Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

I’m coming around to the Unified Stuff-Up theory

I floated half heartedly a theory yesterday that a half-arsed attempt to fix up mistakes with the data MAY explain a lot of what we are seeing. I’m sort of saying the same thing today in a slightly bigger font. The font may get bigger over time.

Let us consider the circumstantial evidence.

  • Everything about Hugo voting and nomination in 2023 was late and difficult to use. Access to voting was spotty. We do not need to assume there were difficulties because we all saw that there were difficulties. Some of these were due to circumstances in particular the known difficulty of data exchange across the internet borders with China and the more complex nature of works in two different languages.
  • Less objectively, I had the impression from the US based members of the con committee that they were less interested in the Hugo Awards and more interested in the complexity of what was a genuinely impressive in-person convention in a newly built venue. Pulling that off in time would have been a challenge in itself and other elements of the Worldcon would have been lower priority as a result.
  • We know that the finalist results were late. We know that a set of finalists was sort of published but that it had multiple errors in it and had to be fixed up. We know therefore that this was a process that was both delayed and rushed and had QA and version control issues.
  • We know that the published nomination total was larger than the final vote total before any stats were published. This looked like an anomaly. It remains odd. (Yes, we can imagine reasons for it but it remains weird).
  • Both the final voting figures and the nomination figures were delayed being published. Both sets of data were not ready to be seen by voters in the immediate aftermath of the awards. That definitely means the stats were not in a clean state for public consumption – extra QA and tidying needed to be done which implies that the level of QA that had been done prior to the release of the finalists and the release of the winners was “only just” good enough for that purpose i.e. they got the nomination stats to a point where they could say “here are the finalists” (only just) and then later the winners were in a similar state.
  • There were admitted errors in the nomination stats when released (Turing Food Court)
  • The EPH totals are inconsistent with the vote totals (Marshall’s observation). This is a definite error. It might just be a typo in the published total but even that implies poor QA of the data even at this point.
  • I am 90% sure there are other cases of long list nominees having copy-and-paste errors based on the way EPH votes spread. I think some Chinese-language nominees have been accidentally listed as English-language nominees.
  • Many people have suggested that Dave McCarty’s responses are more than just him being unpleasant but that he is providing cover for other members of the committee. This is usually framed in terms of sinister aspects of CCP censorship which I remain sceptical of but who knows. However, Dave is covering up for mistakes made by a team that he should have been supervising more closely but didn’t – well, heck, that makes a bunch of sense to me. It is the sort of mix of self-interest and self-perceived altruism (defending one’s team) that humans do

Cons: This does not explain the “cliff”. To some extent, the accidental release of the incorrect finalist creates one issue for the hypothesis – people at the time noticed Babel wasn’t on the list, which means if it was accidentally left off initially the Hugo team did get a big hint. The theory requires a whole bunch of things to have happened and a series of attempts to deal with them with quick fixes. Maybe data was lost and so maybe that explains the Cliff in some categories.

I don’t like that it requires a whole bunch of different things to have happened but then ALL of the hypotheses/conspiracy theories I’ve seen need a whole bunch of things to have happened and THERE REALLY IS A WHOLE BUNCH of observable issues here that don’t add up to a whole (incorrect totals, the cliffs, the delays, the obfuscation and, of course, the ineligibles). What I do like is that we have a single disaster movie-like underlying cause. A ship accidentally steers near some rocks and tries to fix its course and that makes things worse etc.

Except…surely this would be less damaging for the Chengdu Worldcon to admit to than all the other things people are currently imagining? Heck, if people thought I was involved in some weird corruption involving Communist Party censorship of Neil Gaiman, I’d be loudly announcing “No, no, I’m just a complete fuck-up and messed up all the data!”. Even more so given that the “Communist Party censorship of Neil Gaiman” is looking not bat-shit crazy as a theory at the moment.

camestrosfelapton

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116 responses to “I’m coming around to the Unified Stuff-Up theory”

  1. DAta cockups might explain some of this. And it might explain the pretzel around Sandman. But, They don’t explain Xiran or Me (even if we are generous and go with data cockups for Babel). There are multiple streams to all this, if data cockup is part of the reason.the more we look at this, the weirder it gets.

    Liked by 5 people

    • They just literally left you off the list by accident and then tried to cover it up. I can’t prove that. I thought the fan writer data might reveal something that hinted at a mistake they made with your figures but I couldn’t see it. With both Babel and Xiran though, these were close decisions in the actual data, so they may have just picked the wrong winner of the two. With Sandman they may have just applied the same rule in both categories (disqualified the Long Form because of Short Form and then disqualified Short Form because of Long Form).

      You are the only one where that story doesn’t have some backing in the data though but “accidentally copied the wrong name from one file to another” is a mistake that they really did make multiple times in this process. So it is possible that is what happened with you. I know that doesn’t making it feel better and we can’t know for certain.

