Where Do They Get These Ideas?

[kevin_standlee]

I keep seeing popping up in different places saying variations on this:

If a Hugo Award category goes to No Award two years in a row, the category is permanently canceled.

This is not true. It never has been true as far as I know. It certainly is not part of the WSFS Constitution.

All I can figure is that there are a bunch of people who want this to be true, so they convince themselves that anything they personally want must be the actual rule. Actually reading the rules is Too Much Work. Much easier to just Make Stuff Up.

Comments

[annieworld.livejournal.com]

I am not sure why you are so surprised -- a lot of people had some pretty funny ideas on how things work this year. Of course - next year, some "news" agency/site whatever will pick up on that noise and run a "factual" piece on the topic - and confuse even more people. After all, we live in the stone age and it is not that easy to just go and check facts :) And if any of this year's No Awards go that way again, there will be a lot of noise...

On a somewhat separate note though - when I went to my first Worldcon I had not idea what WSFS is or what the rules were or that there is a place I can read the rules (and it was not that long ago - I just never actually processed the fact that Hugos have rules behind them). So some of this may be just new people not knowing any better and listening to rumors... It does not take that long for something like that to become a "known fact"...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I guess it's just me. When I went to my first Worldcon, I looked through the Souvenir Book and saw the WSFS Constitution in it, and something called a WSFS Business Meeting. I went to it. I even made a motion. (I moved the adjournment of the Preliminary Business Meeting.) So I apparently understood things from Day 1. OTOH, I usually read the manual.

[annieworld.livejournal.com]

And I suspect that there are other people with similar experience (on understanding things - I don't think that that many managed to make a motion on their first meeting). Everyone finds their way in a Worldcon differently - which is how it is supposed to be I guess.

I am all caught up on rules these days - it just took a tad longer.

[farah mendlesohn (from livejournal.com)]

Indeed. Still impressed how many talking heads think it is a Committee Award.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I think that's because they cannot conceive of anything else but Awards given by small select groups. The way Worldcons are organized makes their heads explode. All events are run by close groups, usually for-profit companies, and everyone is on the take, like the Olympics. Everything is corrupt. That's just the way the world works. Therefore, anything we say about how the Worldcon and the Hugos works must be a lie, because Any Fule Kno that it's all about paying off the right person.

Okay, maybe I'm a little too cynical there, but it sure seems to me like this is some people's attitude.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

To be fair, there have been similar cases where a new Hugo was proposed, run as a committee award for a year or two and then not taken forward because of the lack of suitable nominations. This gets filtered into "folk wisdom" which is much more powerful than actual rules because most people believe what they're told (and "better" stories get told by more people) rather than going to the trouble to find the rules. It is also the case that many organisations do not follow their own rules. WSFS is quite unusual and even there the BM does not strictly adhere to RONR so that we can get on with business instead of engaging in too much parliamentary neepery. The Worldcon committees, though, generally follow the rules as closely as they can, partly because the BM sensibly on the whole only dictates rules when they're needed, feasible and clear.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

I think your instinct is correct, Kevin. They want it to be possible to "burn down the Hugo Awards", so they've come up with a theory of how that could happen. The fact that it doesn't work that way has no bearing on their faith in the matter.

A week or so ago I told a poster who who was railing against all the people who "had written-in No Award" that she should know the rules before playing the game, and got quite the angry and incoherent response.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That doesn't surprise me. They probably assumed that it's like Proper Meriken Lections, like Real People (which is to say Merikens, the only Real People there is), so when you point to the real rules, they get mad because Real Merikens don't do that funny ferrin stuff, only horse races. They knows The Truth, and Truthiness is all that matters.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Moreover, if they really wanted to eliminate a Hugo category they could write up a proposal to do that, show up at the business meeting two years in a row, and see how many votes they could get. But working openly within a democratic framework doesn't seem to be their preferred method, nor is eliminating a single Hugo category.

[tuwr.livejournal.com]

I think someone has heard "If you want to get rid of the Best X category, the business meeting must vote for it to go away two years in a row" and misunderstood the answer.

[buddykat.livejournal.com]

Sadly, most of the people I have corrected on this have completely understood the pass and ratification part of the rules. They honestly think that it's *automatic* that any particular Hugo award category would just "go away" if it receives No Award for two years in a row.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen this meme in the wild, but I wonder how much of it comes from people who, as you describe, want it to be true, and how many of them are afraid that it's true. There's been a lot of post-Sasquan blither from Puppies about how the non-Puppies "burned the Hugos down" and maybe now they think we're about to burn them down permanently.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I exchanged messages from one of the people who is convinced that the Awards are dead already and that every category forever will always go to No Award without fail because of course if anyone at all votes for it, No Award wins, and of course the Puppies want to kill it and so on and so forth, all proceeding from a misreading of how the rules work and from IMO a hugely overstated assumption of how many Puppies there are.

