Hugo committee has decided to keep it in that category and count the votes instead of discarding them as ineligible.

As I have said before, I don't have a problem with it being moved, but >I do have a problem with the move being done in "secret". And if the Hugo committees were better at communicating it would mean most criticism of the award would be seen as opinions and not valid criticism.

So as you not think I'm totally "anti-Hugo" I would like to point out that I have defended Blackout/All Clear as being within the Hugo rules that states "A science fiction or fantasy story of forty thousand (40,000) words or more."

Although I must say that this seems to mean a part of a series would be ineligible, or that chapter 5 of novel X would be eligible. And my point being that these are things that could easily be defined in the category rules. As the rules stand it looks like Blackout/All Clear and Cryoburn cannot be said to belong to the same definition of story. (With the caveat that I have not read Cryoburn, and that it may be a standalone story.)

Mainly I just want the written rules to be in accordance with what is going on. As they stand know they are very loose in their definitions. And I think that that should be easily remedied without much disagreement.

Sad

What Is A Fan?

Speaking For Fandom

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