Author Topic: 2015 Hugo Awards Possible Tampering  (Read 6916 times)

Gamercow

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on: April 09, 2015, 07:03:48 PM
I've been trying to think of a way to talk about what is going on with the 2015 Hugo awards, but I'm just going to post as neutrally as I can, and let things fall where they may. If this has been talked about somewhere else, let me know and remove this thread.  If this has been discussed in the actual intro/outro to any episodes, please indicate, and I will listen.  I'm still catching up.  ;D

There was a movement among anti-liberal groups on the internet to stuff the ballot box of the Hugos to promote anti-liberal authors and their works in "retaliation" to what they perceived as the liberal elite effectively blocking any authors who were not LBGTQ, or did not have LBGTQ representation in their stories from the Hugos.  This movement was called Sad Puppies, and it succeeded.  Many accounts were made, and many votes were cast without the voters ever even reading word one of the works they were promoting.  Many of the works are by authors who have traditionally conservative views, and many people are upset about this.

Defenders of the Sad Puppies movement state that if the "other side" wanted to avoid this, they just needed to drum up more support for their preferred author, and that their movement was, at its base, a movement to show how broken the Hugo Awards system is.  They refer to voting campaigns by authors such as John Scalzi, and claim that their movement was no different.  The Hugos have always been basically a popularity contest, often won by either authors that voters recognize, authors that have put together the best publicity campaign, or authors that have certain cache with the voting population.

I'm wondering how Escape Artists, an organization that has been outwardly progressive both in the past and recently, will be dealing with this situation come Hugo Month, considering some of the entries in the Short Story category are written by some allegedly ballot stuffed authors. 

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Talia

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Reply #1 on: April 09, 2015, 07:15:31 PM
Yeah this whole affair is pretty disheartening, for reasons that go way behind one's perceived political leanings (pretty sure integrity is something prized by almost everyone... note the "almost").

A few alternate ideas are being discussed. :)

I might be tempted to rename it to Happy Joyful Puppies of Kindness month, but that's just me. :p



matweller

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Reply #2 on: April 10, 2015, 02:06:34 AM
Happy Joyful Puppies of Kindness
I want Norm Sherman & Phil Rossi to form a band, preferably allowing me to perform all of the non-traditional percussion instruments, I want them to name it Happy Joyful Puppies of Kindness, and I want it to perform at the next non-Indiana GEN-CON on a stage that looks like a giant gay wedding cake. Somebody make this happen.



adrianh

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Reply #3 on: April 10, 2015, 08:36:19 AM
I'd personally say "Tampering" is not quite the right word since it has an edge of "breaking the rules" to it. This is 100% within the rules, just the letter not the spirit.

The sad thing is that it's going to be hard to walk the Hugos back to be about the words rather than… whatever it is the SP folk think they want. Especially since it takes two years for the Hugo rules to be changed so we'll have the same issue next year. Because reading the various rants from the SP folk it seems to be more about the folk they don't like losing than anything else so they're gonna grief the awards whatever happens.

And it's really a small minority of registered votes that have caused it — but because of how the nominations are structured that minority can control the slate.

And I'm personally torn over how I'm gonna vote. Unlike last year's campaign some of the works on the slate are actually readable/watchable. But the fact that SP had a specific slate means that some of those works have likely pushed out other things that I liked more. For example (and rather ironically considering SPs supposed beliefs) the rather excellent biography of Heinlein by William Patterson Jr has been knocked off the related works awards by some complete dreck.

Butcher's "Skin Game" is on the novel shortlist coz of SP. And it's a fun book that I enjoyed greatly… and it may well have been on the slate anyway this year. But is voting for it going to encourage the idiots more for next time around (it probably won't be my first choice — I liked Ancillary Justice more — but would otherwise probably have been my second or third, depending on what Goblin Emperor is like).

But even ignoring the edge cases I'm gonna be using "No Award" for the first time this year, because a bunch of the SP slate is unreadable tosh for me.

I'm gonna be interested in with EP does for Hugo month this year. I don't envy the editorial folks decision ;-)
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 08:52:48 AM by adrianh »



adrianh

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Reply #4 on: April 10, 2015, 08:50:33 AM
They refer to voting campaigns by authors such as John Scalzi, and claim that their movement was no different.  

This is one of the many, at best, misrepresentations by the SP folk. Scalzi (and other authors) have had open threads on their blogs for folk who are able to be Hugo nominated to talk about their work. So basically popular authors giving a broader audience to all the Hugo eligible works out there. Without any recommendations for voting.

This is somewhat different from them creating a fixed slate of specific stories, including their own, and engaging in an active campaign to recruit people to vote for that slate outside of the SF community. Which is what the SP folk did.

The Hugos have always been basically a popularity contest, often won by either authors that voters recognize, authors that have put together the best publicity campaign, or authors that have certain cache with the voting population.

They're voted for — of course they're a popularity contest ;-)

But I've followed the Hugos pretty closely for thirty odd years (mostly not voting I have to admit) and the only active campaign I can recall was the one over the The Wheel of Time books. Which was fans over a specific work.

And, to be honest, I wouldn't mind if the SP folks were actual fans voting over specific works. But they're not. It's a campaign to vote for an entire slate with the specific aim of excluding other works. And generally makes me rather sad.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2015, 08:57:21 AM by adrianh »



Gamercow

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Reply #5 on: April 10, 2015, 01:05:34 PM
And, to be honest, I wouldn't mind if the SP folks were actual fans voting over specific works. But they're not. It's a campaign to vote for an entire slate with the specific aim of excluding other works. And generally makes me rather sad.

