2013 WSFS Business Meeting Links
Aug. 13th, 2013 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryI have been spending a lot of time lately reading about the various proposals at this year's WSFS Business Meeting. You can read all of the proposals at the official site. On the one hand I feel a bit silly spending lots of time of this since I'm only a supporting member of Worldcon and thus won't be attending the meeting and won't be able to vote on anything. On the other hand it feels really important to me. So here are some links.
Anyways this year people are trying to do many thing to change how the Hugo's work. There is proposal to eliminate several fan awards. John Scalzi explains why this is terrible idea.
Next there is a proposal to disallow memberships that give voting rights in the Hugo's and are cheaper than the supporting membership. (Which this year was $60 but will be $40 next year.) As far as I know no one was serious considering offering such memberships in the near future. No one seems to know how such "voting membership" would work out economically. So it seems like a measure aimed at making the community less inclusive. I oppose this motion. Cheryl Morgan has some good things to say about the issue and follow up post about a sense of community that is also worth reading. As is Seanan McGuire's thoughts on the issuse.
This motion sparked some ideas about ways to keep the cost of supporting memberships down. One of these is requiring less paper. So a proposal to make paper publications opt-in is in the works.
In better news there is proposal for a YA Hugo. here is the author explaining why she proposed the award. I think I'm in favor of this. (I want the wording on the proposal cleaned up a bit, also I'm not trilled by "Youth book" though I don't have a better idea.) I have some doubts about the duel eligibility issue. However there are some fuzzy edges for categorizes already so I think we ought to be able to work something out. Anyways I think a YA award would be inclusive, and that is very good think. So it is definitely worth trying for a few years.
Anyways this year people are trying to do many thing to change how the Hugo's work. There is proposal to eliminate several fan awards. John Scalzi explains why this is terrible idea.
Next there is a proposal to disallow memberships that give voting rights in the Hugo's and are cheaper than the supporting membership. (Which this year was $60 but will be $40 next year.) As far as I know no one was serious considering offering such memberships in the near future. No one seems to know how such "voting membership" would work out economically. So it seems like a measure aimed at making the community less inclusive. I oppose this motion. Cheryl Morgan has some good things to say about the issue and follow up post about a sense of community that is also worth reading. As is Seanan McGuire's thoughts on the issuse.
This motion sparked some ideas about ways to keep the cost of supporting memberships down. One of these is requiring less paper. So a proposal to make paper publications opt-in is in the works.
In better news there is proposal for a YA Hugo. here is the author explaining why she proposed the award. I think I'm in favor of this. (I want the wording on the proposal cleaned up a bit, also I'm not trilled by "Youth book" though I don't have a better idea.) I have some doubts about the duel eligibility issue. However there are some fuzzy edges for categorizes already so I think we ought to be able to work something out. Anyways I think a YA award would be inclusive, and that is very good think. So it is definitely worth trying for a few years.
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Date: 2013-08-14 10:21 am (UTC)Yeah, I definitely thought there were problems with the membership not knowing enough about non-SFF derived YA books, but on balance it seems better to be inclusive than not. But it probably does make sense to start with a primarily YA hugo rather than pretend it recognises younger children's fiction, since any nominations will likely be swamped by ones adults have heard of.
My biggest worry is that it's unfair having to choose between YA and main hugo, but that's not really worse than the current situation. I wonder if you can have a system where it goes on both ballots, and if it wins both one of the second place is promoted. Or maybe it should just win both -- not all books are equally enjoyable for YAs and fans generally, but if they ARE, maybe they SHOULD win two awards...
As someone else pointed out, the eligibility doesn't really matter: if people want to nominate something as YA, it's probably YA by default.
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Date: 2013-08-16 01:37 am (UTC)