WSFS Infodump

[kevin_standlee]

If you are a regular reader of my journal, you probably know most of what's here already and can easily skip it. I'm more sensitive than y'all may think about being told that it's bad of me to lecture people who don't know anything about how WSFS, the Worldcon, or the Hugo Awards work even when they are convinced that they do know better. So I'm adapting something I posted earlier today, putting it behind a cut, and planning to point people at it to say, "If you want to know more, go here. Yes, it's long."

If you are someone coming here from me having pointed you here, go no further if you aren't interested in knowing the actual details about how WSFS, Worldcon and the Hugo Awards work, and how we got to the sitution we did with the 2023 Worldcon

I fear this will seem like lecturing to those people reading this who already know this, but I beg those people to realize that most people do not know anything about how Worldcon sites are selected and how the Hugo Awards are run. If you already know how Worldcons are selected and how the Hugo Awards are administered, you can skip all of this.

1. Worldcon is not really a single convention. It’s an ongoing series of one-shot events, each of which is run by a separate legal entity with extremely weak oversight that mainly amounts to hoping that the organizers follow the rules that they agreed to follow.



2. The World Science Fiction Society is not a corporation with a Board of Directors that makes all of the decisions, specifically about where Worldcons are held.



3. The site of Worldcon is determined by a vote of the members of the Worldcon two years earlier. That is, the members of the 2021 Worldcon in DC voted to select Chengdu. There was another bid on the ballot (Winnipeg). There is no entity that evaluates subjectively the suitability of a site. That is, no one entity can say, “That site is bad because [reasons], so it’s not eligible.” The requirements to file a Worldcon bid are technical in nature and the people administering the election simply check off that the technical documents meet those requirements.



4. In order to be able to vote on the site of the Worldcon two years from now, you have to join the current Worldcon as at least a WSFS (formerly called supporting) member, which costs around US$50 these days, and then you also have to cast a vote in the election, putting up what’s called an Advance WSFS Membership (again, around US$50), which makes you a member of that two-year hence convention.



5. Several thousand people joined the 2021 Worldcon, mostly from China, and voted (probably for Chengdu, but the choices of individual voters are in a secret ballot), in the last few days before the voting deadline in 2021. I do not mean to imply that only people from China voted for Chengdu. Other non-Chinese members have said they voted for Chengdu. There also were people who said they wouldn't vote because they didn't want there to be a chance that their personal details (name, address, contact information) could end up in a Chinese database.



6. The administration of the Hugo Awards is entirely in the hands of the current Worldcon committee for that year, as others have noted. There is no entity that is superior to the individual Worldcon committee.



7. The rules of the World Science Fiction Society are not imposed by Board of Directors or some other small select committee. They are voted upon by the members of Worldcon at a meeting held at published times at each Worldcon. Any changes to the rules have to pass in two consecutive years in order to reduce the chances of a single-interest group “packing” the meeting in a single year and “voting away the store.” So any changes that might decouple the administration of the Hugo Awards from the individual Worldcon committees would have to be passed this year (Glasgow) and ratified the next (Seattle) before going into effect, at the minimum. You have to be an attending WSFS member to attend and vote at the meeting, but there are no other requirements. Also non-attending WSFS members may propose changes, but they can’t vote on them.

This is a summary of the rules contained in the Constitution of the World Science Fiction Society, which is not secret, but is published on the WSFS.org website. (Disclaimer: I am one of the people who maintains that site.

I know that this looks daunting. Just because I know how it works doesn’t mean that I necessarily like how it works, so please don't accuse me of being a hidebound defender of every bit of the current system. I promise you that I’m not trying to intimidate or condescend to anyone. I honestly want people who care about has happened to understand the wider context of how it came to be.

Lots of you already know this, I know, but it’s clear that lots of other people reading this do not know it, and probably assume that the "WSFS Board of Directors" (an entity that does not exist) allowed the Worldcon to go to China or something like that. The system is complicated and interconnected, and it did not spring into being overnight, but grew organically over the past 80 years, and historically has been dominated by people who are deeply suspicious and hostile toward any form of central organization. The roots of this hostility go back to the 1950s. If you want to know more about the historical context of this, see the article about WSFS Inc. on the Fancyclopedia 3 website.

Further disclaimers: I am the current Chair of the legal entity that owns the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society (“Worldcon,” “Hugo Award,” etc.) I was elected to that position by a committee that consists of both people directly elected by the WSFS Business Meeting and by people appointed by Worldcons and NASFiCs. I am also one of the people who maintains the wsfs.org, worldcon.org, and thehugoawards.org websites. I was NOT one of the people involved in administering the 2023 Hugo Awards, although I have been an administrator in past years.

Thank you for your patience. But don't say I didn't warn you!

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Even knowing most of this, it's nice to have it summarized in one place.

[kevin_standlee]

Thank you.

[history_monk]

Yup, good summary of the basics.

[kevin_standlee]

I do try. But lots of people don't believe it, or get mad at me for explaining it to them. Others actively want to burn the whole thing to the ground, I think.

[history_monk]

Lots of people seem to think that everything should be run by powerful authorities, who will naturally agree with all their opinions, saving them the trouble of acting on them, or even articulating them.

[kevin_standlee]

Well said.

[wild_patience]

Thank you. If you vote for a WorldCon in a Communist country with a committee largely peopled by folks who have never worked on a WorldCon before, what did you think was going to happen? Aside from it being a Communist country, how experienced was the committee on a convention the size of a WorldCon with all its history?

I am SO tired of going through this every year. I can't recall a year when there has not been some sort of bitching connected with the Hugos. My first WorldCon was the one in '88 in New Orleans. You know, the one where they projected the wrong winner for one of the awards during the ceremony?

