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

[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.