Link Farm and Open Thread: Enacted Rules Edition
- This is why there are things we don’t say about race (even when they are true) | Joseph Harker | Comment is free | The Guardian Really excellent take-down of some very common racist arguments, such as the risible claim that the Rotherham rapes were allowed to take place because police are afraid of enforcing laws on minorities. (Via).
- After a few months of hiatus, A Feminist Challenging Transphobia has returned to active blogging. Huzzah!
- Alito Joins Court Majority to Protect Pregnant Workers From Discrimination (I think G&W posted about this case in comments.)
- Ex-Prosecutor Apologizes to Wrongfully Convicted Glenn Ford After 30 Years on Death Row — The Atlantic “I end with the hope that providence will have more mercy for me than I showed Glenn Ford. But, I am also sobered by the realization that I certainly am not deserving of it.”
- ‘To the man who has been taking my Wall Street Journal’ | Berkeleyside And be sure to read the followup article as well.
- Courageous Trans Teen Stands Up For Her Bathroom Rights And Finds Community Support.
- French Mailman Spends 33 Years Building Epic Palace From Pebbles Collected On His 18-Mile Mail Route | Bored Panda
- Call-Centring to Dispose of Sealions. This cracked me up.
- How to utterly ruin the game “20 Questions.” – Ozy
- How drug testing could actually reduce racial disparities in the workplace – Vox
- France Says New Roofs Must Be Covered In Plants Or Solar Panels | ThinkProgress Sounds like a potentially excellent idea, although I imagine some problems could be created by the regulations making new buildings more expensive to construct, although this could be mitigated by a tax deduction for spending on new eco-roofs.
- A conservative judge’s devastating take on why voter ID laws are evil – LA Times It’s Judge Posner, unsurprisingly. His entire dissent can be read here (pdf link).
- Unplanned pregnancies cost taxpayers $21 billion each year – The Washington Post
- How to save Star Trek: Make it the True Detective of science fiction – Vox This sounds like a wonderful idea, but I doubt they’d do it with Star Trek. I’d love to see a “anthology” sci-fi TV show, though, exploring a consistent science fiction universe from different perspectives each season.
- Closing the TV-Guest Gender Gap — The Atlantic A fascinating article about the enormous effort involved in creating a 50/50 gender split of guests on a talk show.
- A Note on Call-Out Culture – Briarpatch Magazine
- The Supreme Court is about to tackle online threats for the first time | The Verge
- “Continuous rules” and “Immediate rules” in role playing games. An interesting analysis of RPG rules by game designer Ben Lehman, who sometimes comments here at “Alas.” (Although I think “Enacted rules” would have been a better term than “Immediate rules.”)
- Sweeping ‘New Motor Voter’ bill clears Oregon Legislature on partisan vote | OregonLive.com So from now on, anyone who gets a driver’s license in Oregon will, by default, be registered to vote at the same time (or when they turn 18), unless they actively opt out. Republicans are against this, although I’m unclear on what the rationalization is this time.
- It’s 2050 And Feminism Has Finally Won
- The adult sympathies of The Breakfast Club / The Dissolve
- ‘The Birth of a Nation’: The racist movie everyone should watch – The Washington Post A good illustration of how racism in art is not just a moral flaw, but an artistic flaw.
- A $10,169 blood test is everything wrong with American health care – Vox Total market failure.
- Prison and White People « The Hooded Utilitarian How white people given unjustly long sentences are victims of anti-black racism.
- Do You Have to Be Japanese to Make Manga? (with images, tweets) · debaoki · Storify
- The Benevolent Stalker. An interesting slash terrifying post by a stalker explaining how what he does is benevolent and not like the thing those evil bad stalkers do. After getting a lot of horrified responses, he quit stalking the woman, got psychological help, and wrote two follow-up posts: A Re-Evaluation of Romance and Stalking Seminar. What I find most fascinating is the way he created an imaginary reality for himself to live in.
- Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers asks on her Facebook for people to post their Obamacare horror stories, and thousands of people (including me) responded with personal stories of how Obamacare has helped them.
- Decades of human waste have made Mount Everest a ‘fecal time bomb’ – The Washington Post
- Slender Man defendants: Trying 12-year-olds as adults is illogical and barbaric.
- Some Speculation About the Google Truth Machine – Windypundit
- Woman held in psychiatric ward after (correctly) saying Obama follows her on Twitter
- “Organisers of a national disability conference in Melbourne have come under fire after a speaker had to be carried onto the stage because it was not wheelchair accessible.” It’s even worse than that sounds.
- Is it time to stop reading books by white men? Good review essay. (This and the prior two links via Skepchick.)
- Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?” I found this very interesting, although there were parts of it I couldn’t fully follow. When I started reading it I was confused over what the words “decoherence” and “classical” mean in this context, and I found that reading this lecture through the end of the section entitled “Story #1” clarified those terms enormously.
- Fair Process, Not Criminal Process, Is the Right Way to Address Campus Sexual Assault
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My crim law prof used “victim” and “defendant.” I asked him once whether a defense lawyer might prefer something other than “victim.” He seemed surprised by the question, but agreed that they might.
It made me wonder whether he had significant trial experience. I never really got the answer to that.
I mostly remember him for teaching rape law poorly, and making a math error, not noticing, and being smug about it.
That’s all apropos of nothing, I suppose. I slip into “victim/defendant” myself sometimes, since I’m mostly civil law, with a little prosecution work while still in law school. I try to police it but sometimes I mess it up.
Also, I quite frankly think that for determining whether or not someone should be thrown out of school on the basis that they are believed to have committed sexual assault, “preponderance of evidence” is simply not a just and sufficient standard.
From that “equality principles” quote:
I dare say that one innovation that would resolve this issue would be for the process to to completely divorse itself from the criminal justice system and remove any punative consequences. The core of this issue is that a process that is focused on the rights and interests of the alleged victim is a process that is not in any way suitable for determining the appropriateness of puntative action against the accused. Rather than a process that is focused on deciding guilt, it seems it would be better to have a process that can conclude that there is a serious and legitmate grievance between the students. The school would then have the responsibilty for taking addtional action to ensure both parties can complete their education while also taking into account that:
Actions could include moving students to different classes, providing extra support to take classes out of order, etc. Obviously a preponderance of evidence standard could play into which student would suffer the most inconvenience, however the relative inconvencience to each student should also play a role.
Ampersand:
Can you explain exactly what rights people are trying to take away from alleged victims?
I don’t think anyone is trying to take away a “right.”
I suspect Amp is referring to taking away a “benefit.” For example, being able to testify without cross examination is a benefit, because it makes it easier on you and it makes it less likely that you will be caught out in a lie. And so on. The criminal (and civil) systems lack some of those one-sided benefits. I’ll let Amp specify.
Balanced? Ha. I would really like to know how many cross-examinations that author has conducted to reach that conclusion. I’m guessing “zero,” which is probably why she thinks that things like “written discovery” and “questions in advance” are even in the same category.
It’s a hostile interview, where your opponent is trying NOT to answer your questions, and is trying NOT to give you the information you want. Only by quick conversation and thinking on your feet can you get out everything, including the parts that they would prefer not to say. Discovery is useless for that sort of work.
I appreciated these two articles in re the Rolling Stone rape article debacle: Megan McArdle at Bloomberg View and Clay Shirky at the New Republic.
In their haste to confirm The Narrative, Rolling Stone showed that rather than engaging in advocacy journalism, they simply engage in advocacy.
There was once an organization called the City News Bureau of Chicago Think of it as an AP for Chicago. They would develop stories in Chicago and Cook County and then sell them to the local news outlets. It was not filled with Columbia School of Journalism graduates. They would very likely have laughed at the concept that journalism was something you needed to learn in college. Their central precept of reporting did not need any academic background to understand:
“If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out with two independent sources.”
But that would have blown this story up – so RS didn’t do it. That would have been journalism, which is a secondary consideration at RS.
Here’s another treatment of the Rolling Stone debacle, from just about the first critic to point out the problems with the story in the first place. In the End, It’s All About Rape Culture—or the Lack Thereof
RonF, that was an interesting link, thanks. It covers some things not discussed in the links I posted (particularly the issue of attorney-client privilege–though I’m not as hard on Rolling Stone for not waiving that as the author seems to be). Some of it I found troubling, though, in particular this passage:
In fact, Erdely interviewed a number of women as possible central cases for her story, not just at UVa; she chose the most extreme of the women she interviewed (which has its own kinds of problems, discussed–oh, I can’t remember, in at least one of the two articles I linked to). This passage, particularly the last line, betrays an assumption on the part of the author that most campus rape stories are false. If even some of them are true, after all, you wouldn’t assume that Erdely would just be working her way through false allegation after false allegation. The author accuses Erdely of holding her thesis tighter than her evidence, but he is making the same mistake.
That wasn’t specific to them–it is quite common as a phrase among journalists, as the Shirky article mentions. Shall I take from this quote that you did not read that article before posting? If not, I recommend that you give it a try (and the McArdle article as well, if you didn’t). They do not go easy on Rolling Stone, by any means, but they do have a different perspective than the article you posted.
I will note that McArdle and Shirky are much harder on the editor than the article you posted was. In the context of the author’s utter dismissal of rape culture, I would point out that that means the article you posted is very harsh on the female writer and only accuses the male editor of being asleep at the wheel, while the two articles I posted divide the blame more equally. I don’t think that proves anything, but it was something I noticed.
I’m trying to figure out how you reached this. I read the article as talking about the fact that the stories were insufficiently lurid (which is why Erdely rejected them) and not that they were true/false. In fact, although it wasn’t clearly stated either way, I grokked that Erdley did not really dig into the true/false aspects of the ones which she rejected.
I may be misreading. Can you quote the portion that you’re getting this from?
