Voting Numbers and Prestige
September 4th, 2007 by Editors
We are getting some interesting comments in on how to improve participation in the Hugos at this post. These include:
- A prize draw for voters
- Lower cost (or free) voting
- On-site voting
These are all things that would probably increase participation, but it is perhaps worthwhile to sit back for a moment and think about what we are trying to achieve.
Some of the people calling for more participation are doing so because they think that a larger electorate would make it more likely that their favored nominees would win. In some cases this is clearly true. For example, the books that Jim Baen edited are avowedly mass market, so a wider electorate might be expected to favor Baen over Nielsen Hayden or Hartwell. But consider what might happen to Best Novel. The more people who vote, the more the Hugos will resemble the best seller lists. And that probably means a ballot full of names like Robert Jordan, Kevin J Anderson and Michael Crichton, and a long series of victories for JK Rowling. That may not be the result that people advocating greater participation are anticipating.
More generally people seem to think that a low number of voters somehow reflects badly on the prestige of the Hugos: that it means that the winners are chosen by a small and unrepresentative cabal rather than by The People. There is a view that the sheer number of people involved somehow lends authority and prestige to the results. That may indeed be so, but it that case we should be wary of doing anything that might reflect badly on the awards and diminish their prestige.
Take the prize draw, for example. It probably will encourage more people to vote. But elsewhere Francis complains that one of the problems with the Hugos is that people express an opinion on categories they know little about simply because they have the right to vote in them. Would a prize draw leave the awards open to the accusation that people were voting simply to win the prize, and didn’t care who or what they voted for?
And what about at-con voting? We know what happens with site selection, which is voted for at the convention. There are bid parties. Lots of money gets spent on them. If Hugo voting took place at-con, how long would it be before publishers started holding “Vote for our book” parties, and how soon after would nominees for Best Professional Artist or even Best Fan Writer feel obliged to follow suit. Do we really want the Hugos to be derided as the awards for the people who throw the best parties at Worldcon?
Of course these things won’t necessarily happen, but they are worth bearing in mind. Changing the Hugo rules is like making a wish: you have to be careful, because you might get what you asked for without realizing what it would entail.
And finally, as it is a related topic, here’s a post from a disappointed Kansas City supporter about how horribly undemocratic WSFS is.
>The more people who vote, the more the Hugos will resemble the best seller lists.
This strikes me as tending towards elitism, or at least wishful thinking. Do we want the the Hugos to be a popular vote (Goddam Popularity Contest (GPC)) or a peer vote awarded by people who Know What They Are Talking About and will make a careful balanced decision after considering all the eligible options.
Seems to me that the Hugos will always be a GPC, even if it is a relatively informed one. I think an astonishing number of voters are conscientious enough to make reasoned comparisons where they can, but are they a big enough percentage of your average Worldcon membership? People will always vote for their favourite author even if this year’s novel wasn’t quite as good as his best work. Or people will always vote for the one thing they have read that made the ballot. The only way to be certain of the alternative scenario is to make it a juried award. I don’t think we can have it both ways.
Re – favour-currying. If we are happy with the oft quoted comparison that the Hugos are the “SF equivalent of the Oscars”, then how do the Oscars work?
The full rules of the Oscars are available here (large PDF).
To a certain extent the Oscars are much like the Hugos, in that they are voted on by the members of a club (in this case the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). However, they do require a little more in the way of participation. For example:
“Those serving on the screening committee(s) will be required to see 80 percent of the submitted eligible films at meetings of the committee(s) or in a theatrical setting. Viewing Animated Feature Film entries on videocassette or DVD will NOT qualify a member for voting purposes in this category.”
(Their emphasis)
We get the impression that media awards often work this way. Cheryl once got into a very confusing conversation about film festival awards on John Scalzi’s blog which only resolved when it became clear that the other person thought that the Hugos were terrible awards because anyone could vote – you were not forced to prove that you are read/seen the nominees. That’s a very different attitude to the more usual “the Hugos are awful because only an elite cabal gets to vote.”
Re: “Would a prize draw leave the awards open to the accusation that people were voting simply to win the prize, and didn’t care who or what they voted for?”
