Better Documentation

[kevin_standlee]

One result of the exchange about the BDP Short Hugo a couple of days ago is that I asked the rest of the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee if we could do a better job of documenting the practical situation with the two BDP categories. This led to us adding a new item to the Hugo Awards FAQ (scroll to the bottom for the new one) that translates constitutional language (which is admittedly somewhat obscure at times and may need some knowledge of its legislative history to fully appreciate) into a sort of checklist of how to interpret the two categories. I'm sure that this won't satisfy people who really believe that there shouldn't be multiple nominations out of the same television series in the same year or that 90 minutes should represent an absolute barrier not to be crossed in either direction for any reason whatsoever (and that it's trivially easy to determine the running length of any work, just as the word count of a written fiction work is never disputable). But for people capable of seeing shades of gray, here at least is something that might help.

Comments

[pwilkinson.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the new item. While rules need to be drawn up in a way that doesn't cause self-contradiction or avoidable ambiguity, this often does make them difficult to understand for someone not already familiar with them or their history. So an easily available explanation in lay terms definitely helps (and if it's available beforehand, at least the complainant is clearly being irrational if they believe that you are making it up as you go along).

[hatgirl.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's a nice, clear explanation. How handy. Thanks!