Do you recognize the author?
Bradley was one of the first (and more notable) people to question this. He took a lot of shit for it, from various sources. He also tried very hard to get through to Erdley and met a brick wall. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that Erdley’s behavior affected his reaction.
Well, I think he was drawing a true/false judgment as well–to quote again the last line of the part I quoted before, with emphasis:
I’m not sure how to read that except under the assumption that every person, or almost every person, that Erdely talked to as a potential subject of the article was lying–not that she was rejecting them because they didn’t fit her purpose. (And, I mean, that opinion is informed by the way he flat-out says in the title of the article that rape culture doesn’t exist, so I don’t think it’s a stretch for me to say that he was skeptical of the article’s broader context, not just Jackie’s particular case–also held up by the intro and conclusion, with quotes like “There is a lot that Steve Coll and his colleagues did not get into or did not get into much: […] the Department of Education’s crusade against the “epidemic” of campus sexual assault” and “When you know how Rubin Erdely went about her work, you are forced to conclude that she failed, that the rest of her story is as unbelievable as Jackie’s story—it’s just concocted in a slicker way.”)
That, I will agree with.
In addition to the stuff cited above, my opinion also derives from this comment:
That is, the thesis he’s talking about (if I’m reading correctly) is that campus rape is widespread (particularly by fraternity members), but this seems to say that disproving the most extreme single case should cause her to question that thesis. (This may also be a bit of terminology difference; when I “question” a thesis I would consider that “thinking it may be untrue”, which is a bad tradeoff if your thesis is based on statistics and your counterexample is a single case; if he meant something more like “considered softening her position [but not to the point of rejecting the idea that rape on college campuses is a problem] pursuant to further investigation” then we’d probably agree.)
I’m not sure why taking a lot of shit over his criticisms of the article explains why he would be more annoyed at the author than at the editors, when other people I’ve seen comment on this issue point to a pretty broad range of people who deserve a lot of blame. Not getting through to Erdely would explain some animus against her, but it still seems disproportionate.
I wanted to check, so: this article has the word “Erdely” 52 times, “editor” 12. In contrast, the Bloomberg article I posted is 25 to 8, and the New Republic article is 9 to 4 for the same words. So it’s not as disproportionate relative to the other articles as I originally thought–that’s about 4:1, 3:1, and 2:1, respectively. My overall sense is still that the latter two articles are more charitable to her–in particular, they agree that there’s something to be discussed w/r/t rape on campus, so some of the discussions of her position are positive, which is not the case for Bradley’s piece–but I think that was coloring my impression of where the blame was being placed.
I took the phrase from the Wikipedia article that I cited. I had remembered it from other stories I had read about City News Bureau of Chicago as “If your mother says she loves you, check it out”, but I figure that the Wikipedia article was more accurate.
GiW’s notation of insufficiently lurid applies here. It seems to me that what she wanted to write was not “rapes occur on college campuses” but “College campuses have a ‘rape culture'” – which I interpret as meaning that rape is commonplace on college campuses, is not condemned by the culture among at least the male (or the male fraternity member) population on campus, and whose existence and investigation is ignored or discouraged by the school administrations. So the “fraud” he’s talking about is not simply an allegation by someone that they were raped that proved to be untrue. It would be an allegation that they were raped plus allegations that support the claim of the existence of ‘rape culture’; that there were students who encouraged rape, that the school administration refused to take an allegation seriously, that it was protecting well-connected students from investigation or consequences, that they tried to blame the victim, etc. etc. that proved to be untrue.
And as an aside, here’s another detail that should have alerted anyone who read this story that there was something bogus with that story;
A glass-topped table in a fraternity house? Really? HIGHLY unlikely.
I think that there’s something worthwhile to be discussed about rape on campus. But I think that said discussion should start with looking at the facts and then proceed to a conclusion, rather than starting from a conclusion that makes extreme claims and then fishing around for the most lurid allegations you can find to buttress it – which is precisely what Erdley was doing..
Perhaps it should start with an analysis of two studies on the matter. One would be the oft-cited “1-in-5” study – which apparently it’s own authors say should not be used to draw conclusions on the prevalence of sexual assault on campuses nationwide – and the recently released DoJ study which claims that sexual assault among female college students is 0.61% (per year), that it’s actually LOWER than the rate of sexual assault of non-college attending females of college age, and that it’s been trending downwards for years.
In other news:
Alas, the Hugo Awards passed over Mandolin this year in favor of — well, let’s say, a variety of fresh names and faces. Ok, maybe variety isn’t the right word, given that John C. Wright alone received six nominations. I sense this may become a parable about the dangers of not voting….
RonF,
That 0.61% is from the National Crime Victimization Survey. There is extensive research (e.g.), acknowledged by the DoJ, demonstrating that the NCVS under-estimates the rate of sexual assault. The value of the NCVS is that it is done every year with a consistent methodology and a relatively large participant pool, so interannual and demographic analysis is somewhat possible. It should not be used to make claims about what the actual rate of rape is.
You’ve previously linked to studies and articles that acknowledged that (in fact, the one you just linked to acknowledges that!), so you don’t have much excuse for being ignorant of that. Why do you continue to misuse a statistic that is convenient for your argument? (it is particularly funny/galling that you do that while declaiming the importance of not misusing statistics!)
Ah, okay. That makes more sense to me now. But…every point I made above is still applicable if he thinks they’re lying about some combination of rape+circumstances surrounding rape, rather than just rape itself.
nobody.really, I’m a bit behind now, but I’ve been following the Making Light threads about this for a couple of weeks; it’s been instructive. Basically, I feel sorry for everybody eligible for an award this year who wasn’t involved with the creation or dissemination of those slates, because either they didn’t get nominated (and might have), or they did but will never know if they would’ve won in a normal year. Plus it sucks for all the readers, and all the voters, and…
Also, RonF, what I meant by “your quote” was that it seemed like you thought you were introducing that concept into the conversation, which implied to me that you hadn’t read the links (although obviously that might have been wrong). I didn’t give a lot of thought to the particular phrasing you used.
Nobody Really: I hope it doesn’t become “become a parable about the dangers of not voting,” because that would be the wrong lesson. Slate voting is a strategy that allows a small minority of voters to win elections. Just saying that people should vote more isn’t a solution here, because – as long as only one group engages in slate voting – the slate voters have an enormous structural advantage.
I think the real lesson here is that voting systems matter, especially in a social media age.
Skin Game? Seriously?
I enjoyed reading it, and I think if there was an “ongoing series” award that Biutcher would deserve something, but the concept of Skin Game as a stand-alone award winner seems strange.
It gets way worse than Skin Game, which could at least imaginably be nominated in a fair system. Odd choices do happen, and virtually every year there’ll be at least one nomination that has people going “how did that get on?”
But – Six nominations for John C. Wright, including three in the “Novella” category alone.
And nine nominations for a brand-new Finnish publisher that turns out to be owned by the person who organized the slate voting campaign.[*] What a coincidence! (I’m not mentioning his name on “Alas,” because I suspect he googles himself a lot. Please don’t mention his name. Thanks.)
Not to mention “Wisdom from My Internet,” a collection of right-wing email forwards with no clear connection to science fiction/fantasy. Meanwhile, a serious biography of Robert Heinlein was knocked off the list.
[*] There were actually two slate voting campaigns, but the “Rabid Puppies” slate – although less talked about than the “Sad Puppies” slate – actually had a bigger effect on nominations.
John C. Wright, their chief nominee, (Six nominations! Clearly the best science fiction writer of all time.) has compared Terry Pratchett to Hitler and fantasized in print about physically assaulting him.
He also said, in his post on the ending of The Legend of Korra (in which two female characters held hands)
This man is not okay. The fact that someone like him would be nominated for six six SIX fucking Hugos in the same year that we lost Sir Terry is something that I doubt I’ll ever forgive the puppies for.
Sir Terry was a titan who will be remembered a century hence. John C. Wright should pray to be forgotten, because if he is remembered, it will not be kindly.
Shockingly, the owner of that Finnish Publishing house is actually worse, which is sort of a weird accomplishment.
—Myca
Over at Obsidian Wings, they’re documenting John C. Wright’s efforts to send some of the vile shit he’s said in the past down the memory hole.
—Myca
Fuck.
When I look at the nominated writers, and Tom Kratman is not amongst the three I despise the most, I know that something is very wrong with the world.
Well, at least, there is one writer in there that I enjoy reading, fiction or non-fiction: Ane Leckie. The sad part is that I have tried reading almost everyone else, as well.
—–
There were actually two slate voting campaigns, but the “Rabid Puppies” slate – although less talked about than the “Sad Puppies” slate – actually had a bigger effect on nominations.
Well, duh! ‘Sad Puppies’ is defensible. Not worth defending, but defensible. They needed something they can actually talk about. But anyone will to march on that drum will have to be somewhat rabid, so why would they go for the ‘Diet’ version, when they can have the ‘Real Deal’?
That’s true, but it’s notable that the slate was less successful in the Best Novel category, where there were 1800 ballots nominating, than in the other categories that had ~1000 nominations. It’s possible that this really can be defeated just with a push for nominations–one of the things that was really notable in the Making Light threads was how many people didn’t nominate in categories where they didn’t feel they were completist enough; getting such people to understand that that’s not expected, and that they can nominate fewer than a full slate of 5 works, might help there.
There’s also a proposal to limit the number of nominations to fewer than the final number of nominees, which also limits (but doesn’t eliminate) the power of slates. That will take a few years to go into effect, if it’s voted in at all.
The response this year seems to be broad agreement to vote No Award above any of the slate candidates…
The response this year seems to be broad agreement to vote No Award above any of the slate candidates…
Seems kind of counter-productive. Some of those nominations (The Dresden book, the talking raccoon movie) are by authors who are not rabid right wingers, and have probably not asked to be nominated by VD’s slate. By the way, I think it is silly to avoid naming VD when such a suitable abbreviation exists.
