The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have been released and we have questions
corabuhlert.com
corabuhlert.com
This reddit post provides a lot of the missing context, specifically the top comment
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/19cvlt3/big_controve...
The 2023 WorldCon was held in China, for the first time. (It's traditionally outside North America every other year.) There were lots of Chinese-language works on the ballot, which was to be expected -- lots more Chinese-literate people attending.
The rules say that the statistics must be released within 90 days of the convention. Usually they are released the next day. This time, it went all the way to the limit, and arguably beyond.
The statistics, at a first glance, look like they have been coerced.
Several works were adjudicated to be ineligible. Some of them were plausibly inelegible, and a reason was supplied for each. (First published in a prior year, for example.) Some of them were obviously eligible, and no reason was supplied. E.g. R.F. Kuang's novel _Babel_.
The Netflix series The Sandman was ruled ineligible, both in the long form (whole series) and short form (episode 6). The rules say that the admin can choose which category to put a work in if it looks like there's a lot of support for both -- but here the admins decided to drop it from both.
Paul Weimer was dropped from the best fan writer award. No explanation.
Finally, only one member of the admin staff has answered questions at all, and he has been repeating "We acted in accordance with the constitution and the rules we had to obey" over and over again, without further explanation.
So.
All of this is pretty shameful.
I'm coming at it thinking it's their award process then who do they have to answer to except themselves and their own standards? Also that as an outsider, I don't know all the demands they're trying to satisfy, or what imperfect process they're accommodating.
Maybe I'm making too much of shameful - where this could be undesirable, unsatisfying, evidence of standards we don't like, or even cause to create a different award program, but shame is about when you know you've done something wrong and violated your own code of ethics
The authors and artists and writers and editors and production staff may feel cheated of their fair competition and possible wins.
Those are the stakeholders. The job of the admin staff -- who are volunteers -- is to administrate fairly. They are accused of failing at that.
From my original comment thread:
> I've also seen it alleged that the concom [conference committee] offered some attendees "special guest" treatment … and stole their Hugo voting rights in return, without telling them about that part of the "deal" first. (I will not cite a source on this until the attendee in question goes public.)
Zhao made enough anti CCP comments on her youtube videos breaking down Asian media represtation in media with 100,000s views. Kuang is graduate from Georgetown School of Foreign Policy.
Their background/online behaviors will inherently trigger enough folks on selection committee / slate voting factions to disqualify them on background/affliation alone. They're basically PRC sad/rabid puppies. There's nothing more that male PRC nationalists hate than diasphora Chinese women who carry water for western narratives / propaganda. PRC nationalists enjoys trolling female Chinese reporters working for western media platforms. Male skewing SFF crowd likely has large nationalist overlap since SFF is being elevated in PRC propagada. Chinese organizers likely have no problem doing some big digging in these authors backgrounds and disqualify then out of their own accord. This felt entirely predictable/inevitable.
The 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics Have Finally Been Released – And We Have Questions
This post was brought to my attention via Mastodon via HN user cstross, who posted an entire thread about this here, the initial post of which I quote:
https://wandering.shop/@cstross/111793448361231714
> Chengdu worldcon Hugo nomination statistics suggest the 2023 Hugo awards were rigged:
> [link to OP]
> I've also seen it alleged that the concom offered some attendees "special guest" treatment … and stole their Hugo voting rights in return, without telling them about that part of the "deal" first. (I will not cite a source on this until the attendee in question goes public.)
[Above repost, including my original comment, upon request via second chance pool. More info about that here:
A Comparison of Hugo Nomination Distribution Statistics
https://alpennia.com/blog/comparison-hugo-nomination-distrib...
Edit:
Even more context from the above link:
https://mrphilipslibrary.wordpress.com/2024/01/21/hugo-nomin...
which has a meta-follow-up at:
https://mrphilipslibrary.wordpress.com/2024/01/23/the-mess-d...
Science fiction awards held in China under fire for excluding authors
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/24/science-fictio...
24 points by Freak_NL, 6 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39119799
IOW, there's no surprises here.
https://alpennia.com/blog/comparison-hugo-nomination-distrib...
More info at my original thread:
There was an extensive campaign in favour of a particular faction circa 2013-17 organized by two loose groups (the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies) which in retrospect were best understood as dry runs for Gamergate, but they flopped (all they could do was rig the shortlist: but the Hugo voters are allowed to vote "no award" if they don't like the menu, and they did so with gusto until the rules could be reformed to make nomination-brigading impractical).
