Worldcon 2016 Day 5: And So It Ends

[kevin_standlee]

I love Worldcon, I really do. But with a couple of exceptions, by the time we get to Day 5, I've had about all I can take and I'm ready to wrap it up. This year was one of those years.



At 3 PM, the "Volcano" erupted for the last time, turning the Swanwick River (crossed by the Nielsen Hayden Bridge) into a river of lava. That was the sign to start breaking down the convention.



Several hours later, the fourth and final session of the WSFS Business Meeting gathered in Room 2104. Lisa and I (and others, particularly rono_60103, the only person who beat us to the room) were there around 8 AM for the 10 AM meeting for setup. It was much less stressful that way.

The final meeting did the following things:

• Gave first passage to "3 Stage Voting," which, if ratified at Helsinki next year, will oblige San José and future Worldcons to include an additional Qualifying Round after the initial nominations, where the members of the current Worldcon only (not the previous/following years' members) will vote to accept or reject each of the top 15 nominees


• Ratified "E Pluribus Hugo", the attempt to deal with slate voting tactics with voting mathematics. This becomes part of the WSFS Constitution and first affects next year's Worldcon.


• Ratified "5 & 6" (originally 4 & 6), a proposal that originally would have limited voters to four (changed to five just before the final vote) nominations per category and expending the number of finalist positions on the ballot from five to six. The amendment to change "4" to "5" was a "lesser change" (and thus the proposal doesn't need to be re-ratified) because the current Constitution is effectively 5 & 5 and thus anything between or including the proposed new values of 4 & 6 and the original values would be a lesser change


• Gave first passage to "EPH+", a "patch job" on the original proposal ratified today intended to improve its behavior based on how historical data behaved when run through the original model.

The items given first passage move on to Helsinki for adoption. As one of the co-sponsors of 3 Stage Voting, I'll have to recuse myself from presiding over it.

The Sunday Business Meeting videos (16 segments of roughly ten minutes each) start with this one.

The Business Meeting adjourned sine die about 12:45.

In the same room maybe 30 minutes later or so, I convened the organizational meeting of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee (also technically the Annual General Meeting of Worldcon Intellectual Property, Inc., a California non-profit public benefit 501(c)(3) corporation). The officers were re-elected, so I'll be chairing the MPC for another year, with Linda Deneroff as Secretary and Bruce Farr as Treasurer.

I made a point of thanking on the record Cheryl Morgan's efforts at last night's Hugo Awards ceremony to save the live text-based coverage when our bandwidth proved insufficient for the first 30 minutes of the ceremony.

The MPC discussed generally what our projects for the coming year will be. Our big projects of the past year are done, as the websites are reorganized and the Hugo Awards service mark has been registered in the European Union. I'll have more to say about this at a future date.

As the MPC met, the Tech Team started tearing down all of the audio-visual tech. Lisa packed up the video camera. All that was left was my computers, as I couldn't do video uploads while running the MPC meeting. As quickly as I could, I finished the uploads (that's why Part 13 was initially private and part 15 was initially mislabeled), tore down the computers, and took them back to the hotel.

Stowing our gear in the minivan, we returned to the convention center as fast as our abused feet could carry us, claimed our groats (volunteer vouchers), and dashed off to redeem them for lunch at the convention food services. Except that the only one left was the hamburger stand, which was out of burgers and hot dogs and had only a few weak sandwiches. The pizza and BBQ stands were done. We redeemed the vouchers for what we could get — we had to eat now! — and made the best of it.



We went to the San Jose Tower, which was mostly torn down by then, and did what we could to help, which included Lisa guarding the stuff while some of us (like me) went off to Closing Ceremonies. I also reclaimed the computer that I'd loaned Worldcon 76 (San José) Registration. We agreed to carry back some of the SJ gear in the minivan, which complicated our packing for the trip home, but Lisa says she can make it work.

I took a bunch more photos, and would like to write about them, but it's late and we're checking out in the morning to start driving west. If time permits tomorrow, I'll write the postscript of the post-closing ceremony part of the final day of the 2016 Worldcon.

I am knackered. Lisa and I spent six hours a day, four of the days of Worldcon, and then put in a full day (and full evening into late night) each day. It's no wonder that we wish we had scheduled an extra day here in Kansas City just to sleep.

Comments

[soon_lee]

Safe travels.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Huzzah! Another Worldcon accomplished! I hope your trip back is as much fun as the drive out.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I hope that by 2018, you'll be able to join us in San Jos´. I know we can use the help. And then you can upload video instead of me. :)

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Do you have a reply ready for anyone who suggests that twelve hours is not enough WSFS business meeting time?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Possibly that they should volunteer to also work the hours before and after the meeting to discover how much work it actually is!

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

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[ceb.livejournal.com]

Thanks as ever for all your hard work in keeping the Hugos and WSFS functioning.

[sisokolo.livejournal.com]

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

When you say "Lisa and I spent six hours a day, four of the days of Worldcon," did you mean you slept six hours a day?

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Thanks for all you do! Have a safe trip home.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

(Question for anyone who was there): What exactly is the "patch" that EPH+ provides? I'm curious, and I can find lots of references to it, but not an actual executive summary of the change.

Also, should both take effect, how would 3SV and EPH interact?

