kevin_standlee | Rocket McRocketface

As often seems to happen around Worldcon time, when people who don't pay attention except right about now start complaining about how terrible it is that you have to be a member of WSFS to exercise any WSFS rights (which costs at least the minimum membership dues, which are around US$50 these days), and that it's not "democracy" unless "every single person in the entire world can vote." They don't seem to think there is any problem whatsoever with allowing unlimited participation of anyone (at zero cost and without any barriers whatsoever) from full participation in all of WSFS governance, including voting on the Hugo Award, selecting Worldcon sites, and making WSFS rules. I guess I should admire their idealism, as I guess they think that only Proper Right Thinking People Just Like Them will take advantage of this.

Some of you may remember that even with the cost of buying a supporting membership to the 2015 Worldcon, a rather large number of people decided to crash in and push a slate of candidates onto the Hugo Award ballot so amazingly unpopular that the rest of the membership voted five categories as "No Award," doubling the total number of such events over the entire history of the Award.

I'm sure that there being no barriers of any sort and no cost will work just fine, won't it? There won't be thousands, if not tens or even hundreds of thousands of bad actors jumping in just for laughs, will there? And it will all cost nothing at all, because there's always Someone Else who pays for everything, isn't there?