I mean, I won’t be a voter this year so it’s not really my skin in the game (ha ha); the rationale I heard from the people who are proposing this is that the damage that will be done by possibly denying a Hugo to a worthy person who was placed on a slate and didn’t know is less than the damage that would be done by letting any of the slate candidates win. (It was not a universal opinion where I was running around, mainly Making Light and Twitter, but it was probably more common than any other proposed action.)
The other argument I’ve heard is that when there’s slate voting, it fucks everything up by denying spots to legitimate candidates, so that if Ann Leckie (who I agree is really excellent) wins, she won’t be winning against the best of the year’s work … she’ll be winning against whoever these jokers let through.
—Myca
“Goblin Emperor” is supposed to be great, as well, and I don’t think the author chose to be on the puppy slates. But, arguably, the point of No Awarding the full puppy slate isn’t to deny Hugo awards to “rabid right wingers,” but to make slate voting a nonproductive strategy.
Harlequin –
I think the best suggestion I’ve seen so far, from Bruce Schniener’s guest post at Making Light (so you’ve probably already seen this), is to switch Hugo nominations to a Single transferable vote system. It would make it easy for slate voting groups to get a single person nominated, but much harder for them to get each subsequent person nominated.
I don’t have much faith in the “recruit new voters / get more people to vote” strategy, because the puppies can do that strategy too, and since (as I understand it, the math here is far beyond me) it takes about five honest voters to cancel out a single slate voter – and more than five if the honest voters aren’t nominating a full slate – the puppies have a HUGE structural advantage if this is the strategy. I’d love to be proven wrong on this, but…
Here’s a comment I just left on a post on George R. R. Martin’s Livejournal, where it’s awaiting approval.
****************************************************************
Thanks for an excellent post.
I’m a cartoonist. I haven’t been nominated for a Hugo (yet), but I’ve been nominated for many other awards. I was once nominated for the Andre Norton, but lost to Terry Pratchett, and losing to Terry Pratchett is a high honor.
This year’s Hugo award nominees for graphic novels are the strongest list in years. The books chosen aren’t the most literary or experimental graphic novels that came out in 2014, but in four out of five cases they are genuinely outstanding popular works, exceptionally crafted, widely read, and advancing the field of (mainstream) comic books. Every one is not only popular with readers, but respected by cartoonists and critics.
(Incidentally, although Fables wasn’t nominated for a Hugo this year, it’s been nominated multiple times, contradicting the claim that conservatives are shut out of Hugo award nominations.)
And then there’s the sad puppies nominee, a relatively obscure web comic. This comic is a pleasant and skillfully crafted entertainment. The cartoonist is talented and hard-working and I respect him.
But this comic is not even remotely in the same league as the other four nominees.
Nominating a work for having exceptional artistic merit and advancing the form makes sense. Nominating a work because it is enormously entertaining and shows a mastery of craft and has thrilled a lot of readers also makes sense. You could also go for a combination – look for works that combine popular appeal with innovation. That makes sense. In each of these cases, the work is being honored with a nomination based on merit.
But the Puppy nominee isn’t there because it’s innovative (it’s not); it isn’t there because it thrilled a wide audience (on the contrary, this is an extremely obscure work); it isn’t there because it’s one of the most outstanding works of the year in terms of craft (it’s not).
This book is Hugo-nominated because the cartoonist is, in his personal life, friends with Brad Torgersen.
The SP folks like to say that they are populist. But there’s nothing less populist than nepotism.
With all due respect to the SP nominated cartoonist, who isn’t to blame for what happened, his work didn’t deserve to be Hugo nominated. There is a graphic novel that deserved it more; that was better crafted, more popular, and showed more mastery of the comics form. I’m talking about whatever comic was knocked off the list of nominees by the SP nominee. That work – whatever it is – was created by cartoonists who worked really damn hard, and they don’t deserve to be knocked off the list because another cartoonist is friends with Brad Torgersen.
No voting system is perfect. There are always cliques, and there are always works that are unjustly ignored by readers. But slate voting is ten times worse than that. Slate voting can make merit completely irrelevant. Works are nominated, not based on merit, but based on three people (Brad Torgersen, VD, Larry Correia) deciding what their followers will vote for. Those three people are not committed to the organization that issues the awards, and have not put in any of the work involved in running either Worldcon or the Hugos.
Could there be anything more elitist?
In a bunch of categories, no one who wasn’t part of the Puppy slates – that is, no one not chosen by one of those three men – was able to get on the ballot at all. By gaming the system with slate voting, they completely shut out every other fan’s choices. In one category, three of five nominations went to a single author.
Could there be anything less inclusive?
If you think works should be honored based on merit, then you oppose slate voting – period, regardless of the politics of the people organizing the slate.
And if you support slate voting, then – regardless of what your intentions are – you are not honoring works based on merit, you are not opposing elitism, and you are not making the Hugos more democratic and inclusive.
It’s really that simple.
I’ve noticed what seems a pretty strong assumption that the slate voters are, basically, trolls. People want to “cancel” their votes. People refer to other voters as “honest.” People are more than happy to “no award” a deserving author lest a single slate vote slip through, because they are teh evil.
But it seems facially true that that those slate voters feel the same way about their opponents, as well. I.e., about you. In fact, that seems to be the whole reason that the slat votes exist. And I’ve seen sites which talk about how a puppies slate is being misconstrued; those are also somewhat convincing.
I don’t think there is a problem with organizing people on your side to “no award” things, or to boycott slate authors, or to focus on a particular author and dig out whatever you dislike about him/her, etc. That is partly how voting works. But it seems sort of like a lot of folks are acting like those are different tactics held by the righteous, and to me it seems like they’re pretty much the same tactics, if not worse.
(If you really want to make judgments, I think that what a lot of folks are proposing is worse and that it is less appropriate. Getting people together to decide on a group of folks, and voting for them, is, while annoying, within the wide boundary of “voting for someone to win.” Everyone else who wants OTHER people to win can do the same thing, and–voila!–the results will be what they will be.
OTOH, things like “organizing to deny votes” and “deliberately voting against people who are good to send a message to those we don’t like” and “trying to find dirt on candidates” are negative campaigning. They represent a much larger deviation from the “vote for folks you like” rule. And they’re certainly OK in my view, but I don’t get how folks can sling that much mud and claim their hands are clean.
G&W- you’re exhibiting exactly the reaction campaigns like Sad Puppies rely upon.
The underlying story here is one of social norms collapsing, leaving us reliant only upon de jure rules. And under de jure rules, nothing technically wrong has occurred. So how can anyone validly object, right? On what can they rely? The norms of the community, but those have little force if people simply reject their existence.
This is the same social dynamic that got us the filibuster as a regular feature of the Senate. It violates no written rules to filibuster everything by default so that all bills need a supermajority. But for centuries it was the community norm not to do that. Destroy the norm, and what can anyone say to object to your behavior? It isn’t technically wrong. But there’s no guarantee the community can function under the new norm.
Using government shutdowns to extort policy concessions is another example. It isn’t technically wrong by the rules. But maybe our government only functioned because doing that was considered wrong. Destroy the norm, and the entire system shifts.
We rely on so many unwritten norms that it’s hard to even count then. They’re just background assumptions.
The old Hugo norm was “nominate your favorite.” That’s being destroyed. You’re helping- I notice that you recast the issue as voting for something you think deserves an award. You had to, your argument evaporates if you use the real norm.
Without that norm, we get a system where you vote for something you think is popular enough to win, and more acceptable to you than whatever you think will win otherwise. A book could be your tenth favorite, but if your other nine aren’t viable, they’d just be throwing away your vote. So you vote for the low option. Even more importantly, and much, much worse, what viable ceases to be based purely on popularity. If you vote a slate, you trade your vote on things you don’t care about for the support of others on something you do. Now “viable” is about how well you politic.
And that’s why these people are poison, and why the communities response has been like that of an immune system rejecting a toxin. Because letting this stand destroys the norm that the community needed to function, and the only way to fix this is to reinstate the norm. And how do you do that? Moral censure.
It’s just ironically useful that the puppies really are poisonous horrible human beings being cynically manipulated by authors who have used the process to self promote, and who are, themselves, terrible human beings.
The other irony is that the argument I’m making is pretty much just Classical Conservatism 101, and yet literally every example that’s made a meaningful and identifiable impact on the modern era has involved conservatives tearing down norms. Almost like they’re just reactionaries.
I have nothing against their tactics. But it’s important to understand their objective and that’s to destroy the Hugos. I do oppose that.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Charles S., I am quite aware that there are differences in methodologies among the various studies – after all, as you point out, the very study I cited discusses that very issue. Did you think I cited something I didn’t read? Which is why I said that an exploration of the issue should start by comparing two different studies. I did not say it should conclude by simply citing one (as many who have cited the “1 in 5” study seem to think).
RonF,
Even now, you refuse to acknowledge that the NCVS prevalence rate is incorrect and should not be stated as though it were the accurate rate. Instead you just vaguely acknowledge that there are differences in methodology. How “neutral” of you!
You cite two statistics and point out that one is not representative and that the other supports a claim that rape is less of a problem in college than out of it. Why would anyone think that that is anything other than a neutral way to reference two statistics? One of those two statistics is well known not to be an accurate description of the rate of sexual assault, and one of them is not a national, representative study (but not clearly mis-designed for determining a rate of sexual assault). You implied that one of them is incorrect and it was the wrong one.
