The WSFS Must Be Crazy

[kevin_standlee]

I have to conclude that the way in which the World Science Fiction Society is organized is so utterly insane that to a significant number of people, they simply cannot believe that it really exists that way. The way they would set up WSFS is as a small, close corporation controlled by at most three or five people, and they certainly wouldn't let the attendees (a.k.a. "marks") have anything at all to do with the governance of the convention. And of course, the Board would decide where to hold Worldcons, keep all of the money, sign ten-year deals with convention centers, and otherwise engage in sensible economies of scale.

Because the "Worldcon Must Change to Suit Me!" crowd would never set up such a crazy situation as the members actually deciding what to do themselves (members obviously being too stupid to make up their own minds for themselves), they have great difficulty believing that anyone else ever did it that way. Thus there must be a Ruling Cabal (call them the "Secret Masters of Fandom") who really run things, so you just have to find those people and subvert them.

Alternatively, if you really are so stupid to have set up an organization whose mere members get to decide how things are run and where their conventions should be held, then those 4000-5000 people should just go away and never come back and give their property to Someone Else who can Do Things Right, which in this case means throwing away all of the things that those 4-5K people enjoy doing and Doing Something Else because a different, larger group like doing them.

There is nothing wrong with Anime Expo having 50K anime fans enjoying themselves, or ComicCon having >100K enjoying themselves, or for that matter Comiket having something like a quarter-million people as I recall. Why do so many people want the World Science Fiction Convention, which primarily (but not exclusively) celebrates written science fiction and fantasy, not comics, anime, movies, television, ballroom dancing, baseball, trains, regency-style dancing, costuming, or any of a number of different popular activities to die right this second to validate their own personal hobby entertainment preference? Why do they, to quote someone who recently Got It, want to "appropriate the cultural identity of thousands"?

Worldcon is a club. It's a club with between four and five thousand members, but it's a club, and it's run very similarly to how a club of only about two hundred people — the approximate attendance of the first Worldcon — might be run if organized by a group of opinionated know-it-alls who trust nobody but themselves to run things. And the members, on the whole, like it that way. Yes, the club might eventually go out of business when nobody shows up for their meetings, but until then, what is so wrong with the members running their club the way they want to run their club for the benefit of the other members of the club?

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I know about the gate/warm body distinction. (Worldcons count you once and only once regardless of whether you're there all five days or for five minutes.) I am unsure how other events count their numbers.

By the "unless you're the biggest," measure, then no US-based event "wins." But that doubtless would make the "big is all that matters" crowd's heads go all 'splody, so they'd find a way around it.

[solarbird]

Most convention-centre events (and I know this to be true for PAX and Sakuracon) count valid issued passes per day. So if someone had a four-day pass for PAX, that would be four, regardless of who used it, or even if they used it. This is standard for gate-style events; I just point that out because some membership-style people go "That's cheating!" and no, it's just a different count method.

For PAX in particular, they specifically do not care if you hand off your badge or trade it around. They're just fine with it. So some passes almost certainly do mean multiple people per day. I doubt that's a very large number, but that's just by guessing, not knowing.

Anyway, it's relevant, because Norwecon's "membership" is around 3,300/year, but our "gate" - if we counted one, which we don't, so this is unofficial - would be around 10,000ish? Maybe more.

Using gate - even an estimated gate - makes a meaningful difference in conversation and like it or not, increases interest overall - at least, in my experience. This is because the most common frame of reference for people not already in organised F&SF fandom is gate, not "membership," and they have no idea what "membership" means here. So they see 3,300 and think "tiny," and were that our gate for a four-day, they'd be right. (3300/4 = 825. We'd rattle around in that hotel and it'd be like a ghost town.)

So a 4,000-member "Worldcon" across five days to them means the crowd you would think of when somebody says "800 members." Smallish. Rattling around.

I do genuinely wonder whether Worldcon would suddenly look a lot more attractive if it announced "gate" numbers. To oversimplify, 4,000*5 = 20,000, and suddenly, Worldcon stops looking like a pretender in these eyes.

eta: For example, Worldcon could announce membership as "20,000 at gate, with 4,000 members." It does make it sound like two groups, which some would say is deceptive. But what it's communicating is more accurate, not less, to all the people who only know event sizes by gate counts.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. I'll bring it to the attention of the committee that keeps track of the Long List numbers and see if we can reach any sort of consensus on what sort of formula we could use to calculate "gate." It's clearly wrong to multiply full attending members * 5, but similarly assuming that attending members only attend for one day is wrong, too. The truth is somewhere in between.

[solarbird]

It's clearly wrong to multiply full attending members * 5
Except that's the standard for gate.

You don't have to like the standard, but that is the standard, at least, as I've encountered it in use. These large events don't try to count bodies actually present, except for fire code compliance. They count paid-per-day-to-attend.

If you want to compromise on it a bit (it'll make you look smaller against the standard, but this is fandom, after all), then you could count starting at badge pickup. Someone with a five day who shows up on day three would count as three (Days 3, 4, 5.)

Many of these large events don't have badge pickup - they're posted off in advance - so they can't do that kind of check. But Worldcon could. So start with badge pickup (the one solid piece of data you have), include that day, and all days to end of convention (for full memberships), then add in all the one-days as one each.