Gamergate kicked off between the 2nd and 3rd Sad Puppy slates and before the 1st Rabid Puppy.
That's very different than this case where there is evidence of fraudulent tabulation of votes and gross misapplication of the eligibility rules.
Where do I sign up for this monolithic Vast Right-wing Media Conspiracy? How much are the annual dues? I always get left out of these things!
2022 was a semi-normal year. https://alpennia.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public...
2015 is the worst prior year. https://alpennia.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public...
2023 has weird cliff voting. https://alpennia.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public...
(Many jokes were made that year about "Noah Ward", multi-Hugo-winning author extraordinaire...)
Pounded in the Butt by My Hugo Award Loss - Chuck Tingle
Pounded in the Butt by My Second Hugo Award Nomination - Chuck Tingle
Now, I'm one of the last people to cry "woke", but those books were awful IMO. There is no way the award went to those books based on quality (again IMO). It's not hard to imagine what other factors might have affected the outcome.
To put it another way, yes, the Hugos often recognise shit work, and have done for decades, but they do so fairly.
Not for nothing, but Jemisin is also a MacArthur fellow.
There have been sort of political or social tussles over the awards, in the "Puppies" era, in particular, with organised slate voting by one faction, and then changes to the voting process by the other. But all of that happened in full compliance with the rules, and the rules for changing the rules. It's not comparable to what seems to have happened this year.
Slating was a group of voters organizing to all vote for the same group of works (or slates).
Until 2017, nominations were evaluated by counting the number of nomination ballots that each work appeared on. A hundred people nominate a work, it scores a hundred. The thing is, there are a lot of books published every year, so there are a lot of candidates, and so nominations are quite spread out. In 2015 [2], to get to the top of the shortlist for best novel, a book needed ~400 nominations, from ~1800 ballots; for best short story, ~300 nominations, from ~1200 ballots. So if you can get together a group of 400 voters, and they all agree to nominate the same five works in each category (a slate), then you can get all of those five works onto the shortlist. 400 is not a small number, but it's no more than a third of all voters, and that third can take over the shortlist, and dominate the contest (although their nominations are quite unlikely to actually win - but it is still very annoying!).
In 2017, the system was changed, to do some sort of more proportional evaluation [3] that should reduce the power of slates. Consensus seems to be that it worked.
[1] https://www.thehugoawards.org/the-voting-system/
[2] https://chaoshorizon.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/2015hugosta...
However, when it comes to a large part of Chinese-authored publications, one cannot help unfortunately but to have sometimes a kind of a ear-scratching sensation that one is not 100% sure these aspects are really there. First, because we're absolutely flooded daily by Chinese-authored drafts, and I'm not talking about simple, small-scale research results; these are big sprawling research results, involving large datasets and lots of subjects, all coming in at a staggering rate, non-stop. We don't have enough volunteers to review these papers accurately and carefully, especially given that modern open-access journals want to have reviews (100% volunteered, without any pay, mind you) sent back in ridiculous times, like one week. And yes, many of these journals are either Chinese or managed by Chinese colleagues. So in summary we simply cannot manage to review them in time with the care that is necessary, which means that some undesirable work will invariably pass the check (statistically speaking, it will happen). One cannot also help but think that it seems unrealistic that all these research projects are being carried at such incredible pace and with so much efficiency.
One thing that compounds this problem is that papers come initially with a very low quality. Slowly they become better; you may find yourself reviewing the same paper 5 or 6 times until you get so sick of it that you have no other choice but to say, "I have nothing else to add, just publish the goddamn thing." This is not how the system was designed to work; usually, the authors (and the PhD supervisor) are supposed to work on the paper a bit before submitting, so that they don't submit a horrible thing for reviewers to work with. I think this works usually on the basis of reputation and "name", but my impression is that the Chinese authors could not care less about this. As I usually say to my local colleagues, we are supervising the Chinese PhD students (via paper reviews) without getting paid for it.
Some of the most incredible researchers and smartest people in the world are certainly Chinese and some of their research reports are just amazing. But the numbers are so staggering that invariably the classic system ends up breaking. And one cannot help but think that many of them have found optimized ways to take advantage of the system in exactly those parts were one cannot really point the finger at, because they are based on informal and subjective common-sense rules that are just expected to be there (or else the system does not work).
“The seemingly random ineligiblity is believed to be due to the affected nominees being considered politically undesirable in China, especially since two of the affected nominees, R.F. Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao, are American and Canadian Chinese respectively. However, nothing I have read by R.F. Kuang suggests that she would be overly likely to criticise the Chinese government.