Ignorance of the inaccuracy of the NCVS was the generous reading of what was wrong with your comment.
g&w, there’s evidence of people involved with the Rabid Puppies, at least, reaching out to members of a certain misogynist mob within the video gaming world (which I’m not going to name for rather the same reason we’re not naming VD outright). So when people are discussing the slate voters as “trolls”, that is, at least in part, factually accurate–some of the people who voted had no interest in the Hugos but merely wanted to stick it to “SJWs” (as they have been loudly crowing about doing ever since).
Even for the rest of it, the stated purpose of the Sad Puppies was to a) get new people to realize they’re eligible to vote for the Hugos and involve them, and b) highlight works they thought were unfairly overlooked by the current voter pool for the Hugos. But for both of those goals, it would have been just as effective and far less harmful to the process to just solicit suggestions (which they did) and then publish that list of suggestions, rather than culling it down to a specific slate. Putting out a specific slate is a deliberate attempt to game the system, which normally relies on constructive interference among noisy ballots to find the things that everyone found truly memorable and deserving; by doing that step before the nominations even began, the Puppies essentially substituted the curatorial power of the folks in charge of the slate for the statistical average of the voters.
Indeed, the first year the Sad Puppies tried this, they claimed that they thought the voting was rigged; then the guy in charge did a statistical analysis and concluded that he was wrong about it. Oddly enough, that didn’t stop them from trying again, and then again, until they finally succeeded…
This is true, but–at the same time–it’s not insurmountable odds. Given that it costs money to vote, I think it will be easier to nab “people who are eligible to vote and nominate but usually only vote” for the nomination process than it will be to get “people who want to join the nomination and voting process only to nominate a slate.” But, not my call either way :D
(I saw Schneier’s post but haven’t read it yet since I’ve been a bit work-swamped the last couple of days: it’s easier to keep up here than there at the moment!)
I didn’t call slate voters “trolls,” and I didn’t call them “teh evil.” I never said anything like that.
What I am saying is that slate voters are people who are gaming the system, which I think is completely undeniable. I think gaming the system as thoroughly as the Puppies have is dishonest, and is not compatible with the idea of individual voters choosing nominees based on merit.
If you’d like to respond to those arguments, that’s fine. If you want to respond to some other arguments, that would be fine too, but please don’t attribute those arguments to me when I never made them.
Gaming the system is an accepted norm in our society so I don’t see that as a valid complaint against them. Every competitive endeavor in the US allows gaming the system. It’s discouraged more in some arenas than in others, but I’m not aware of competitions where it’s banned (other than the bonus program I implemented where I work).
Gaming the system is permissible (and many times encouraged) from politics to economics to sports to video games and on and on.
I can see being against the gaming of systems (as I generally am) as a perfectly valid position, but I don’t see gaming the nomination/voting process of the Hugos as outside accepted norms.
If we’re going to criticize the various puppies, I think we’re on more solid ground criticizing their objective rather than their method.
Jake:
George Martin has a good post on this: Blogging for Rockets.
“Gaming the system” is a continuum, just like violence is a continuum. Someone saying on her blog, “hey, these works are great, you should read them and consider nominating them” is, in a way, gaming the system. Someone giving their friend a playful shove that neither party considers hostile or objectionable is, in a way, committing violence. But it’s fair to distinguish between a playful shove and a mugging, even if you say that one of the major reasons to be against the mugging is because of the violence. Saying “well, you don’t object to playful shrugs, so I don’t see violence as outside of accepted norms” isn’t convincing to me.
I’m not saying that slate voting is the same as a mugging; I am saying that the ordinary “please consider voting for my story” campaigning is as different from organizing a slate as a playful shove is a from a mugging.
Finally, given the reaction from within the sci-fi community, I think it’s a stretch to claim that slate voting falls within accepted norms.
And Jake Squid offers yet another brick in the wall. So much for norms!
For decades it was considered really shady to even ask people to vote for you. Just writing a blog post saying “I have two eligible books this year, just FYI, use the comment thread to talk about the Hugo’s” was seen as getting uncomfortably close to the line. People broke the rules, sure, but there was enough pushback to preserve the norms anyway.
That’s dead, apparently. Norms only work within a community capable of using reputation to police itself. That won’t work here because the various Puppies have no reputations worth protecting with anyone who cares to enforce the norm.
This is how communities break. It’s just rare that we see one taken out back and shot, so deliberately.
By the way, as long as we’re discussing the Hugo nominations, I’d like to strongly recommend this essay, by a writer who turned down his Hugo nomination (for best fan writer) this year. It’s very long, but very thoughtful, has a perspective that’s different from the typical anti-Puppy (or pro-Puppy) perspective, and is refreshingly free of anger and partisan grudges.
I disagree. Gaming the system is, as I understand the definition, taking action in ways that were not anticipated by the rules in order to gain an advantage.
Is it acceptable to get a job from a friend of your parents? That’s gaming the system.
Is it acceptable to vote straight party line? That’s slate voting and, therefore, gaming the system.
Was it acceptable to ingest or inject PED’s before the major sports made rules against it? That was gaming the system.
“Rules lawyers” game the systems of games.
Crew chiefs and engineers in auto racing find ways to improve their cars that are not explicitly forbidden. Not only is this gaming the system, it is openly admired.
Video Gamers do everything up to and including using cheat codes to game game systems.
Those of us who believe in the spirit of the rule as much as the letter of the law are currently on the losing side.
Sure. And as with most things, once it becomes more popular it becomes more likely to have participants with no qualms about gaming the system.
At this point in time, if you want to keep people from gaming the system you must be (or appoint) the arbiter of the spirit of the rules. That was easy for me with our bonus program. I simply announced, “Any system can be gamed but if I even suspect you of gaming the system you will be out of the bonus program with no possibility of reinstatement.” And you know what? That’s worked really, really well and nobody has tried to game the system since I made that declaration. However, that’s a very small group of people and I am the spirit of the rules tyrant and ultimate power when it comes to distribution of those bonuses.
If the Hugo Award community wants to stop the puppies in the future, they’ve got to take action to stop that particular method of gaming the system. Determined people will find another way to game their nomination/voting process and then they’ll have to close that down.
Until gaming the system becomes socially unacceptable, that’s what we’re stuck with.
But pack to the puppies… Condemning the puppies over the method they used is both going after the lowest hanging fruit and ineffectual when we hear no voices decrying larger, more reputable organizations using the same methods. Slating is a venerable and accepted part of voting in the USA. It’s how Harry Truman began his political career (among innumerable others). It’s how corporate boards are elected. The only people who ever complain about running slates are those whose preferred candidates lost out to the slate. Local politics are often one slate against another. We’ve seen it in Portland several times over the last two decades and I don’t recall a noticeable outcry against it. There have been slates that I approve of and slates that I didn’t like at all. I have no objection to how the puppies did it. They used a common method of competing in elections. I object to why they did it and the atrocious results. They used a common, accepted method of running in an election and produced inferior, unworthy candidates because they wanted to destroy the award.
I’m positive that they’ll be as pleased with no award given for a category as they will be to have one of their nominations win. That is the problem as far as I’m concerned.
It has a larger effect here, though, because the pool of potential nominees is so large. I mean, look at Best Novel–with the ~1800 ballots (max 5 nominees each), 587 different novels appeared at least once! No category had less than 100 different items nominated. That is not, as far as I know, analogous to any political race ever run in the US, and it’s why slate voting is so particularly powerful here.
This has also, at least in my observation, not been true in this case. I’ve seen lots of anti-slate people praising particular items on the slate, and talking about how it’s hard for them to decide whether to vote No Award above things they actually did like (see, for example, the Jim Butcher book).
That is a really well done and detailed explanation and, as you say, free of anger and grudges. It also has a much more sympathetic view of their motivation than I have.
That’s definitely true and makes slate voting extremely powerful in this case. That’s the problem with slate voting and a (relatively) small organization. But I honestly don’t see the difference between the puppies slating and the slating that goes on for corporate boards except that the puppies’ slates were full of inferior candidates. Well, maybe that’s not even a difference depending on which corporate election we’re talking about.
So the problem here is that slating is extremely powerful and produced the intended, destructive result. What’s the solution?
With regards to the Hugos:
Back in the late ’60’s and early ’70’s I read a lot of SF. Even joined Noreascon I. But for various reasons I gradually fell away. Lately I’ve been moved to start putting SF back into my reading. Not knowing much about the current authors, I’ve picked up a few anthologies (Gardner Dorzois, etc.). So this whole controversy attracted my attention when I ran across it on a couple of blogs. I certainly can’t claim to be an expert. But even allowing for the fact that the blogs I’ve read have an obvious point of view, a couple of things in the above comments seem at odds with what I’ve read elsewhere.
It seems to me that the SP’s contend that
Patrick @ 133:
The SP’s would counter that this was the norm some time ago, but that the current norm is “nominate your favorite among authors that have the correct political outlook.”
Jake @ 134:
“But it’s important to understand their objective and that’s to destroy the Hugos.”
That is nowhere stated in their objectives in their writings that I have read. It seems to me that their belief is that authors who have a conservative or libertarian outlook are essentially blackballed in the field – on the basis of their politics, not on the basis of the quality of their work – and that this campaign is to ensure that authors with such outlooks get on the ballot.
As far as slate voting goes, the arguments go back and forth about whether this is something that has occurred before or not on a formal or informal basis or both, and I can’t get into that. But I’ll say that if the slate was put together purely on the basis of the politics of the writers without regard for the quality of the work – as George R. R. Martin seems to be claiming – then they’re no better than the people they oppose. OTOH, if they at least think that the works they are nominating are at least as good if not better than the ones that other people are nominating and that the authors have been discriminated against, then it seems to me to be an intellectually honest effort.
…the difference is that in one situation you have a dog eat dog business setting where anything goes, and in the other you have a community built around the idea that there are some things you just don’t do. As before, your response suggests that unwritten norms of conduct are literally nothing. That’s not how human beings work. Never has been, never will be.
