Worst System (Except for All the Others)

[kevin_standlee]

The WSFS Business Meeting is taking a fair amount of abuse for using a parliamentary rules manual (Robert's Rules of Order, the most common, but not the only such manual) for its formal decision-making process.

WSFS actually manages only two things of significant importance: The Hugo Awards rules and the rules for selecting future Worldcon sites. (There are other things, which I can detail upon request.) Everything else about how Worldcons are run is done by the individual Worldcon committees.

So, before I hit the road for El Paso, I leave this question before you all: Direct Democracy as WSFS practices it is extremely messy. If you were allowed to change things to suit yourself (other than simply saying, "I'm King and You'll All Required to do what I say when I say it"), how would you change the governance process for the Hugo Awards and Site Selection rules?

Come up with a better system that doesn't have the flaws you perceive are present in the current system. Please.

Comments

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

Nobody, fwiw, is "sending" Worldcon anywhere. If no US group bids for it, it can not be held in the US.

Period.

[billroper]

U.S. groups, however, have generally been well-trained to not bid against non-NA bids. This year's Helsinki bid is one of the few that I can think of where a serious non-NA bid has lost to a U.S. bid.

[(Anonymous)]

It's the first time in 23 years that has happened; in 1990, Zagreb lost to San Francisco for the 1993 Worldcon (and also finished behind a write-in bid for Hawaii). Between then and Helsinki 2015, the only non-U.S./non-N.A. bids that lost were ones that lost to other non-U.S./non-N.A. bids. (The only examples that come to mind are Zagreb again, which lost to Melbourne in '96 for '99, and Cancun, which lost to Toronto in '00 for '03.)

--J. Kreitzer