I have mostly been seeing writers complaining about this year's WorldCon. Scalzi weighed in today on his blog about Babel being disqualified. I don't know why it was disqualified. I personally could not get into the book. It didn't hold my interest at all.

Perhaps it's time to just say goodbye to the Hugos or to spin them off as an award disconnected from the WorldCon.* Then wait for the screaming.


*I know, constitutional amendments and all that would need to be done first.

[billroper]

There are all sorts of things that two consecutive Worldcon Business Meetings could figure out how to vote in favor of.

Then, there is the question of unanticipated side effects...

(Personally, my position is that rushing to fix a problem because Something Must Be Done is absolutely the best way to mess up the fix. On the other hand, I program computers for a living... :) )

[kevin_standlee]

On the other hand, I program computers for a living... :)

So do I. I agree with you.

Back in 2015, there were people who insisted that the Rules Must Be Changed Immediately, and preferably retroactively, and seemed very unhappy that it takes at least two years to make a constitutional change. Telling them that "Constitutions are not suppose to be able to be changed quickly" did not make them any happier. Even the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution (repeal of alcohol prohibition) took about ten months to be ratified.

[msconduct]

I've been reading about the issue elsewhere, and I'm really annoyed. Why on earth do you, and no doubt Cheryl too, have to catch heat for this just because you have some involvement with the Hugos although nothing to do with the issue at hand? Absolutely ridiculous. Also, I'm amazed to see people who are mostly Americans astonished at what can happen when you have a constitution which assumes good faith. Have they been asleep since 2016?

[kevin_standlee]

I think there's a whole lot of "shoot the messenger" in the people who pile on whenever something goes wrong. Also, the crazy-quilt nature of Worldcon/WSFS governance is such that most people can't believe it and assume that you're lying to them, because they'd never set things up that way. I can't think of any other "organization" that is this decentralized.

[katster]

Hey Kevin,

Just wanted to say thanks -- having this to point to has helped me explain the weirdness of WSFS to some friends.

[kevin_standlee]

Thank you! With all of the static that I've received in the past few days, I deeply and sincerely appreciate your message. There are times when I wonder why I keep trying, but then I get messages like yours.

[calimac]

I'm wondering how it is that I learned all this (except the Chengdu-specific stuff, of course) by osmosis many years ago when I first got into fandom. Nobody explained it all to me, I just picked it up somehow. Careful reading of the very informative progress reports of my first Worldcon, Big MAC in 1976, helped, so I have the late Tom Reamy, who edited those PRs, to thank.

[kevin_standlee]

Possibly because you respond to written instructions better than most people?

Lisa told me today that she read the entire Constitution some time ago, and aside from a couple of things that she asked me to clarify, she say that in her opinion is isn't really that complicated. Boring, maybe, but most technical instructions are that way.

[calimac]

Yes, that's another thing I did early on: read the entire Constitution. It seemed clear, and understanding the Constitution helped make me feel qualified, years later, to be Hugo administrator.

[voidampersand]

From the article about WSFS, Inc.:

(The basic problem remained one of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? As long as each Worldcon is independent, people who like power and glory more than hard work and careful planning are limited in the harm they can do. WSFS, Inc. would have provided a mechanism for busybodies to stay in power. Further, the proposed remedy for incompetence — removal of the committee and appointment of a new one — would probably do more damage than letting the incompetent committee do its thing.)

That seems spot on.

[kevin_standlee]

Ooh, a good one! I'd forgotten that part.

Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure we're not going to be able to keep using a 1950s governance structure much longer. Either we get a little bit more control, or else someone is going to exploit us to destruction.

[a_cubed]

As you (and others) have said elsewhere, it's unlikely that any non-state level organisation that tries to be open and inclusive can prevent itself from being invaded if there's enough money and people willing to do it. There are things that could be done to prevent a repeat of Chengdu winning in the way it did, such as limiting voting to those actually attending, or to those who have actually attended n Worldcons previously. There would be pushback against such things by the existing community who might be disenfranchised by such rules, of course, and it would be a balancing act. It still wouldn't prevent a group with enough money and people from overwhelming the voting populace and if they really wanted to they could probably do it twice in a row (particularly in a geographically large country like China or Russia it's easy to vote in two successive Worldcons without violating the 800km rule for the second, and after that they've had two to change the constitution any way they please.
I suspect we're going to see a number of proposals along these lines, just as we saw with Hugo Voting. There will be allegations of racism and xenophobia, complaints of exclusion, complaints of overcomplication, GDPR as legal hammer, etc. But, I suspect there will be moderate change within a few years. Not just because of the Hugo administration issues, but because of the precedent of, apparently, 1000 people who'd never been to a Worldcon "buying" the result they want, despite the committee bidding being clearly incompetent, leaving aside any of the political issues. My problems with the Chinese bid and the vote was always more about competence than the politics. As we saw with the Puppies, the Hugos and the Worldcon can survive one year of a political problem. An incompetent committee wrecks everything for a year.

[jreynoldsward]

To put it in perspective, this has been a year of issues with awards. At this point I'm one of those who feels that perhaps it's time to set aside these big awards. If an author isn't fortunate enough to land the sweet spot on the promotional wheel, they're less likely to be sufficiently visible to voters no matter how good their work is. It's not a measure of quality, it's a measure of visibility.

Much obliged

[rickmoen]

Very considerate of you to create this as a handy guide, and I will happily point people here in the future for a sound and lucid tutorial on this subject.

Thank you, as always, for your many generous deeds.

Re: Much obliged

[kevin_standlee]

And thank you for the kind words, which do help when one has been told they are the epitome of what is wrong with Worldcon and WSFS and that I should go away and never come back.