RonF- the old “they’d say that about you” chestnut is utterly worthless. So what. Anyone can say anything. Anyone can be wrong. Who is, and who isn’t, matters.
Well, at least we know that there were two genuinely, uncoercedly, widely popular novels in the field this year. That doesn’t fix the problem of slating, of course, and one can’t expect a genuine consensus (as distinguished from a manufactured one) to emerge in all categories, or in any category every year. I’m not a Hugo voter (in fact, I generally use the nominations to guide my reading, so this year is a loss for me, except for discovering The Goblin Emperor), and I don’t know how the process can be fixed to avoid running slates. I hope it can be fixed, because this years nominations are certainly broken.
So the problem here is that slating is extremely powerful and produced the intended, destructive result. What’s the solution?
Why do you think there is a solution? The fandom has been divided. There are people (some of them assholes, some of them authors I enjoy, some of them trolls) who are choosing their nominations for ideological purity. I personally have thought for a while that many of the nominations were pure propaganda… it never bothered me when it was propaganda I agreed with or when it was a really good read (I actually voted for something that fits both of these criteria in 2000)
But the people who care about ideological purity will always be more motivated that those who vote for what they like. Both sides are getting mobilized, and each side thinks that they are only fighting back against what the others started. Personally, I think that Science Fiction has been always extremely politically charged, it is not a coincidence that Aelita, Maria, and Friday were all in the middle of social upheavals. So, as far as I am concerned, the two blocks will destroy the Hugos, and a decade from now each side will have its own little corner. Maybe there will be an award where everyone will have a chance, but the rules would have to be a lot better than anything that’s been seen in literary awards so far.
I enjoy both David Drake and Ann Leckie, so I hope there will be an award for which they will both have a chance to compete.
I don’t know that there is one but I figure that since there’s a lot of talk about it – almost none of which is “The Hugos are fucked, let’s find another place to reward our favorite writing” – that the folks talking about it are looking for a solution/have ideas for solutions.
Obviously not. In one you have a business setting where anything goes, and in the other you have a community where, for a large enough subset, anything goes. Given that the slate nominations made it through it appears that the leadership allows anything to go. If it were a community where there are some things that you just don’t do, I feel like the award nominees would comprise a notably different list of work.
Organizations that have, more or less, open membership are subject to this kind of thing. I don’t know how many you’ve been part of but IME, from quasi-governmental Neighborhood Associations to organized hobby groups to volunteer organizations, this eventually happens in all of them. New people show up, often with gripes about how things have been run in the past, organize and flex their power and things begin to change. Sometimes it makes a fundamental change in that organization, other times the longer tenured folks reassert their control. It’s the nature of human interaction, apparently. That it took decades to happen to the Hugos is exceptional & wonderful. Where do they go from here?
Look, sometimes assholes come into an organization or group and shit all over it thereby ruining it for the old crowd. Once that happens, either the old crowd reasserts control and keeps it the place it was or it becomes an excrement filled corner of the world and the old guard leaves. Complaining about the tactics of the shit throwers doesn’t restore the nice thing. Saying, “This is not allowed here,” and then not allowing it here does.
The puppies used tactics that the old guard despises and finds out of bounds but the puppies do not. Complaining about it will not mitigate the mess the puppies have made. Cleaning up the shit (atrocious nominees) and putting in place policies that prevent this from happening in the future does mitigate it. They can either decide to reclaim their organization or leave it to the newcomers and their tactics.
Nope. But if you look at their slate you’ll see that almost none of it is worthy of Hugo nomination. It would be one thing if these were writing of great quality that were odious to the majority of the Hugo nominating world’s values. But it’s not. It’s mostly workmanlike, at very tip-top best, or much, much worse. That speaks volumes as to intention.
I’d be willing to put up a small bet (with the proceeds going to charity) that, should there be many “No Award Givens”, that the puppies sites will claim that as a victory and there will be much rejoicing.
“Obviously not. In one you have a business setting where anything goes, and in the other you have a community where, for a large enough subset, anything goes. Given that the slate nominations made it through it appears that the leadership allows anything to go. If it were a community where there are some things that you just don’t do, I feel like the award nominees would comprise a notably different list of work.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. Over and over I write about the difference between de jure rules and social norms, and the difference between literal rules of behavior and enforcement through reputation, and you just… brush it aside like it wasn’t even there. You just tell me I’m wrong, because… you just don’t see social norms at all. Or more importantly, the words I write about social norms. You don’t see those either. Dunno what to do here.
I think that George Martin pretty much destroys that claim in his new post.
Unless you can go into it – with proof, not just conjecture – then it’s not worthy of bringing up as an argument.
I don’t think that is what GRRM is claiming. Do you have a direct quote?
I posted a suggestion earlier in this thread:
I think the best suggestion I’ve seen so far, from Bruce Schniener’s guest post at Making Light, is to switch Hugo nominations to a Single transferable vote system. It would make it easy for slate voting groups to get a single person nominated, but much harder for them to get each subsequent person nominated. So everyone has a voice, but it wouldn’t be possible for an organized minority to use a slate to push all other nominees out of the running for the Hugo.
It’s already the case that there are such prizes; I can think of two offhand, both of which are perfectly respectable. There’s the Triptree, an award given for the best sf/f works that do interesting things with gender, and there’s the Prometheus, an award given to the best sf/f works that incorporate libertarian ideas. (The latter one is actually given out at Worldcon, too.)
Perhaps I’m not understanding what you’re trying to tell me. That’s entirely possible.
I see newcomers/people who feel marginalized banding together to make the changes they want to make with no respect for how the group worked before they made their move. I see this as a common occurrence in open organizations. The newcomers’ tactics implement the changes that they desire. Now it’s up to the longer term members to decide how to meet the challenge.
Obviously enforcement through reputation or through peer pressure won’t work here because the newcomers/marginalized see nothing in their tactics to be ashamed of. That’s not surprising since the puppies goal is to destroy the integrity of the Hugos (or, as they see it, redirect the integrity destroyed Hugos to their favorites).
I see their goals as problematic whereas you take issue with their tactics. I understand that much. What I don’t understand is why their tactics are problematic (or, at least, MORE problematic than their objectives). I also don’t understand why slating would be objectively problematic.
That is a good suggestion. Slating will still help you get representation without destroying the entire ballot. That seems pretty fair. It also seems to legitimize slating (or at least acknowledge it). Will that be a problem for a lot of people?
Jesus Christ, George R. R. Martin just dropped the mic in his most recent post. It’s devastating.
RonF:
I think that this claim is untrue, but more to the point, it’s unclear what the mechanism of enforcement would be. Anyone can vote for anyone. How on earth would this ideological uniformity be enforced?
Let’s say that a bunch of people vote for John C. “I like to fantasize about physically assaulting the elderly and infirm” Wright. Enough that he’d be on the shortlist. By what specific method do they think he’s kept off the shortlist?
Is the entire argument really “Well, those stinking libr’ls must be cheating or we’d be winning more?” Because that’s sad.
—Myca
Jake: I’m not saying that slating is inherently problematic. I think it is problematic in these particular circumstances, in this voting system, in a vote which is intended to allow all fans* to have a say.
* ETA: Well, all fans who have a Worldcon membership.
I don’t think it will. Speaking for myself, I’d be fine with it.
Slate voting is objectionable in the current context for the reasons I outlined in my monster-long comment about the Hugos earlier this thread. If changing the rules means that slating is no longer harmful, then I won’t object to slating. I suspect a lot of people feel the same way; they don’t care deeply about the particular method of voting, but they do care deeply about a minority gaming the system to overwhelmingly control who gets nominated.
Martin may be right. But you can’t tell from his post. Martin’s idea of “debunking” doesn’t address rates.
As I read things, some folks are arguing that there has been inappropriate political influence–let’s just call it affirmative action because that’s basically what they mean although they don’t use the term.
Talking about AA is pretty straightforward: If you assume that story quality is unrelated to the group status of the author, then you end up with an assumption that a “neutral” process would produce nominees and winners at %ages that basically match submission %ages. If you have 50% white males submitting stories, you would expect 50% of them to proceed to the next step, and so on.
Martin is counting people, not percentages.
His argument is a bit like saying to a Vermont resident “what are you complaining about? Every group of twenty authors has sixteen whites, one black, one asian, and one latino. That proves there’s no discrimination against whites.” Except that actually, Vermont is so lily-white that there should, by rights, be NINETEEN white people, and only a single POC.
I don’t actually know a damn thing about the submission pool. It may be that Martin is factually correct. Be that as it may, his argument is wrong.
The SP’s central thesis seems to be that there is a body of very good writers who have produced Hugo-worthy (or at least Hugo-nomination worthy) work but whose work has not appeared on Hugo ballots because of the politics of their authors rather than the content of their work. They also claim that there are many authors who have had issues getting their work published because of their politics.
I’m not taking any position. I have not read any of the works in question and I’m not familiar with any of the people involved. I’ve only paid attention to this because I was looking over teh Hugo list in order to see what I might like to start reading and stumbled over this controversy.
However, some of the people here certainly have a lot more familiarity with who these people are. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the works that the SPs claim have, over the years, been neglected. But I figure it’s possible you are. So let me ask you – do you think those two allegations have any truth to them?
You are being much too generous to the Sad Puppies. They’re not claiming that conservative/right-wing authors are merely underrepresented; they’re claiming that they are almost entirely kept out.
Here’s Brad Torgersen, using an analogy where the political alignments of authors are like the numbers 1-6 on a dice, where you should have equal representation of all numbers like you would with dice rolls:
Sarah Hoyt (linked approvingly by Torgersen):
Larry Correia:
(See also this entire post by Torgersen.)
