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.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Speaking For Fandom
Date: 2011-09-02 06:59 pm (UTC)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.