[WorldCon] WSFS Main Business Meeting #3 Liveblog

WE ARE LIVE.

Liveblog will begin shortly. As usual, apologies in advance for missing/misspelled names. I will do my best to keep up!

And we have tea and coffee thanks to generous donation of lots of people. YAAAAAAAY.

1009: Business meeting is in order.

1009: Starting with Three Stage Voting and the committee report to amend.

1010: Mr Rosen gives the report. The big change is that we no longer remove rejected entry from the list of finalists. If there are rejected entries above the fifth non-rejected one. People say it’s an honor just to be nominated. If a majority of fans say that something is unworthy, they can just ban it. 3SV as it stands is not a good way for the fan community to have works that only a few people like. This amendment gives minority groups the ability to get their stuff on the ballot.

1013: Question from Ari Goldstein. To clarify, if there is a longlist of 15 and the first 10 are rejected, that means we’d have a list of 15? Yes.

1013: Dr Adams speech against. It is indeed an honor to be nominated/be a finalist unless you finish under no award. We already list the top 15 plus whatever gets more than 5%. Finalists this year who ended up under No Award and were unaware of the situation.

1015: Motion from Kevin Standlee. Moves to call the question on the immediately pending amendment. No objection. The motion fails. 3SV will not be amended with this language (thank goodness).

1016: Colin Harris giving his opening remarks on 3SV, key points as yesterday. Committee of the whole is the best way to address this; willing to trust the voters. The appropriate rubric needs to be on the ballot. But if we’re not going to trust the voters, what’s the point of having the WSFS meeting? Re: gaming this year, once again we are looking toward the committee of the whole and let the voters judge what is appropriate. We chose up/down over the ranking of a semifinal; we don’t expect people to positively rank 15 items. It’s a way to let people

1019: Gary Blog: Wants to add a sunrise/sunset amendment. Chair notes there is already a sunset clause for every year between now and 2022. PoI: sunrise is meaningless too, since 3SV wouldn’t go into affect until 2018 anyway.

1021: Ben Yalow speech against. 3SV forces voters to make a political decision. We should be looking at the merits of works. I want to judge the works on their merits. There isn’t time as 3SV is constructed to make the decision anything but political. “I don’t want to play Vox Day’s game.”

1022: Cat Faber for; it’s very clear when you look at these works which of these was nominated for harassment and griefing purposes. It doesn’t take a long to judge that.

1023: Stephanie Sullivan against; it’s adding more negativity to our community. The best way to stop the gaming of the system is to be positive. Getting more people involved will fix this.

1025: David Dire-Bennett for; he likes Ben’s hope for less obvious politics and trusting people. Two cases last night where winners felt it necessary to comment on this is political.

1026: Mr Goldstein against; the more time pressure you’re going to create the voters, the fewer who will make the decisions. Won’t have time to make informed decisions.

1028: Dave McCarty for; we are already engaged in what 3SV is doing. We’re just forced to do it at voting time. The nomination process is not a majority vote. We’re taking small pluralities and picking the best; this is how the system is game. We can either adopt a democratic process, or we can let the administrators weight things, which I don’t think we want to do.

1029: Daniel Rego question; how much time is allocated for the rejection phase, and would there be a packet?

1029: Ms Fozard answer; one month period, no packet. The purpose of the semifinalist is to move forward the No Award phase and not the actual voting.

1030: Question about definition of eligible voters. Voters, so this current year’s membership. Not number of ballots returned, but total count of members. This sets a very high threshold for how many people have to reject work.

1031: Ms Nichols against; this can be gamed. Fan factionalism will be encouraged.

1033: Mr Bacon for; I’m a train driver. I understand 3SV. Understanding transparency is fundamental to every system. Last year was an incredible stress and pressure for the nominees and winners of the Hugo; he won the Hugo last year and he cried because of the stress. “I would much rather be a loser at any stage than undergo all this stress and pressure again.” He urges us to vote for 3SV.

1035: Mike Stern against; I’m a procrastinator, and this is another round of voting for which I can procrastinate. If I don’t have time to read the work, I’m not going to work.

1037: Mr Kovalcik for; does not believe that any one author is going to get the threshold needed to game this.

1038: Ms Bons against; need to look to the future of the Hugos. This sounds like collusion. How is this going to look in the future?

1040: We’re about out of debate time. Kevin Standlee moves to extend debate. Motion fails.

1040: Mike Willmouth against; needs data and encourages everyone else to do so.

1041: Mr Quinn moves to add language that it is the sense of the meeting that no work should be voted down for aesthetic reasons but this should be for winnowing off illegitimate nominations.