So, no. The claim is not disproportionate representation; the claim is, literally, SJWs are bullies who are keeping everybody else out of the nominations and have taken over the awards, preventing any dissenters from appearing in the nominations.
Brad’s wrong in the same way that Martin is wrong. His facts may or may not be true (I wouldn’t pretend to know) but the analysis is faulty.
RonF- there’s zero chance those claims are true. You might find some fleeting truth at the edges- VD is an out of the closet white supremacist so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone, somewhere had thrown one of his submissions in the trash at least once- but in general these guys continue to sell books via the same publishers as anyone else. Tor, of all outlets, publishes Wright. The “evil SJWs” are clearly doing a better job of treating these people fairly. Tor. Seriously. Wright complaining about how he’s oppressed by liberals while Tor publishes him is like when conservative whiners write New YorkTimes op eds about how the liberals never let them speak.
What is probably far more likely is that the sci fi convention going community is really socially liberal. And if you write military science fiction with conservative moral lessons, they aren’t going to like it. And regarding the more vile extremists organizing the puppies, if you write long screeds about how the natural response of a true heterosexual man to a gay man is to beat the pervert to death with an ax handle, they might straight up hate you and not read your books. So they don’t vote for you and you don’t win Hugo’s.
Of course, there’s an award reserved explicitly for libertarian science fiction you might win. Or any number of other awards you might win.
But they want a Hugo. So they need rhetorical language for why people not liking their books isn’t fair. They tried claiming the votes were rigged once, but the process is too transparent and everyone laughed at them for slandering people wildly over sour grapes. Their current narrative is that they represent “real” sci if fans, and the Hugo voters are interlopers who vote based on illegitimate political agendas rather than quality. The possibility that people don’t enjoy their books because those books don’t speak to them has to be rejected as illegitimate.
I did not say Torgersen was correct. I said that that was what he believed, and it is, and Martin’s count is sufficient to show that his belief is incorrect.
(I should also say, he doesn’t specify how people are to be divided into the various numbers; you could divide it so that 1/6 of potential authors are in bin 1, 1/6 in bin 2, etc, rather than dividing on the severity of the opinion, in which case his claim is trivially true.)
There may be some platonic version of those arguments that is actually worth discussing. But that is not the version they have put forward. And if this were merely a debate, it might be worth trying to tease out which if any of their opinions are supported by evidence. But this isn’t a debate, it’s a wrecking ball, and a wrecking ball they believe justified because of the arguments they have presented.
I’ve read the work of two of the more prominent PuppyGaters.
I read Larry Correia’s “Grimnoir Chronicles” series, and John C. Wright’s “Chronicles of Chaos” series.
I haven’t read anything my Brad Torgerson, and I’m not terribly into MilSF, so I’m not likely to. I’ve not read anything by VD, and as I’m a decent human being, I’m not likely to.
Both Correia’s work and John C. Wright’s work was entertaining, and I purchased, read, and enjoyed both series in full.
I was unable to get into Correia’s more recent Monster Hunter series – it seems to be written for gunbunnies, and while there’s a place for that, that place isn’t really my bookshelf. I haven’t tried Wright’s more recent stuff, but from what I’ve heard, his quality has declined.
So looking just at the Grimnoir Chronicles and the Chronicles of Chaos series, both series were fun, I’m glad I read both, but neither series deserved a Hugo. Neither was anything special.
I think that when they complain that their high sales numbers aren’t translating to prestigious awards, they’re discounting the possibility that there are a lot of readers like me – folks who enjoy their work, who are more than happy to give them money for their work, but who don’t consider their work particularly remarkable or noteworthy.
McDonalds sells a lot too. That shouldn’t get them a Michelin star.
Mandolin’s, “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love,” made me cry. Their work didn’t make me feel anything, particularly.
And look, ‘not being good enough for a Hugo’ isn’t an attack on their quality. I read a lot of stuff. My favorite recent series is the Necromancer Johannes Cabal series by Jonathan L. Howard. I love them. Love love love them. I wouldn’t nominate them for a Hugo either. I think that takes something more.
In George RR Martin’s post Ampersand and I linked upthread, he asks for examples of the particular works that the puppies think were overlooked or the particular authors they think have been ‘blacklisted’. So far, nobody’s been able to offer an answer.
Nor, mind you, has anyone been able to answer my question from #160 regarding the theoretical mechanism of enforcement.
The reason I keep asking about that is that some mechanisms of enforcement would be unfair (vote-tampering, some sort of central authority disqualifying your nominations on trumped-up grounds), but some would just be ‘how things work.’ It seems like what their real complaint is is that “people don’t like our work enough to vote for it!” And yeah, maybe part of why people dislike them and their work (or like them insufficiently well) is because of their political stances, but that’s just part of how things work.
So if they’re “locked out of power,” it’s the same way that, say, the Community Party USA is: They’re locked out because people do not agree with them or vote for them.
—Myca
PS: Or, on preview, what Patrick said. Because really.
Ron f;
there are plenty of good books that don’t make the ballot because that’s pretty much how life works. Due to the authors ideology? Not sure.
In an organized fashion? No. Authors are not being excluded by an organized group. Like Scalzi, I would presumably know if there was one. There isn’t.
In a vague interference pattern way? Maybe. If you piss off a lot of people, and no one wants to deal with you, then your name might not be the first that occurs to people at nomination time. If your work has explicit politics that make readers uncomfortable, that can happen too.
This functions the same way regardless of political spectrum. Benjanun Sriduangkaew is absent from awards ballots this year, at least in part due to ideology and manner of expressing it.
It’s the same phenomenon that drives any work on or off the ballot. After all, you’re looking for aesthetic overlaps in the WorldCon population. On another metric, whether and how a work is experimental will limit its audience, and therefore its nominations. “Dinosaur” was experimentally off-putting for many voters, while being seen as positively, neutrally, or even non-experimental by enough nominations to get it on the ballot. It shows up, unsurprisingly, in the low middle of the final tally.
As far as specifics?
Terry Pratchett has been brought up; he’s a great example of super fun books–but he’s a liberal, and actually has been nominated and turned those nominations down.
Ian Banks, also liberal, apparently didn’t get many nominations. He seems like he wrote good SF, so I can see where that’s frustrating, but given his political positioning, I’m not sure where the allegations of ideological descrimination fit in.
Will have to think.
Oh, I think author Eric James Stone received seriously shitty treatment because of his ideology (conservative). The work of his that won a Nebula, “The Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made,” ended up being representative of an aesthetic division (where presumably “Dinsosaur” is the other “side”) in that it was sensawunda SF, without emphasis on language or (edited to correct typo: character). However, this aesthetic difference got politicized in a truly bizarre way, and I think it only gained traction as a symbol because Eric James Stone was a conservative.
I enjoyed the story. Read as sensawunda SF, it works. Read with a literary lens, it doesn’t. I long-listed it in my recommendation list that year.
I wish the Sad Puppies would present an example of someone who writes good stuff, deserve an award, and has been kept away because of his political opinions.
I read military Sci Fi, and I have even managed to get to the end of some John Ringo and Tom Kratman. I think I deserve a medal for that. I could not do so for recent O.S.Card, or any John C.Wright, L.N.Smith, etc… I’m sorry, but even ignoring the politics, the writing is workmanlike, the attention to detail is lacking, and the science is shaky.
Now, there is awesome military Sci.Fi. out there. David Drake (his old stuff, lately he is just milking series), Joe Haldeman (all of his military stuff is solid), Frank Chadwick (How dark the world becomes, at least) , Richard Morgan, etc… And they will not get any awards, nor that many readers, because they are writing for pre-video-game-wars veterans and are pushing views that do not appeal too much to the left or to the right. They’re grim, they’re cynic, and I do not want to know how they got so bitter. But I most certainly do not think that there is conspiracy keeping them away from the awards lately… they are just niche authors. I do not know any fans of the above authors in real life. I could not get my sister, a Sci.Fi. fan, to finish even one of their books. There is no need for a conspiracy to explain their absence from the Hugos.
So, if the Sad Puppies can’t convince me, a military sci.fi. fan, I do not think they can convince too many people who do not share their politics.
Johannes Cabal is excellent. I wouldn’t pick it for a Hugo, but. I almost always disagree with the Hugo results. Unlike the puppies, I am mature enough to realize that this is because my tastes differ from others. Usually, when I look at the Hugo’s, my thoughts aren’t “did this deserve to win by my lights,” because that’s always “no.” I think, rather, “can I see where people were coming from?” And from that perspective, I could see a Cabal book getting a Hugo. I wouldn’t think people had lost their minds.
I’ve read a lot of John C Wright. And ironically, if it wasn’t for his politics, he’d be Hugo worthy. At least for a few of his books. But his politics infect his writing, deeply. Characters think and behave in strange, alien ways, because they’re being written by a strange, alien mind- a synthesis of Objectivism, Catholicism that considers the Pope a dirty hippie, men’s rights activism, more creepy sexual hang ups than you can shake a stick at, and a stridency that goes beyond militant about all of them. Wright is one of those people who conservatives think is on their side because he’s trashing liberals, and then they slowly realize just how far he takes it, and start edging uncomfortably away. Wright is to conservatism as the creepy guy who show up on campus every spring to shout epithets at sun bathing girls is to Christianity.
The results are books that are really good sometimes, but… off. Off in creepy ways. Everything’s great, and then suddenly a point of view character starts monologuing about something ridiculous, and you start realizing that he’s an authorial mouthpiece… He genuinely believes, with the certainty of a religious apologist, that his views are self evident, and everyone knows this, but chooses to argue anyways because of their wickedness and depravity. And this seeps through his writing like ichor from a Lovecraftian tome.
Which is unfortunate, because he’s a great ideas guy. And sometimes all you need to take the sci if world by storm is a great idea that really stimulates the imagination.