Yes, of course it would. But the original question was ‘how to encourage participation?’ Not ‘how to ensure quality standards?’ no? And if you want to encourage folks to vote you have to address the ‘what’s in it for me?’ factor and overcoming voter apathy with some sort of incentive is the way forward, surely.
The eligibility criteria would still be largely limited by attendance at Worldcon – I can’t see many folks taking out the $40 supporting membership on the off-chance that their 1 in 3,000 or so number comes up and they win a bunch of signed books – so that stops it becoming too much of a best-seller list free-for-all.
But yes, any voted-for award will always be a GPC – that’s the whole essence of democracy, surely?
Maybe the Hugos should be a juried award, with the awards panel voted for by the members of the previous year’s Worldcon, on the strength of the candidates’ knowledge of the genre / published book review record / impeccable taste in literary sf / general popularity / size of beard / whatever..?
The biggest problem that I have with the Hugos is that the nomination process and final ballot process are identical, and driven by a too-small group of trufen who will seldom (if ever) look outside of familiar imprints. I’d be much happier with juried nominations, or at least an equal split between juried and popular nominations. (The Nebula system of “the jury can add one nominee” is probably the worst of both worlds… because it’s usually startlingly obvious which work it is, when it does so, which then leads to inept arguments over “elitism.”) This past year’s novel ballot is an excellent example: Three works on the final ballot didn’t belong there on merit,* and two works that should have been competitive to get onto the ballot didn’t even come close because they’re not from sources familiar to trufen.
The second biggest problem that I have with the Hugos is that nominations close too soon after the end of the eligibility period to allow adequate reflection on the whole year’s output, particularly in the longer-form categories. That’s not unique to the Hugos, though…
* By “on merit,” I mean an objectively — or at least as “objectively” as one can ever apply to literature — deep flaw, not a matter of taste. I don’t believe that a ballot should always have five/six/however many “finalists” if there aren’t enough available finalists to avoid embarassment if one of them wins.
>However, they do require a little more in the way of participation.
And that on the surface would be the sort of model that the Hugos would be chasing, wouldn’t it? It’s fairly easy though to ascertain that this criterion has been met with films – you invite the electorate to a series of screenings (complete with tempting complimentary gift bag etc), but with books it’s clearly not feasible.
So, is another option to change who can vote? Can you take away that right from those WSFS/Worldcon members who mostly just want to have a good time and weren’t going to vote anyway and transfer it instead to those who take the Hugos and voting seriously? Create another level, call it the “Hugo Voting Academy” or something, make it free to join but not limited to Worldcon membership that year, but make voting compulsory and transparent. If you rely on the serious intent and honest good will which I think we believe exists among the Hugo voters you might well end up with the prestige you’re looking for. Sort of like a big jury.
Best of both worlds or silly compromise?
I see I’ve just suggested the opposite of what C.E.Petit suggested. The trouble is, I agree with that too. There are certainly lots of Hugo-worthy books/stories/etc that don’t get noticed because they are not from major American publishers/magazines/distributors or whatever. Although I think that may be changing to a certain extent.
I think “we” should be focusing on how to get the current membership to exercise their voting rights.
How about a full page article about nominating and voting in a Denvention PR that begins:
“Don’t let Matt Ruff mock you”
Heck, make it look like a full page advertisement.
C.E. Petit: Three works on the final ballot didn’t belong there on merit.
I think plenty of people will agree with you there…but you and they will likely disagree on which are the works in question.
And that is what happens with an award with a large, diverse voting population — voters each use their own criteria to decide what is important and “best,” and those criteria often conflict with each other.
Bluntly, you’re not the king of the Hugos. Nor am I; nor is anyone. Your “objectively deep flaws” are your personal opinions, and they are precisely as valuable and important as those of any other Hugo voter. (You did vote, right?)
Mike: you are reading our minds. More on this tomorrow.
FWIW I have come up with a “cunning plan” – http://www.di2.nu/200709/05.htm
It might not increase the breadth of nominations (although I think it could do that) but I think it would increase the incentive for more people to buy supporting memberships, read the works nominated and shortlisted and then vote accordingly.
It should also help kick the ebook market…