You make excellent points in both of your posts.  The initial reaction that I had to the whole SP thing was anger, because it  reeked of GamerGate, a movement that did irreparable damage to the video gaming hobby, and actually caused me to seriously think about dropping the "gamer" from my tag.  I didn't want yet another thing ruined by these cretins.  My first post in this thread took me a while to write because I had to sift through about 800 words of bile to get a non-ranty point across.

But now I think I am feeling sadness, because whatever the fallout, the Hugos are changed permanently by this whole pointless avoidable fiasco.  I may not have been a fan of some of the works that have been nominated in the past, and I think some authors have more pull than others(I call it the Meryl Streep Effect) but they still were worthwhile.  Now I'm not so sure.

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Fenrix

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Reply #6 on: April 10, 2015, 01:40:15 PM
GRR Martin has been doing a blog series providing a lot of history on the subject. He brought up an interesting example of outside nomination stuffing that the Church of Scientology did for L. Ron Hubbard. Apparently their efforts netted a response of the work finishing 6th of 5.

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DKT

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Reply #7 on: April 10, 2015, 02:31:39 PM
GRRM also made the point that when the Hugos were apparently "broken" (read: prior to Sad Puppies)both Correia and Torgersen were nominated for awards.

The whole thing is a real mess, honestly. And yes, I'm annoyed that a slate is being compared to people saying "BTW, I really like these books and stories."


El Barto

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Reply #8 on: April 10, 2015, 09:12:58 PM
For those who may not have seen it, Slate recently published this article about the situation:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/04/08/_2015_hugo_awards_how_the_sad_and_rabid_puppies_took_over_the_sci_fi_nominations.html




UnfulredJohnson

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Reply #9 on: April 11, 2015, 12:12:59 AM
Lol.

Sad Puppies vs Social Justice Warriors

What a time to be alive.



eytanz

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Reply #10 on: April 11, 2015, 09:46:27 AM
Lol.

Sad Puppies vs Social Justice Warriors

What a time to be alive.

That's how the Sad Puppies like to frame it, but it's really Sad Puppies versus the rest of the SF community. Not saying that there aren't people on the progressive/SJ side that view things in equally binary terms, but the majority of people impacted by this aren't necessarily politically affiliated with anyone, they just want their favourite stories to have a chance at Hugos, and the Sad Puppies have figured out how to game the system so it's no longer democratic.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2015, 01:23:11 PM by eytanz »



SpareInch

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Reply #11 on: April 11, 2015, 01:18:26 PM
I'm just going to say in this public thread what I said when this was discussed in The Crit Group.

Any award is only worth as much as people's perception of the integrity of that award.

It seems to me that all of this can only harm the prestige of The Hugos. By doing this at all, these arseholes have simply belittled their own achievement.

Unfortunately, it also lessens the worth of every Hugo awarded for at least the next couple of years.

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wintermute

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Reply #12 on: April 11, 2015, 04:34:35 PM
Is it too early to congratulate Anne Leckie on her second Hugo?

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UnfulredJohnson

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Reply #13 on: April 11, 2015, 05:30:40 PM
Lol.

Sad Puppies vs Social Justice Warriors

What a time to be alive.

That's how the Sad Puppies like to frame it, but it's really Sad Puppies versus the rest of the SF community. Not saying that there aren't people on the progressive/SJ side that view things in equally binary terms, but the majority of people impacted by this aren't necessarily politically affiliated with anyone, they just want their favourite stories to have a chance at Hugos, and the Sad Puppies have figured out how to game the system so it's no longer democratic.

How is it not democratic, as I understand they just rounded up a load of votes for the works they wanted nominated, but maybe I'm missing something.

Also I'm not sure about this 'majority' business though. Is there anyway to know that other than counted votes? Who is the majority? I dunno. It does feel like things are pretty polarised at the moment though.



adrianh

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Reply #14 on: April 11, 2015, 06:21:36 PM
Is it too early to congratulate Anne Leckie on her second Hugo?

Dunno. I liked it, but I've heard good things about The Goblin Emperor too and that's on my to-read pile.



Scattercat

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Reply #15 on: April 11, 2015, 10:59:06 PM
Moving from pure democracy to a party-based system, perhaps.  Previously people voted for things they liked, and louder voices might have been able to influence that simply by making their preferences more visible.  Now people who did not previously care enough to vote are being actively recruited to vote for pre-set slates, largely sight-unseen.

So it's still democracy, but now we're moving toward yet another iteration of modern US culture-war party-platform style active politics, complete with entrenched groups and false binaries.  Which is probably going to have some impact on the quality of the nominations going forward.



UnfulredJohnson

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Reply #16 on: April 11, 2015, 11:27:13 PM
Well it's all out in the open now. Time to pick a side folks! Are you a conservative pig? Or a liberal pig?  :P

It will be interesting to see how it develops. The hugo has endured controversy for years I'm sure this too shall pass.



Fenrix

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Reply #17 on: April 12, 2015, 01:25:47 AM
Some interesting neutral maths heavy blog posts.

https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/how-many-puppy-votes-breaking-down-the-hugo-math/
https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/margin-of-victory-breaking-down-the-hugo-math/

My conclusion from reading these is that the field will have to open up by a huge amount, or we're stuck with a party ballot system.

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bounceswoosh

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Reply #18 on: April 26, 2015, 02:01:15 PM
Is it too early to congratulate Anne Leckie on her second Hugo?

Dunno. I liked it, but I've heard good things about The Goblin Emperor too and that's on my to-read pile.
Read it!