If feeling that way about his writing counts as political repression, I dunno what else to do. It’s how I feel.
Pesho- Haldeman already has five Hugos. And five Nebulas. And a bunch if other stuff. He’s in Hall of Fames, he’s got a Grand Masters… He’s not starved for praise. The guys medals jingle when he walks.
Morgan…. I could understand others voting for him if we’re talking Takeshi Kovacs novels. Not the other stuff though.
Sadly I note that the web address referred to by this link is broken: https://amptoons.com/blog/2010/07/16/another-right-wing-remix-the-24-types-of-progressive/
It appears that http://bobhayesonline.com/ produces some writing in an Asian language (Japanese?). I’m guessing that Bob Hayes let his domain name lapse and somebody grabbed it for some reason or another.
Do you have and/or can you post (on your own web site) the cartoon “24 Types of Progressives” for us to enjoy again?
I know about Haldeman’s Hugos. I was taking a class he was teaching when he got his last one… it was a while ago. I still think that his recent stuff is less likely to get an award. He writes for an older generation of Sci.Fi. fans, and his politics are moderate. Dallas Barr is very popular amongst my French friends. No one I know has heard of it in the US… I do not know whether it has been translated, or whether what Haldeman wrote in English was published.
Morgan’s recent stuff is still good. I may wish for less gay sex in his books, but I can live with it. It’s strange and uncomfortable, but the problem’s mine. Card, Wright… they will throw stuff that makes me think “Why the hell am I subjecting myself to this?” or “I cannot even pretend to think like this.”
The SFWA made him grand master in like… 2012?
For Wright… I know what you mean. It’s just that in between the WTF moments, he has really interesting ideas. The Orphans of Chaos series had some of the most interesting ideas I’d seen in a long time- my favorite was probably the character who could curse people by convincing the animistic spirits of the world that you had wronged him. So a fight between him and a rival warlock would involve screaming to an unseen audience about how victimized you were, and how unfair your opponents aggression was. And whoever had a better reputation and/or better argument would sway more unseen beings to their side. War by twitter storm. It was great, and the books were full of those moments. Also, um, a really creepy guys effort at writing a teenage coming of age story, complete with REALLY weird outlooks on sexuality.
Everything he writes is like that to me. So no Hugo’s for him, but I do mourn what he could write if he weren’t a nutball.
I liked The Steel Remains. I can deal with the creepy gay sex. But the angst! Oh man. I liked it in spite of the angst, not because of. Id pick the Kovacs books over that any day, particularly the first or second.
Very interesting stuff, folks. Thanks for all the responses and the effort you put into them. I didn’t pick out all the references some of you made in passing, but I get the ideas. I figured I’d get some intelligent responses here.
The distinction between “Don’t like his/her work because of their politics” and “Don’t like his/her work because of the politics expressed by the characters in the book” is worthy of focus. I can see where the former would be considered illegitimate but the latter – especially if done in a strident or otherwise (for lack of a better phrase) “non-literary” fashion (say, crammed into the plot in a contrived fashion) would put people off on voting for a particular piece of work.
I note that some people expressed being uncomfortable with gay sex in a particular author’s work. For example, Pesho @ 176: “Morgan’s recent stuff is still good. I may wish for less gay sex in his books, but I can live with it. It’s strange and uncomfortable, but the problem’s mine.” So if you are uncomfortable with gay sex – but see that as a personal problem – is that a good reason to not consider a given piece of work Hugo-worthy? And if so, would that apply to other things than gay sex, though – perhaps to particular politics?
Patrick, @ 167:
“Tor, of all outlets, publishes Wright.”
Can you explain the context here?
Myca @ 169:
“In George RR Martin’s post Ampersand and I linked upthread, he asks for examples of the particular works that the puppies think were overlooked or the particular authors they think have been ‘blacklisted’.”
Would not the answer to this for this year – at least for “particular works” – be their slate?
I don’t think so. I think their slate really just isn’t good enough get enough votes to get nominated sans gaming the system. There’s really no mechanism to blacklist works at the moment. Of course, they believe there’s some kind of conspiracy keeping them of the nomination list although they have no proof of any such thing. I’d think that the effectiveness of their slate voting would be pretty solid evidence that there’s no blacklisting or conspiracy that keeps whatever the fuck it is that binds them together from being nominated.
If they were to back off of slate voting in the future – I don’t see that as likely – it would go a long way towards showing them as being a group that wants to do something other than win a contest at any cost. They’ve pretty well proved that there’s no conspiracy keeping them from winning nominations so… what’s their objective if they continue to game the system?
RonF- the specific liberals the Puppies think are keeping them down, their personal little hate list, prominently includes certain people who edit and publish sci if at Tor. Wright is one of the worst among the Puppies. And the people keepin’ him down are publishing him, by all appearances fairly and impartially, in spite of his hateful rants.
If the evil SJWs were going to conspire against conservatives, it would happen at Evil SJW headquarters, which is Tor. And it would happen to the most strident reactionary, which is Wright. And yet he still sells words to them.
As for your other question about gay sex- personally, all I want from Hugo voters is for them to vote for things they liked the most instead of voting for a list of things someone told them to vote for, let’s be honest, many of which they haven’t read. If someone dislikes a story for gay sex and votes for something else they really liked, that’s fine. The Hugo’s are t normally a context where you vote against things. The possible nominees include thousands of books. I’m less interested in what you vote against, than what you vote for, and taste is oersomal. Though not so personal as to encompass “what vox day told me to vote for.”
I don’t mind if you voted for the dinosaurs story purely because you freakin love dinosaurs and automatically vote for anything dinosaur related. Just so long as you read it, liked it, and liked it more than anything else.
It’s fandom, not an award given by professional critics. If cat girls become “in” and next years Hugo’s go to anime erotica, as long as that was voted for with sincerity, I’ll be ok. That’s a “roll my eyes” issue, not a “you’re cheating” issue.
Tor has been listed as one of the proposed agents of blacklisting conservative writers, and fixing the awards in favor of liberals (generally) and their publishing house (specifically).
They nevertheless publish Wright.
Patrick:
As someone who doesn’t read a lot of fiction, much less science fiction or fantasy, I’m somewhat of an outsider on this issue. However, the above description of the issue seems comparable to the substance of the complaints underpinning the actions of the sad puppies. Using your terminology, they’ve chosen to break one set of social norms in order to protest the existance of another.
The main addition I suspect they would add would be that this intrinsic bias has only been openly acknowledged as a result of their campaign. Now that it has been acknowledged, I would think the question of whether such a bias is appropriate ought to be as important to the community as the question of how to resolve the problems with slating.
Myca:
To flip this around a bit, can anyone provide examples of particular works for this year that are clearly more deserving that the actual nominees?
Desipis- so you view “I am not the target audience of this work, it appeals to interests that are not mine, so I like other things more” as inherent bias?
Patrick, that would depend on whether the purpose of the award is based on high-minded assessments of quality or base popularism.
I’m behind on my reading of real SF for the year (well, decade), but the two books I’ve seen mentioned most (and mentioned even before this snafu, by the way, not just in response to it) are the novel The Three-Body Problem and, as Amp mentioned at #121, the second volume of a Heinlein biography. The Heinlein biography in particular is odd because it seems right up the alley of the people who put together the slate; they’ve said they simply forgot about it, which is, y’know, one reason slates at the nomination stage are stupid.
EDIT: That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of works that were better than the nominated works in the other categories–merely that those two omissions were so glaring that I’ve seen lots of people comment on them.
Desipis- that’s easily resolved. It’s a fan award voted on by convention goers. Dr Who gets about three nomination in the top five for dramatics every year. It is populism.
Patrick, that would seem to be at odds with what a lot of other people are claiming in this thread. If it is simply a popularist award, on what basis can one claim that the works that have received sufficient votes, are works of insufficient quality to be deserving of nominiation?
Because the works were not nominated based on having been popular among Worldcon members; they were nominated based on an organized minority gaming the voting system.
Regarding works that they say haven’t been able to succeed at the Hugo awards because of the horrible SJW cabal, Brad Torgersen, one of the three lead organizers of Puppyness, wrote:
Of course, The Avengers won a Hugo award the year it came out.
I think that all you need to know about Torgersen, Correia, and Vox is that the Puppies has been a thing for several years now, and they organize it, and it nominates all three of them for awards. Weird how that works. I’m sure it’s a coincidence.
Despises, look at the nebula short list for one.
RonF:
The distinction between “Don’t like his/her work because of their politics” and “Don’t like his/her work because of the politics expressed by the characters in the book” is worthy of focus. I can see where the former would be considered illegitimate but the latter – especially if done in a strident or otherwise (for lack of a better phrase) “non-literary” fashion (say, crammed into the plot in a contrived fashion) would put people off on voting for a particular piece of work.
I’ve come across examples where I agree with the author’s politics but found their insertion in the book really annoying. Example: “Old Man’s War” by John Scalzi. I actually agree with a much of the politics expressed in the book, and I like Scalzi as a blogger, but I still found the inclusion of characters who were basically there to represent a particular viewpoint/type of person for Scalzi to take a sledgehammer to really annoying. (It’s his first novel and the only one I’ve read, so part of me feels like I should give him another chance, but part of me feels like my to-read list is so long that it doesn’t make sense to give second chances.)
I note that some people expressed being uncomfortable with gay sex in a particular author’s work. For example, Pesho @ 176: “Morgan’s recent stuff is still good. I may wish for less gay sex in his books, but I can live with it. It’s strange and uncomfortable, but the problem’s mine.” So if you are uncomfortable with gay sex – but see that as a personal problem – is that a good reason to not consider a given piece of work Hugo-worthy? And if so, would that apply to other things than gay sex, though – perhaps to particular politics?