1042: Mr Standlee has a PI on the motion. Is this to be in the constitution or commentary? Into the constitution.

1044: There is no time for debate. There is some parliamentary shit going on.

1046: Okay, we have language now. “No qualifier should be voted down for purely aesthetic reasons.” The motion fails.

1047: Mr Rett wants to know why we are discussing this when we have data on it that hasn’t been discussed. Ruled as debate on the issue when debate time is out, he is out of order.

1049: “I would really like to vote on this.” — the chair. Who already needs a hug and some chocolate.

1049: Move to amend by Daniel Rigo, does not get seconded.

1050: Mr Kovalcik points out that this will be up for ratification in Helsinki so we’ll have another year to look at it.

1050: The question is called by multiple people, to the immense relief of the chair. We vote, ayes have it! Three Stage Voting will be passed on to Helsinki for ratification.

1052: WE ARE TAKING A BREAK. COLLUSION. COLLUSION ALL THE WAY DOWN!

1059: And we are back in order.

1059: Mr Standlee immediately has a parliamentary inquiry. Pointing out that should a member get a ruling from the chair he or she disagrees with, the proper thing to do is appeal the ruling of the chair.

1101: Warren Buff moves to suspend the rules and reconsider the motion to reform the YA committee with a different head. Membership would remain the same, chair would just be different. Motion passes with 2/3 majority.

1103: Now we get to EPH. BUCKLE UP KIDS. I have a fresh cup of tea, I can handle this.

1104: Mr Quinn offers a technical fix to deal with withdrawn nominations that will make things easier for the administrators. Seconded.

1106: Dr Adams PI: is this a lesser change? Yes. Ben Yalow appeals the ruling of the chair.

1110: We are in wibbly-wobbly parliamentary-warlmintary shit here. I’m catching Pokemon, tbh, as we explain in several different ways what is going on.

1112: The chair believes this is a lesser change because he believes the body last year would have accepted it. Ben Yalow believes that this an orthogonal process.

1117: Chair’s ruling is upheld. Now we are on to trying to deal with the actual amendment. Motion to call the question. We vote to close debate on the amendment. Then we vote on the amendment. The motion is amended.

1118: Kevin Standlee moves to add a renewing sunset clause until 2022, similar to the one on 3SV. Seconded. We need to move faster than we have, but it is better to give ourselves flexibility while we test this so we can get out of it now.

1119: David Wallace against; he has a different amendment to offer instead if this one is voted down. His amendment will be that every business meeting can vote to suspend EPH for a year rather than removing it from the constitution.

1121: Kate Secor with a Parliamentary Inquiry on the amendment. If we amend it during re-ratification, does that mean it would trigger two year re-ratification? Yes.

1124: Ingvar Mattson asks if this would be a lesser change. Yes. We shall vote on Kevin Standlee’s amendment.

1125: BUCKLE UP KIDS, IT’S TIME FOR A SERPENTINE!

1130: The amendment fails by three votes. Yikes.

1131: Now we’re addressing the other amendment that was offered as an alternate to Kevin’s. Mr Wallace’s.

1133: Mr Quinn tries to move to call the question. There’s been no speech against yet. Actually, no speech for yet either, so Mr Wallace gets to finish.

1136: Speech against; it’s always going to be one year too late.

1136: Mr Kronengold calls the question because he is a hero.

1137: Mr Wallace’s amendment passes. Now FINALLY we get to EPH.

1138: Motion to end debate and call the question for EPH. Vote overrules objections. We are going to vote on this without further debate on the underlying motion.

1139: Mr McCarty explaining the report in brief with unanimous consent. Gets interrupted a bunch.

1140: Mr McCarty’s report is 51 pages long and didn’t get finished until 6 in the morning which is why there are only 5 copies of it. We get it up on the screen. Here we go.

1141: In the longlist that was released last night. There would have been no change to the ballot for novel and novella. Something in novel would have been knocked off the longlist. There were nine categories that would have had 1-2 works different. It will also change things in the longlist where no slating is present. It makes unintentional changes that do have an effect. This is an incredibly unintuitive system.

1144: We as a body natively slated the dramatic presentation categories; they have been excluded from the report.

1145: Mr Olson asks to have question time with Mr Quinn and Mr McCarty without opening to debate. Yes. It’s a suspension of the rules. (Good, this is probably way more useful than debate.)

1146: EPH would have knocked a Hugo winner from LonCon off the ballot. McCarty doubts we will see an occurrence like that again, but this is very concerning.

