Foolishly jumping into the Hugos mishegas

[ianrandalstrock]

I told myself I wasn't going to get involved. I don't have the time or interest to argue Hugo rules. But enough of my friends are involved in the current debate that I keep hearing about it, so I have formed an opinion, which I want to share

Comments

[ext_261507]

ianrandalstrock:
>"It would make slates slightly more difficult, but not impossible. The party directs its members: "you third nominate these, you third nominate those, and you third nominate the others."

It would be 2.5 times more difficult; you'd need 2.5 different slates to drive other things off the ballot-- in the real world, of course, that means three separate slates. So each work on a party slate will only get 1/3 of the nominations it would get in the current system, where the number of nominations equals the number that wil make the ballot: the party needs to be three times larger to drive the full slate.

That's probably good enough-- the puppies (or any party) aren't a big group; merely a big ENOUGH group to drive the nominations as it's currently run, when it's easy to do so.

mikevonkorff:
>" I think that'd be a move in the wrong direction, actually. I think increasing the number of nominations per person per category is the way to go."

No, that makes the problem worse. The underlying problem is that there are too many works for voters to read them all. The more works you put on the ballot, the more voters are going to skip actually reading the nominees, and just vote on what they see on some list labelled "vote for these."

[mikevonkorff]

Aha, good point. I guess I didn't consider the difficulty of picking ten nominees (especially for some of the less "prominent" categories).

[ianrandalstrock]

Exactly. Nominate two, ten, or a hundred and fifty. Unless you're nominating a significant percentage of the eligible works, a concerted effort is always going to dominate the ballot, because their two (or five, or ten) chosen works will receive ALL of their votes, while yours will only get a random sampling of votes from all the other voters. Unless, that is, you discuss your choices and agree with your compatriots which works you'll all nominate, and voila!, you've formed another party.