I think the key phrase is “see that as a personal problem”. I’d look at it from a meta level–do you think your distaste is irrational and silly, or that you’re focusing on something trivial or superficial?
At a less meta level, I do personally think rejecting a book just for its politics or just because it includes sex I don’t like, if it’s otherwise a good book, is superficial, so I would try not to do it… within reason. But if there’s not much to the book besides those things, that’s a different story–“fits in a few pages of good plot between the sex scenes” is different from “an awesome book that has a few pages of sex I’m not interested in”.
Speaking of military SF, has anyone read any Myke Cole books? They’re on my to-read list, but haven’t gotten to them yet. He’s interesting and entertaining at the panels I’ve seen him on. (He’s a regular panelist at Boskone.)
With the “fits in a few pages of good plot between the sex scenes” bit, I guess I’m mostly thinking of my husband’s rants about how Anita Blake used to be a good series, back when it was more mystery and less erotica. (Erotica that’s not exactly tailored to him as an audience…)
Over here, a brave soul is reading and reviewing the works on the *Puppy slate.
Honestly, the more that I read a lot of the stuff on other sites than this blog, the more that I switch from mostly thinking that the puppies are a bunch of PITA folks to thinking that the anti-puppy group is significantly staffed by utterly self-righteous twits.
Primarily that is because
a) This is a freakin’ slate for Hugo voters. There is nothing inherently offensive about it. Yet it’s being treated like Gamergate.
b) the anti-puppy folks are tarring folks with a lot of nasty brushes. They’re racist (sure, some of them are like VD, but not most) and they aren’t too careful. And this is not equivalent to being tarred with a “too liberal” brush.
c) the anti-puppy folks are simultaneously talking about the politics of authors and also, interestingly enough, aparently claiming that the politics of the authors are irrelevant.
d) the anti-puppy folks are not precisely denying that there’s AA in the sci-fi community, but seem to be doing their darndest to conflate “we are actively enacting AA to try to change the face of science fiction” and “the face of science fiction just so happens to be changing, due to public demand.” Which is a convenient way of refusing to engage with the main underlying puppy argument while simultaneously denying that there is one.
e) the anti-puppy folks are seemingly denying that there should be voting influence while also, it seems, st least tacitly acknowledging that there was influence, presumably the “right” kind by the “right” people, beforehand.
Not friendly stuff. Not nice stuff. Not magnanimous-loser-for-a-year-who-will-fight-back-in-the-future stuff. Mostly, the word which comes to mind is “snotty.”
Like, the guy Myca approvingly linked to? Comes across like a total asshole.
Jake @ 179:
That doesn’t mean that their slate isn’t their answer to the question “Where are the examples of works [the SPs] think have been overlooked because of their author’s politics.” You may not think it’s a good answer, or a deserving answer, but that doesn’t mean it’s not their answer. The charge was that they were asked that question and haven’t answered it. It seems to me that they have.
Patrick @ 180:
One would wonder how many of the Hugo voters this describes – both those voting for the SP slate and those NOT voting for the SP slate.
Myca @ 194:
Why would someone reading the works on the SP’s slate be characterized as a “brave soul”?
Because, by all accounts (including accounts from people who are fans of John C. Wright’s previous works) much of the slate is deeply, deeply, shitty.
They’re a ‘brave soul’ the same way someone deciding to do a Michael Bay Transformers movie marathon is a brave soul. I wasn’t implying that they’d be harassed or anything.
—Myca
That there is a slate IS THE ISSUE. If you have an argument for why gaming the Hugo vote with a slate is not objectionable, then make the argument. But just to say “there is nothing inherently offensive about it” is just hand-waving away what is (imo) the most important anti-puppy argument.
b1) The double-standard in this statement is ridiculous. When it comes to the “anti-puppy folks,” you refer to the group as a single coherent mass, with no nuances at all. Yet what you criticize us for is that, in your view, we discuss the puppies without noticing the nuanced distinction between Vox and others.
b2) In any large group that is joined merely by posting agreement on the internet, of course there will be people making mean comments on both sides. That’s inevitable, because there’s no mechanism by which I can prevent some random person on reddit from blasting the puppies. In contrast, if a group is actually being LED by someone like VD- and VD is undeniably a puppy leader, and (in terms of impact on the Hugo ballot) the most important leader – I think that’s a fairer basis for criticism. (Analogy: You can’t prevent a random racist from arguing for your political candidate on the internet, but you can choose not to actively support David Duke’s political party.)
c1) This seems to be a “how dare the anti-puppy folks fail to be the borg!” argument. Given that there are hundreds (thousands?) making anti-puppy arguments, of course there are contradictions.
c2) Also, it’s not necessarily a contradiction. I can both talk about the over-the-top racism, homophobia, and misogyny of a couple of the puppy leaders, AND say that the quality of the works they’ve nominated is often substandard, AND say that slate voting is the real problem, without contradicting myself. There is no requirement that I talk only about what I consider to be the most important issue and ignore all sub-issues.
d1) “Not precisely denying” is an amazingly empty criticism. What does even “AA” mean in this context? And why have you moved the goalposts from talking about the Hugo Awards to talking about “the face of science fiction”?
d2) The “main underlying puppy argument” doesn’t exist – the puppies, including their leaders, have made multiple overlapping arguments. Presumably they’d say that there are multiple arguments leading to a common conclusion, and that’s reasonable – but it’s unfair to claim that they have a singular “main underlying argument” without providing a specific claim as to what the heck that argument IS.
The argument I’ve seen a lot from many puppies is that there is a cabal of “SJWs” who have, in years past, have succeeded in fixing the Hugo nomination process to lock right-wing voices out (a claim that is empirically false). But I’ve also seen Larry C. argue (in his response to GRRM) that their main point was that the Hugos represent only Worldcon members and not all of fandom (something which has been publicly acknowledged for decades, and amounts to “we burned down the Hugos because we don’t like that sometimes people use hyperbole”).
d3) Has there been a concerted effort among some people in the field to encourage and foster the careers of new writers who will make the field more diverse? Yes, of course. This is something that people have talked about a lot in public. Does that mean that there’s no demand for more diverse voices among the public? No, of course not; there is no contradiction between these two things, and the book sales of authors like NK Jeminson (who posted at “Alas” long ago, btw) show that there is indeed a buying public for good authors writing from a non-whitemale perspective. Finally, are the claims “we are trying to foster diversity in the field as a whole” and “there was no secret cabal keeping conservatives/Christians/straight white men out of being nominated for or winning Hugos” contradictory? No, they are not contradictory in any way.
e1) You’re using the words “presumably” and “tacitly” to imply baseless accusations that you don’t provide any evidence for. That’s odious. You might respond “anti-puppies have said ugly stuff too,” but that doesn’t make you doing it okay.
e2) Analogy to elections: I think it’s wrong for politicians to accept large campaign contributions from people who have a direct financial interest in what legislation passes. But this sort of thing is inevitable (at least, unless we switch to 100% publicly funded elections), and I don’t think it makes sense for either side to unilaterally disarm by not making donations. So I guess you could say that I am “tacitly acknowledging” that there is “influence.”
I also think it’s wrong for politicians to accept bribes as a quid pro quo for supporting a particular piece of legislation.
If someone is bribing politicians in a quid pro quo manner, it is not hypocritical for me to object to this, even though I tacitly acknowledge that influence exists in the system. Moral consistency doesn’t require me to accept extreme and over-the-top forms of vote-fixing merely because I acknowledge that other, milder forms of influence are probably inevitable.
(To be clear: taking bribes is illegal while slate voting is not against the Hugo rules. That’s a difference, but not one that undermines my argument. The point is, if someone destroys Doc Brown’s garage by turning the speakers up to 11, it’s no excuse to say “but other people had already turned the speakers up from 0 to 3.”)
Before this year, there is no example of a large group of Hugo nomination voters, all voting in unison for an identical slate.
(If such a thing had ever happened, it would be easy to show in hindsight – the Hugo folks release detailed statistics about the vote each year, after the awards are announced. When the numbers for this year are released, they will look statistically very different than any prior year.)
I mean, as much as I enjoy being called a self-righteous twit of a Monday afternoon, a couple of responses:
Well, it’s in a context where something as simple as listing your own eligible works from the previous year–just to remind people what you wrote, without pointing to Hugo nominations at all–is considered suspect by some non-negligible fraction of the voters. But even so, it was a successful attempt to game the system based on a dislike and suspicion of the people who currently participate in it. You can tell it’s not just the fact that they made a slate, because this is the third year it’s been done, and while people complained about it in the past it was nothing of this volume. It was against community standards, and the community is responding.
As for comparisons to GamerGate, as far as I’m concerned, if they didn’t want those comparisons to be made, then the leaders should not have actively courted GamerGate figures to help them out (while drawing the comparison to GamerGate tactics themselves).
Again: there are community-approved and community-disapproved methods of changing people’s minds. Promoting works you like and trying to convince people that your values are important is fine. Those methods were available to the Puppies and they didn’t take them. They chose to cheat instead. Which gets down to…
Sorry, are you arguing that a community can’t have standards for itself? Because it sure sounds like you are saying that, what with putting quotes around the “right” kind. And as far as those right kinds were concerned, no, it wasn’t limited to the “right” kinds of people, whoever those are.
If you meant something more sinister than this–if you meant that there was actual voting pressure, not just conversations about what’s award-worthy and what direction the field should take–then I’ll need some citations on that. I’m having trouble here, because that seems like an unrealistic thing to believe, and yet I can’t account for your outrage if you meant something else.
About 300 people banded together and managed to control 70+% of a ballot nominated by 2100+ people, for a major honor granted by and to a small but passionate community. If you consider only the categories where they nominated anything, those 300 controlled 75+%. The news came out like a week ago. Yes, it’s totally shocking that people are still pissed about this.