Beset From All Sides

[kevin_standlee]

Some of you who read this LJ may be interested in the discussion happening on this item on SF Awards Watch, where I'm informed that WSFS is doing a bunch of things I don't think we're doing (such as claiming that the Hugo Awards represent All of Fandom), and we're certainly mis-administering the Hugo Awards, and that it's a terrible shame that we actually charge anything to vote, since Poll Taxes Are Evil, but also awful that we let the members make the nominations, because Voters Have Terrible Taste.

As I pointed out in one of my comments, I'm usually beset from all sides. I'm a bomb-throwing lunatic who would Destroy As All according to the conservatives, and a Hidebound Old Fogey according to the radicals.

If you want to comment, I'd prefer you do so over there, not here.

Comments

[cmdrsuzdal.livejournal.com]

::eyeroll::

It never ends does it?

But why would anyone want to prevent a Hugo Award winning author from being labeled as a Hugo Award winning author? I'm missing something there. Would it even be possible (short of retracting the Award) to do so?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, you'd have to ask C.E. -- I invite you to do so -- but I suspect that the argument goes like this:

1. Written fiction Hugo Awards apply to the work, not the person.

2. Therefore, labeling a novel that won a Hugo Award as "Hugo Award Winner" is appropriate, but...

3. The author of that novel didn't win a Hugo Award -- the novel did.

4. Therefore, labeling another work by that same author as "Hugo Award Winner" (meaning "Hugo Award Winning Author") is misleading and inappropriate.

I suppose the even greater crime might be to throw "Hugo Award Winner" on the cover of a work when none of the author's past novels have won Hugos, but the author has won a Hugo in another category. For example, Dave Langford has won in four different categories (fan writer, fanzine, semiprozine, and best short story). He has the largest collection of Hugo Awards on the planet. If he wrote a novel -- he has written several -- and the publisher chose to do so, putting "Hugo Award Winner" on the cover would be descriptive of the author, but not the book itself.

See the distinction? Personally, I think it's hair-splitting. If a publisher claimed a Hugo on a work where neither the work nor the author had won the Award, then the MPC would get active, but otherwise, I don't see it as a problem.

[cmdrsuzdal.livejournal.com]

I see, so the wording should more correctly read "author of the Hugo Award winning -blah-"

Thanks for clearing that up, although I agree it's silly.

[(Anonymous)]

Of course it's silly. It's trademark law. This is a reasonably clear explanation of one of the problems.

That it's silly, though, doesn't mean one gets to ignore it on that ground.

— CEP

[renegade500.livejournal.com]

Kevin, I don't know how you put up with all this!

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It's not always easy. But I do take some solace in the fact that Worldcons continue to ask for my services, despite the complaints from certain people that I reduce the Business Meeting to a panel on parliamentary procedure and that I should just depend on "common sense" decisions. If I did a sufficiently wretched job, nobody would want me back, and I'd retire to the back benches.

And the elected representatives of WSFS keep re-electing me to the theoretically highest post of the society, although of course in practice all of the authority vests in the various Worldcon chairs and the MPC Chair's authority is roughly that of the President of the Continental Congress.

Sometimes I figure I have SUCKER written across my forehead. Maybe one of these days I will lose all patience and some other person will take a turn in the barrel. It wouldn't break my heart if the MPC elected another leader, and I actively took myself out of contention for chairing the 2008 Business Meeting because I think it's not a great thing for the same person to chair it too many times in a row. Indeed, I was somewhat uneasy about doing it two years in a row; there are strong constitutional arguments against it due to the way we amend the WSFS Constitution. But I didn't turn it down when it was offered to me.

[howeird]

Hey Kevin, there's no rule which says a Hidebound Old Fogey can't also be a bomb-throwing lunatic who would Destroy Us All. Leslie Fish even has a song about it.
:-)

[jbriggs.livejournal.com]

I prefer to think of you as a bomb-throwing Hidebound Old Fogey who means to Destroy Us All, but not necessarily lunatic.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Curses! My Plot has been discovered! Where's the auto-self-destruct switch for my Fortress of Evil [are there any other kind] SMOFish Schemes?

[querldox.livejournal.com]

"...my Fortress of Evil [are there any other kind]..."

I take it you're of the school that Doc Savage was evil due to performing lobotomies on his defeated foes (Fortress of Solitude I) and that Superman is a dick (Fortress of Solitude II)?

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Any chance you can talk with Cheryl about getting RSS working so I can add SFAW as a syndicated feed to Livejournal?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That's funny -- I thought the RSS feed was working. I see the entries (and comments) on Bloglines through it. Bloglines says that the feed address is <http://www.sfawardswatch.com/?feed=rss2>

[bovil.livejournal.com]

The RSS is generally working, I can pull it up from my web browser.

I get the following error when I try to subscribe to the syndicated feed in LJ using that URL:
Syndication
Error retrieving content
There was an error retrieving this URL. The server may be down or the content unavailable at this time. Please verify the URL you have provided and try again.

Emcit was fine on LJ, but the short-lived blog that followed it produced the same error on LJ (and so does the Hugo Awards site).

[(Anonymous)]

In which case I'm pretty sure that it is LJ's problem, not mine. Probably it can't handle a dynamically-generated feed.

I'd happily have a look at what they are doing, but the article you provided a link to is not accessible to people who are not LJ members.

- Cheryl

[bovil.livejournal.com]

I've got a ticket open with LJ, but I'm wondering if you see anything in the server logs from 204.9.177.18 (the address of LJ's feed reader) that shows HTTP request status codes.

[(Anonymous)]

Good luck, but don't expect me to change anything to conform with what LJ wants. As far as I'm concerned, people not being able to subscribe to the feed through LJ is a Good Thing, because it stops people commenting on posts through LJ rather than on the site.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

It also prevents lots of us from following anything here directly; I only get over here when Kevin reminds me of something in *his* LJ. The "friends list" is the killer ap for this decade.

[(Anonymous)]

Not my problem. If you want to stick with a proprietary standard that won't work with the rest of the Internet then you have to accept the limitations of that standard. There are plenty of other feed-monitoring services (Bloglines, Google Reader, for example) that work just fine.

- Cheryl

[(Anonymous)]

The RSS is working. I've subscribed to it through Google Reader. Also it is the same code that the Emerald City blog used to use, and that worked OK in LJ. Obviously there is something more complex going on here, but I think it is probably an LJ issue. Email me if you have any suggestions.

- Cheryl

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

This is somewhat bizarre. LJ is successfully picking up and syndicating the feed from my WordPress blog (the blog is http://dd-b.net/ , the lj feed is http://ddb_net.livejournal.com/ ).

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Livejournal is picking up tons of WordPress blogs.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Well, I've got some information why LJ can't create the feed, but it's weird...

This error message is occurring because the site in question is using the Wordpress Bad Behavior plugin, which blocks LiveJournal's servers from retrieving the syndicated feed.

Please contact the maintainers of the site and ask them to review their security settings and, if possible, temporarily disable the Bad Behavior plugin or add LiveJournal's IP address (204.9.177.18) to the plugin's white list. Once the configuration has been updated, you may try adding the feed again.

As to why Emcit worked even though it was using Bad Behavior too? Well, it apparently only is a problem when creating the feed. Once the feed exists, Bad Behavior doesn't block the retrieval. Very strange.

So one solution: adding 204.9.177.18 to BB's whitelist will solve the problem.