And then you've got the people bleating about their "votes not being counted" because of No Award. Amazingly, IRV doesn't even come into the picture. By Good Old Muriken first-past-the-post voting, No Award won in five categories, outpolling everything else. But you see people -- particularly certain Puppy leaders -- calling for No Award to be removed from the system, because Democracy is only good when it reinforces what they want, not when they lose. To their defense, there are way too many people in the USA who as far as I can tell think that Democracy = "I get what I want," and declare the system must be corrupt when someone other than Their Guy wins.

Frankly, one of the things that has to be part of a healthy democratic society is learning how to be a good loser. If you are convinced that any result other than "I win" means the entire system is corrupt, then the social contract unravels.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

OTOH, the one cheerful thought from all of this is that this particular peculiar idea may be driving some of T. Beale's rampages. He and his crew may think they can kill the Hugos if they can get two "No Awards" going in a category.

Oh, the outcry when they realize they're wrong (the evil part of me who does not do Sergeant-at-Arms stuff cackles and looks around for popcorn).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Maybe. There surely are a bunch of very ill-informed people out there. Considering that the actual rules are 'hidden in plain sight' on the WSFS web site, people really ought to know better. But as I said above, if you're convinced that everything is a conspiracy, everyone is on the take, etc., then you're likely to lap up this nonsense like sugar water.

[solarbird]

Maybe this is why they aren't even trying to come to the Business Meeting? If so, don't disillusion them.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Very few of them will every show up. In their hearts, they don't believe in democracy. They want the Rule of the Strong Man who will Do What They Want. I honestly think that many of them can't conceive of a case of the Strong Man not doing what they personally want. If it wouldn't take me down with them, I'd like to give them the Strong Man so I could watch the Strong Man impose his will upon the puppy-like followers, who would learn (too late) that the Strong Man doesn't give a hoot for their wishes and would cheerfully throw all of the followers under the bus as soon as his power was consolidated.

[solarbird]

Not just would cheerfully - must. The first rule of order for any strongman is to demonstrate that he doesn't need your support. Otherwise, he's held hostage to their support, and that's antithetical to strongman rule.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I'm further amused that a significant number of self-described Puppies who worship the idea of the Sainted Heinlein (the way many Tea Partiers worship the Sainted Reagan) are themselves characters right out of the lead character of "Coventry," who would be hopelessly lost in the society that they contend to want to live in. They want all of the benefits of society and none of its responsibilities.

[solarbird]

By the by, it's kind of hilarious how much more blunt on this matter you've become now that you aren't running the business meeting anymore. XD

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Indeed. And because I'm no longer in the chain of command (once we get around to fixing the staff list) for next year's meeting either. I can afford to be less diplomatic. I'll still be fair to people within the rules, but I'm also going to be far less tolerant of fools.

FWIW, showing more of my actual feelings after having given everyone as much of a fair hearing as the rules allowed me to give (more than some past chairs would have given, I reckon) should show that I am deeply committed to a fair process, even when I personally lose, such as with Popular Ratification. Disappointed that I lost? Sure. Convinced that the process is corrupt because I didn't get my own way? Nonsense.

[solarbird]

The debate on Popular Ratification moved me off of "no" and onto "abstain," btw. I thought the comments about European fandom were particularly salient. But the three year timeframe was too much for me to vote "yes."

[annieworld.livejournal.com]

Showing up on a Business Meeting makes you part of the system. As long as you are do not, you can complain about how unfair everything is and how your vote is not counted. Once you show up, you need to face the people that think differently or that disagree with you - and you cannot just stomp your foot and say "this is the only truth". And accept that things are not exactly as you had been told.

[billroper]

It's amazing what you can learn by actually reading the source documents. :)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Even more so when you write the source documents, as I did. (The existing Westercon Bylaws and WSFS Standing Rules are mostly my handiwork, although in many cases I was rewriting existing material to a form I thought easier to understand. I submit that the relative dearth of Westercon Bylaw and WSFS Standing Rule amendments since my rewrites is a sign of how good the documents are.)

[snarke.livejournal.com]

"So some guy named Stanley says that two years of No Award isn't enough to cancel a category. Maybe we'll have to keep it up for three or four years. On the other hand, he's probably one of the losers who's been voting for stuff because it's got handicapped dark-skinned women protagonists, so he'd probably say anything just to try to pretend he's not already lost."

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yep. It don't matter that he wrote a lot of the rules; everyone knows it's all a front anyway and there's someone raking in pots of money. We just has to find who's really making the decisions and take him out and replace him with a Real Person who will do what we tells 'em to do.

[quentin-long.livejournal.com]

Mr. Standlee, you friggin' rule. Thank you for showing how it's done. Would that more than an isolated few of the Pups were willing to learn…

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I try to be a good example. :)