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

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Ah, but imagine you were bidding Chicago in a year where the selection was in San Jose, while Anaheim also had a bid. Don't you think Anaheim would have a distinct advantage over you solely based on people living in the Bay Area saying, "Hey, I can drive down there in less than eight hours, whereas Chicago probably means having to fly!"

What we have is a compromise, but I think it's a good one and it does have a self-limiting action in that it's impossible to have more than two Worldcons in a row nearby each other. (Theoretically, the same site/committee could run two in a row, but aside from being insane, it's unlikely that the electorate would let them do it.) It forces geographic diversity, but doesn't guarantee that any particular region of the USA (or anywhere else in the world) will host the convention every N years.

And I'm not convinced that the three zones we had were ideal geographic rotation, anyway. How tighly tied is Chicago to Texas, or Atlanta to Boston?