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This is the biggest part of the drama that of course western reporting/conversation will ignore - people think the organizers biased the selection to be pro PRC

This is the biggest part of the drama that of course western reporting/conversation will ignore - people think the organizers biased the selection to be pro PRC, when they are massively rigged against PRC titles that would have won via PRC community slate voting, which as far as Hugos (and past Hugo dramas) go, is a legitimate tactic. Excluding these western authors likely wouldn't even have mattered since PRC scifi community already voted for Chinese titles to win. PRC fans getting great intro to democracy / (dis)enfranchisement. But I guess they're used to that.

15457345234 3y ago
Giving both sides a bone to chew on The Chinese side can say 'ahhhh Sinophobia, they dropped all the Chinese books because they're afraid of China' The Western side can say 'ahhhh censorship, they dropped all the Chinese books because they're afraid of China' How marvellous!
aardvark179 3y ago
Oh it won’t be ignored. The EPH voting system is designed to make slates hard to get through, but if your slate is really popular it should still succeed, and the fact you need at least some form membership of the convention usually prevents a reasonable barrier to nomination stuffing. If the two Chinese publisher slates should have made it through then they should have made it through, and everybody could have picked through the data later and worked out if there was something else that needs to be done to stop groups nominating slates. If the votes weren’t valid then that should have been made clear and called out. There was a lot of surprise that Chinese works weren’t better represented on the ballot when the nominations were announced. As it is Dave has probably destroyed any chance we had of having a proper debate on how well the voting system works in the face of heavily voted for slates because he just made the votes disappear.

15457345234 3y ago

Giving both sides a bone to chew on The Chinese side can say 'ahhhh Sinophobia, they dropped all the Chinese books because they're afraid of China' The Western side can say 'ahhhh censorship, they dropped all the Chinese books because they're afraid of China' How marvellous!

aardvark179 3y ago

Oh it won’t be ignored. The EPH voting system is designed to make slates hard to get through, but if your slate is really popular it should still succeed, and the fact you need at least some form membership of the convention usually prevents a reasonable barrier to nomination stuffing. If the two Chinese publisher slates should have made it through then they should have made it through, and everybody could have picked through the data later and worked out if there was something else that needs to be done to stop groups nominating slates. If the votes weren’t valid then that should have been made clear and called out. There was a lot of surprise that Chinese works weren’t better represented on the ballot when the nominations were announced. As it is Dave has probably destroyed any chance we had of having a proper debate on how well the voting system works in the face of heavily voted for slates because he just made the votes disappear.