1147: Dave we trust you, what do you recommend? That is considered debate, which has now been cut off. Questions must be limited just to the data.

1148: Dramatic presentation results were not included, but they will still be applied. Quinn and McCarty felt that they were not germane, but it is asked, aren’t they germane if they will be applied?

1149: It was mostly because there was way too much work involved.

1149: Ms Paulk asks how much work will this place on future management? Ruled as debate since not directly about the data.

1150: A committee of the whole is moved for the next five minutes. Jared explains. “Does everyone understand that? I heard one no, but I’m not going to deal with that because I don’t want to.” Someone give this poor man a drink.

1152: “Chairman, I believe you aren’t allowed to preside at this point.” “Oh goodie!” Jared appoints Mr Illingworth to run the committee of the whole and then runs for the hills.

1153: McCarty: If you have blind faith in computers, this is fine. If you want to check anything, it’s extremely difficult. This makes me very uncomfortable as an administrator.

1153: “Okay Dave, we trust you implicitly–” “That’s a bad idea.” “–What do you think?” Dave says he doesn’t like this as an administrator at all. This is an interesting voting system, but… he’s been trying very hard to not let his personal feelings affect that.

1155: McCarty feels EPH was stronger this year against weaker slating than it was last year against stronger slating.

1157: There is some stuff here about types of voting systems. Basically, no slate can fill a category entirely.

1159: I ask how easy Dave thinks this is will be to explain to voters and what this will do to the faith of voters in the system. He says he is not a PR dude, but he thinks it is very difficult. Someone else answers that you can boil it down to one slide (We going to be showing sides to potential voters?)

1200: Dramatic presentation will be the most changed category. Erk.

1204: EPH is ratified.

1205: 5 minute break MY BLADDER THANKS YOU.

1215: Meeting is back to order. We have two items left!

1215: Mr Quinn moves for resolution to thank the Hugo Administrators and Mr McCarty for staying up so late preparing the report.

1217: Mr Kovalcik moves to require the Hugo Administrators to gives us the Hugo longlist and the data for how it would look either way. (Resolution.) Mr Dashoff “We can ask for it. We can’t tell them to do anything.”

1222: Against publishing sets of data: “If this data is published people will know who should have won.”

1224: Ms Fozard, deputy admin for EPH, has no input on this because they will implement it as directed, and feels she has no standing to offer it.

1226: Ayes have it on the resolution. Next year’s Hugo Administrators are requested to run both mechanisms and report back. On to 4 and 6.

1226: Mr Goldstein moves to amend 4 and 6 to add the same suspension clause we added to EPH. Seconded.

1227: Mr Desjardins moves to change 4 to 5 (making it 5 and 6) and the chair rules that is a lesser change. He did a quick review of the 2015 and 2016 data and it would allow more non-slate works to get on when applied with EPH. Is this a good change on its own merits when the slates go away? He believes so due to the diversification of the pool of works along all axes.

1232: Ms Hayes points out that last year’s WorldCon meeting spent a lot of time picking out very specific numbers. That’s what we should be voting on, is what the previous meeting picked.

1232: Kate Paulk asks about “four equally weighted nominations” — lesser or greater change? What about the equally weighted in terms of EPH?

1235: We vote to call the question. We are now voting to the amendment that will change 4 and 6 to 5 and 6. Results unclear, WE GETTING ANOTHER SERPENTINE.

1239: Motion passes. The amendment is now 5 and 6.

1239: 5 and 6 is ratified with no one wishing to speaking against.

1240: EPH+ next.

1241: Mr Kovalcik moves to suspend the rules and adjourn Sin Die (without EPH+ being addressed). Suspension of the rules is required because we postponed EPH+ definitely to today.

1243: Nope. We are taking up EPH+.

1244: Mr Quinn moves to add the suspension clause to EPH+ as we did with EPH and 5 and 6. Motion is withdrawn when it’s pointed out that it’s unnecessary.

1244: For EPH+, Mr Quinn says the administrators already have to do all the work, this is no extra work with extra benefit.

1245: Mr McCarty against because there is no data to show right now. Please delay until Helsinki.

1246: Warren Buff has moved to call the question. We vote to call the question.

1247: Mr Kronengold wants to make a motion, which is out of order. “I don’t have words, but no.” — Mr Dashoff.

1248: Question is called. We vote on EPH+. It passes and will be up for ratification in Helsinki.

1248: Mr Wierda, the most beautiful human being who has ever walked this earth, moves that we adjourn.

1248: AND WE ARE ADJOURNED.