Hugo Awards - how much shilling is OK?
Apr. 22nd, 2014 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackEvery sort of award has biases. With an award like the hugos, if you accept it as a popular award, the question seems to be, where is the right balance between favouring books which some people like a lot, and favouring books which everyone likes a little?
I don't know about the politics, but the current balance seems about right. It doesn't always produce the right answer, but it's not usually obviously wrong. The thing people fear is people signing up (especially with a supporting membership) in order to vote for a particular book. I agree this is a risk, and if it happens it has a tendency to destroy the system (because we already have a way of measuring "which book has the most fans" and that's how many people buy it, and that's not what the hugos are supposed to be about).
However, it seems this mostly doesn't happen yet, so if not we should probably go on with the status quo until it definitely becomes a problem.
So, what's the right amount of self-promotion without running into this sort of problem? I think authors announcing which of their books are eligible is clearly a good thing: if I'm eligible to nominate, I won't nominate a book just because the author says so, but if I liked it but didn't remember it might be eligible, I can do so. I think some people are unfairly criticised for this.
I felt Brandon Sanderson was a little too close to the wire in pointing out WOT was eligible, but at the same time reminding people they could buy a supporting membership in order to nominate. That seemed to come a little too close to suggesting that people should get a membership if they wouldn't have otherwise. However, he also wrote a blog post, exhorting people *not* to sign up specifically to vote for WoT, which is a good thing.
Some people have proposed a slate of recommended votes in each category, and urged people to buy a membership. With something of a suggestion you might just enter those votes without really having read any of the other entries. That seems harmful to the process: in small doses it does no harm, but if it becomes common it skews the award to "who can get the most people to sign up", which destroys either the usefulness of the award, or forces worldcon to stop allowing supporting memberships. That's bad for everyone, so no-one should do it.
I don't know about the politics, but the current balance seems about right. It doesn't always produce the right answer, but it's not usually obviously wrong. The thing people fear is people signing up (especially with a supporting membership) in order to vote for a particular book. I agree this is a risk, and if it happens it has a tendency to destroy the system (because we already have a way of measuring "which book has the most fans" and that's how many people buy it, and that's not what the hugos are supposed to be about).
However, it seems this mostly doesn't happen yet, so if not we should probably go on with the status quo until it definitely becomes a problem.
So, what's the right amount of self-promotion without running into this sort of problem? I think authors announcing which of their books are eligible is clearly a good thing: if I'm eligible to nominate, I won't nominate a book just because the author says so, but if I liked it but didn't remember it might be eligible, I can do so. I think some people are unfairly criticised for this.
I felt Brandon Sanderson was a little too close to the wire in pointing out WOT was eligible, but at the same time reminding people they could buy a supporting membership in order to nominate. That seemed to come a little too close to suggesting that people should get a membership if they wouldn't have otherwise. However, he also wrote a blog post, exhorting people *not* to sign up specifically to vote for WoT, which is a good thing.
Some people have proposed a slate of recommended votes in each category, and urged people to buy a membership. With something of a suggestion you might just enter those votes without really having read any of the other entries. That seems harmful to the process: in small doses it does no harm, but if it becomes common it skews the award to "who can get the most people to sign up", which destroys either the usefulness of the award, or forces worldcon to stop allowing supporting memberships. That's bad for everyone, so no-one should do it.