[kjn]

From how I understand it, the patching done by EPH+ is by changing the divisors used for calculating the points that are used to decide on the pair that are to square off in elimination.

Plain EPH uses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 as divisors for the number of points a given ballot generates, based on the number of (remaining) works the ballot lists in a category.

EPH+ changes the divisors to 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 (or 2n-1). The reason for the use of those divisors are apparently well-studied in elections science (and they are in fact used in Swedish elections when dividing the seats based on votes, though in that case it goes winner-first instead of loser-first like in EPH).

From how I can tell, EPH and 3SV will have no trouble interacting. EPH will just run for a shorter amount of rounds since it will have to generate 15 semifinalists instead of 5 finalists.

(That said, I'm quite sceptical against 3SV for various reasons, like administrator workloads and the inherent gatekeeping that can be used against any minority within fandom.)

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I cannot explain the former as I'm still confused by EPH's algorithm (which would be a worse thing if it weren't that Dave McCarty has the code that counts the nominations - but I should probably attempt an independent implementation for the same reason we have two vote counting programs). But my understanding is that EPH+ changes how a given nominator's nominations are distributed utilizing a known therom from voting theory.

3SV will work the same with EPH as it would have with the current system. Now it is just that the long list of 15 and the short list of 6 will be generated using the EPH rules.

[kjn]

Here's my understanding of the EPH (using the EPH divisors) algorithm, using what is hopefully a clearer terminology than the one used in the statues:

Every ballot is first tallied normally. This yields the "gross" of every nominee (which is exactly the same as total numbers as nominators). The gross for each nominee never changes.

Then each ballot generates a "net" for every nominee (this is "points" in the statutes, I believe). If the ballot has one (remaining) nominee in the category, the nominee gets 1 net, if it has two (remaining) nominees each nominee gets 0.5 net, then 0.33, then 0.25, and last 0.2 (with the full five nominees per ballot and category).

All the nets are added up for each nominee. The two nominees with the lowest net become eligible for elimination, and the one with the lowest gross is eliminated. In the case of a tie in gross, I believe the lowest net is then eliminated (but it might be that both are simply eliminated at once, unless that would put the list of nominees under the number of desired finalists).

Once a nominee has been eliminated, it is struck from all the ballots, and new (higher) nets are calculated, and back to the previous paragraph.

What happens with slates is that they tend to be high gross but low net. First, all the little-nominated works are eliminated, which increases the net of works with wide popular appeal. However, the net of the slated works stay pretty much constant. Then theoretically, a few works will find themselves with very high nets, and the slated works (with lower nets) find that they have to compete against each other. A few of them are likely to survive to the finalist list, but I don't view that as a major problem. Theoretically, in certain ties one might also find up to nine works on the final ballot (4 on top and a 5-way tie for the 5th place), but I don't view that as a major issue either.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Thanks, everyone!

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Note that this may only be valid for a year. Helsinki may see the EPH++ or EPH 2.0 or ...

[malkaesther.livejournal.com]

Thanks for all your hard work.

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

You're exhausted?! How do you think *I* feel? I hope to Ghu we never have a four day session again. My fingers couldn't type fast enough!

Linda

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your work.

Please look into cloning technology. Short of that, we need to find other secretaries - and possibly work out how to allow them to share the load when the agenda looks like it could get packed.

And, I fear as long as the puppies are treating the Hugo Awards as their training pad, we may continue to see related proposals, new meeting participants, packed agendas, and the resultant long sessions.

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

I was wondering: hypothetically, if someone moved to amend Best Series next year to limit it to five finalists (except in case of ties), would that be a lesser or a greater change? If it had received first passage after 5 and 6 was ratified it seems like that would obviously be a greater change, but since the motion would revert Best Series to the effect it would have had at the time it received first passage, it seems like it ought to be a lesser change. But I'm not at all sure I understand the distinction.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I think it would be a greater change. Yes, at the precise moment that Best Series received first passage, categories had only five finalists (more in case of ties); however, you have to treat all of the amendments ratified at a given Worldcon as having been ratified simultaneously. (This usually isn't an issue at all because ordinarily ratification votes all happen before new business comes up, but this year we postponed the vote on ratification until after most new business.) You have to think of it as the scope of the change. Anything between the constitution in effect at the time of ratification (that's Worldcon 75 in this case) and what the constitutional amendment awaiting ratification (Best Series) says is in scope. Anything outside that range is out of scope. It doesn't mean that making the number of finalists smaller is a "lesser change." What matters is that did you exceed the scope of change contemplated in the constitutional amendment.

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the answer. I guess I was confused by the explanation Jared gave during the discussion why the EPH technical amendment was a lesser change, then. It sounded like he was saying that the state of mind of the voters at the time they gave the amendment first passage was relevant.

I kind of wish I'd thought of this during the final Business Meeting, instead of a couple of hours later. Although I'm not sure anyone would have thanked me for bringing up the hypothetical as a Point of Parliamentary Inquiry.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I would have refused to rule on such a hypothetical question.

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

I can see that. I feel a little bad that I may have screwed the Best Series people over a little bit, though; I think if 5 and 6 had passed first, someone would have said, "Hey, can we limit this to five finalists?"

I'm not at all sure Best Series is a good idea, but I don't want this to be the detail that tips the balance between passing and failing.