…
However, if there was political influence on the Hugo ballot (and note that this is a big ‘if’ at this moment) and if Dave McCarty or Ben Yalow allowed this to happen, then fuck them and fuck Chengdu! I don’t blame any of the Chinese organisers for going along with possible political pressure, because they have to live in China and face genuine risks. But McCarty, Yalow or any other western SMOFs involved should have sounded the alarm or at the very least resigned. The Chinese government has no power over them. So shame on them, if they went along with this. Also shame on them, if they thought that burying the data would mean people wouldn’t notice the problem.
Note that this is all just theory and conjecture at this point. We don’t know for sure what happened. And this is why we need answers and an explanation and we need it now. The people who were randomly declared ineligible needs answers and the finalists who made the ballot or won also need answers, because this is tainting their nominations and wins as well, if they don’t know if they really made the ballot or won organically.”
Hugo (technically, the WSFS) held its Worldcon in Chengdu, China. There is speculation and preliminary evidence the 2023 awards were rigged.
They don't.
World science fiction conventions are autonomous and independent of one another, apart from (in theory) having to abide by the WSFS constitution. There is no permanent floating worldcon organization that oversees these events. It has worked up until now -- through 81 conventions in a variety of countries -- because everyone abided by an unspoken agreement to observe the rules.
The Chengdu concom appeared to be following the rules right up until they didn't any more and went "rules? what rules?"
Here's your brief intro to what worldcon is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldcon
(Disclaimer: I'm a three-times Hugo award winning author and the author with the most appearances on the Hugo shortlist from outside North America.)
File770 claims that Dave McCarty was "a Chengdu Worldcon vice-chair and co-head of the Hugo Awards Selection Executive Division".
Do you know if there are plans to incorporate WSFS? Seems like it could help with the issues.
Wasn't the concern that they _didn't_ abide by the WSFS constitution?
> The Chengdu concom appeared to be following the rules right up until they didn't any more and went "rules? what rules?"
Right, but WSFS then seemed to loudly proclaim that they have _no ability_ to enforce that each Worldcon obeys the rules? Which, if false, is a lie to avoid accountability, and if true demonstrates a deep level of organization ineptness.
It seems like the WSFS has fallen down either on the enforcement side, or on the contractual relationship with the Worldcoms if enforcement isn't possible.
Where are you seeing that the WSFS has loudly proclaimed that?
As far as I know, there isn't even anyone who is authorized to make statements on behalf of the WSFS with the exception of getting a resolution passed at the business meeting at Worldcon, but that doesn't happen until August.
Comments like: https://bsky.app/profile/kevinstandlee.bsky.social/post/3kjl...
> I ask again: how could you take away the license from an organization based in China? And what do you do when they tell you to get stuffed?
And:
https://bsky.app/profile/kevinstandlee.bsky.social/post/3kjj...
> The WSFS Constitution depends upon its members to abide by it. There is no external enforcement mechanism. There is no Strong Man who comes in and imposes their will upon committees. And the members have nearly always rejected anything that would make it more enforceable.
(It’s hard to point to specific links, because a lot of it is back and forth conversations that have taken place over several days)
I assume Kevin Standlee is a reasonable authority on this because of this infodump:
https://kevin-standlee.dreamwidth.org/2296661.html
> Further disclaimers: I am the current Chair of the legal entity that owns the service marks of the World Science Fiction Society (“Worldcon,” “Hugo Award,” etc.)
He is the chair of the Mark Protection Committee. The Mark Protection Committee has the power to enforce trademarks. Nothing else.
Which is why is position on the MPC is relevant, in this context. The lack of _ability_ to enforce the WSFS constitution, _threatens the validity_ of the trademark.
But, that's a good correction, that it's not a formal position of the WSFS as a body.
It's true, but your mistake is in assuming an actual organization exists.
WSFS is just a club, the membership of which consists of the paying members of the current worldcon. The WSFS constitution is a set of rules for the WSFS business meeting which handles stuff like the bidding process for the next-but-one worldcon, and running running the Hugo awards. But there's no continuity of WSFS membership or governance from one worldcon to another except insofar as some people may be members of two or more consecutive worldcons.
It worked for 80 consecutive worldcons, then broke when it ran up against folks who didn't abide by the norms of behaviour that the rules presuppose.
Basically, "the WSFS rules presume norms of behavior" may not be compatible with "holding a trademark". If that's the case, it could mean other non-worldcon entities could put on their own "Hugo Awards".