How a Slate Distorts the Nomination Process Part II

[catsittingstill]

I went through the post at Torgersen's blog where he solicited suggestions from his readers for what works to put on the Sad Puppy III Slate.

41 people suggested, among them, 35 books (and quite a few other things, but I haven't analyzed the other fields yet.) The most popular books got 3 "nominations" each--there were four of these. Then there were four more books that got 2 nominations each. And the remaining 27 got one nomination each.

So in a group of Sad Puppies--whose tastes might reasonably be expected to overlap--the most popular works were getting less than 10% of the vote. More than two thirds of the works were only getting one vote each.

This is what I mean when I talk about normal nominations being thinly spread over a large group.

Brad curated these into a list of only five books--and those books go from less than 10% of the vote to something close to 100% of the vote.

*That* is what a slate does. It multiplies your nominating power by ten or twelve.

In addition to the Sad Puppies Slate, there was also a Rabid Puppies slate, run by their friend and fellow conservative Vox Day. I disregarded this slate in the past because Vox Day could only drum up about 70 nominations last year even with the Sad Puppies helping, so I assumed since he wasn't on the Sad Puppy slate this year he wouldn't play a big role.

I suspect he thought so too; the rumor is that he invited the Gamergators in. I can tell you for a fact that he claims to be one of their leaders--I saw him do that over at File 770. I thought he was exaggerating to make himself look bigger, but looking at how well the Rabid Puppy slate did in the Hugo Nominations, it's certainly plausible that he invited outsiders in, and the Puppies have a lot in common with GG. Again, voting a slate, you have ten times the voting power; he wouldn't have had to attract more than a couple of hundred people.

This is why, despite the Sad and Rabid Puppies being a relatively small portion of the Hugo Nominating public, they were basically able to shut the rest of us completely out of the nominations for

Best Novella
Best Novelette
Best Short Story
Best Related Work
Best Editor Short Form
Best Editor Long Form

There is only one non-Puppy nominee for

Best Fanzine
Best Fan Writer
Best Professional Artist
Campbell Award (not a Hugo)

and two non-Puppy nominees for

Best Novel
Best Fancast
Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form
Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form

There are three non-Puppy nominees for

Best Semi-Prozine

And four for

Best Graphic Story

The Best Fan Artist category appears to be entirely clean.

I don't know about you, but I was not put on this earth to be a patsy for the Puppies, meekly choosing which of their favorites to crown the "best."

This is the situation that No Award was invented for. I intend to at least start reading everything (I need to decide on that coveted sixth place slot), but anything on a slate will be going below No Award.

I joke about "that perennial scrappy contender "No Award"" but this really might be her year to take home, not one Hugo, but several.

I am too tired to type out all the names. File 770 has several collations; "nominees not on any slate" is the last before the comments

[later edit] For those coming in from nwhyte's journal, there are other parts to this essay. Part 1 is here: "A slate distorts what people read" and Part 3 is here "A slate shuts out works the slate-makers didn't know about." [/later edit]

Comments

[markbernstein56]

There's one thing you should be aware of. If you put a work after No Award, and No Award is eliminated, that work will get your vote. If you don't want something to get any consideration at all, don't put it on the ballot.

[catsittingstill]

Longtime Hugo Administrator Kevin Sandlee explained this to me.

Anything you rank below No Award *cannot* help that thing win over anything you rank above No Award, because the final step of the vote counting is comparison of Thing X to No Award on all ballots, and at that stage, being below No Award on your ballot counts as one vote against Thing X--and failing that vote means No Award is given.

What ranking things below No Award *does* do, is help "meh" win over "OMG Who Let THAT in here?" if everything you ranked above No Award, *and* No Award, are off the table no matter what.

[markbernstein56]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks.

[mneme]

Yep. Ranking something below No Award on you ballot does potentially help it win over something you ranked even lower, but only that, because your vote cannot go to it until everything above it is eliminated (and the No Award test still guarantees that if 50% of the voters put something below No Award, it cannot win even if by some quirk of elimination it ends up on top).

The actual occasion mistake people make is to try to vote negatively while not expressing a positive preference, ie:

Category I know nothing about:
1. No Award.
2. Thing I hate second most.
3. Thing I hate most.

The problem with this is that everything you leave off your ballot is always considered to have been ranked below everything you ranked. So in the above situation, if there was a thing you didn't despise, you are, in fact, helping the things you hate beat the thing you were only meh about.

This is a key thing because this is a specific quirk of the SPV system. It's entirely possible to have a voting system that only cared about relative ranking within your ballot --where things you didn't know anything about neither gained nor lost to your ballot (this is very useful when you expect that most voters will only read/play a subset of your nominees). However, that's not what SPV does.

[randwolf]

On the night before the results of the ballot were announced, I saw Vox Day exhorting the Gamergaters on Twitter. (Wish I'd gotten a screencap) So, yes, he did.

I am wondering if the slate voters were primarily Gamergaters or fans with some interest in the field. Just who or what is the enemy here?

[catsittingstill]

I suspect a mix in both cases, with the Sad Puppies having more people who regularly read SFF for fun than the Rabid Puppies.

It's perfectly possible to read SFF for fun and be unhappy with past Hugo winners and nominees. It's a big field, with plenty for people whose tastes differ from those of most Hugo voters.

Such people are only my "enemies" when they vote a slate, because slates are unfair. If they separately voted their honest preferences, more power to them. You'll be able to tell those people, because they'll be saying what works they loved and why they loved them, and everyone's picks and reasons will be different.

[randwolf]

Knowing the mix is important to political strategy. Honest conservatives we can hope to persuade; thugs have to be fought. I don't want to be attacking people who might otherwise be our allies against the thugs.

[randwolf]

Second thoughts: I am not sure how much slate voting from honest voters we actually had, though. Are slates a problem because they persuade honest but naïve voters, or as a rallying point for the thugs?

This needs more thinking. Later. I need to get back to work.

[catsittingstill]

Check out my previous post about how a slate distorts the nominating even when people read everything on it and only nominate slate works if they honestly liked them best.

They work for both.

[randwolf]

I'm pretty sure the "crowding out of readers time" effect you describe is less than the entire slate. I don't think the honest conservatives would actually read everything on the SP ballot; the work mostly isn't very good. After one or two really awful stories, they might just give up on the slate, or just glance at the others. Partisans (yellow puppy Hugo voters?), on the other hand, would just vote the slate. My guess is that the partisans are the ones who swung the nominating ballot.

[randwolf]

Rephrasing that, I wonder, really, if the slate's influence over the conservative fans was the problem here, if the slate was effective largely as a rallying point for the thugs, (added) or some balanced mix of those? Is there any method you can think of which could determine that?

[catsittingstill]

Nothing reliable.

Some percentage of the increase in Puppy nominators this time over last time is thugs. Vox Day is more likely to attract thugs than others, so I'd look at increase in nominations for RP vs SP nominees. But exactly how much? I don't know how to sort that.

[randwolf]

We might be able to look at the proportion of Vox Day and Wright nominations over general SP nominations; I'm not sure how much of the nomination data is made public.

BTW, we are on Breitbart again. I wonder if Beale wrote the article.

[catsittingstill]

I don't read Breitbart; it drains intelligence, and I might not make the fortitude save to recover it.

Numbers source?

[jvjr.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the analysis but I think it would be useful to cite the post directly (at least non-clickable / through a redirect service if you think it warranted); am I right it was bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/announcing-sad-puppies-3/ (150 comments)?

Re: Numbers source?

[catsittingstill]

You are right; I was just being lazy. My bad.

It was the post you mention, and it can be found here on Brad's blog.