      Liked by 5 people

        • Perhaps that’s it then? I said elsethread that the most parsimonious explanation I can come up with for the “ineligible” rulings is worry over what winners might say at the podium. Very plausible with Kuang, Zhao, and GNeil; I just don’t know enough about your body of work and activism to speculate. And one of the most worrisome situations for a government determined to censor free expression is “spontaneous” remarks at a podium. Even if you pre-approve speeches, it’s very hard to keep people from going off-script unless you’re extremely obvious about pointing weapons at them or stationing goons in the wings to drag them off stage.

          Liked by 5 people

  2. I commented in another post that “Everything Everywhere all at Once” made the final list for BDP, Long Form, and eventually won. This, despite containing butt plug fights, lesbian characters, and not getting an official release in China except being shown the Shanghai Film Festival (presumably because of butt plug fights & lesbian characters). The inconsistencies keep mounting.

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    • EEAOW was, if I understand correctly, censored in its Chinese release (they removed the gay relationship).

      Production teams associated with film and TV historically do not show up at the Hugos and give speeches, typically.

      Authors typically do. And although Neil G’s association is with a TV show that was nominated, he most definitely does. And he has a history of doing human rights work.

      The most parsimonious explanation I can come up with that accounts for 3 of the for “ineligible” determinations has to do with fear of what someone might show up and say at the awards, as spontaneous remarks are beyond the control of censors. I don’t know how this would explain Paul’s situation as I don’t know his work, but it easily explains the other 3 in my opinion.

      Liked by 3 people

      • That would be handled easily by having only in-person speeches at the awards. China (and indeed the US, Australia and the UK) already have a neat way of stopping somebody coming to their country and “making trouble” – just don’t give them visas.

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        • Perhaps the thinking was that just declaring a work ineligible would attract less attention than having a nominee be unable to get a visa, then spend months publicly criticizing the government over it? (I’m not saying this thinking was correct.)

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      • I do remember when “Galaxy Quest” won (over “The Matrix”), the producer? and a writer? were already at the con so they accepted even though they were surprised. A panel with them was hustled up for the next day.

        But then, they are obviously Our Kind of Nerds, or they wouldn’t have made that movie.

        Also, by God, Chicago has always run good Worldcons.

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      • EEAOW was, if I understand correctly, censored in its Chinese release (they removed the gay relationship)

        Do you have a link for this? The last I had heard was that the filmmakers were quite adamant they would not allow any release with such a change, and as of last spring there had not been any official release in China, but I haven’t seen any news about it since then.

        Liked by 1 person

        • I do not! It’s entirely possible I’m contributing to the rumor mill by repeating something I’ve heard others say, which perhaps is a distortion of “they wanted to censor the gay stuff but the filmmakers didn’t authorize a release as a result.” Entirely possible.

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  4. I’m afraid you may be right. King Arthur Baking Company has generated standard things to say when your baking turns out unexpected results, two of which seem weirdly relevant here. When it looks a mess, call it “rustic”. Of course it’s supposed to smell like that!

    I’m not clear why you wouldn’t just claim a server crash with only partial backup as the reason for rustic, odoriferous data, however.

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  6. Let me make one thing perfectly clear: This data has been tampered with and falsified. Most of the things I can point to are not 100% bulletproof evidence, but enough things are impossibilities and near-impossibilities that cannot be ignored, and too many to chalk up to being merely “errors” or copy-paste mistakes. 

    I don’t know by who, at what stage, and for what motivations, but this data is absolutely illegitimate.

    Liked by 8 people

  10. Last I checked the error in the Lodestar longlist hadn’t been corrected. In the Serpent’s Wake didn’t beat itself to make the final ballot.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Definitely a case where we need to “embrace the power of AND”, I suspect. 

    By which I mean, we need to be open to the possibility that instead of just one singular cause for all the various issues, there are multiple causes, each of which may apply to some things but not others. Not just predictable first-time mistakes by a con com who are massively inexperienced in running a major awards program; not just a sinister determination by the Chinese government to avoid criticism; not just a conspiracy to fudge the data in order to get good-looking results for the local kids; not just “lost in translation” errors caused by two different groups of people who think in two different languages having to try and organise things across the language barrier – but all of these at once.

    (I work in the quality management field, and one of the things I’ve learned over the years is there’s very seldom a single cause for any major problem. Instead, there’s usually multiple causes, interacting in unique ways, and the best you can do to prevent these sorts of errors is try and limit the number of them that can occur at once).

    Liked by 6 people

  12. However, Dave is covering up for mistakes made by a team that he should have been supervising more closely but didn’t – well, heck, that makes a bunch of sense to me. It is the sort of mix of self-interest and self-perceived altruism (defending one’s team) that humans do

    When the leaked finalists came out, he said something about IT screwing up, but that he should have stressed the importance of secrecy more to them.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Your last paragraph sort of debunks this theory for me. If you’re going to take a bullet and cover up for your team, it makes infinitely more sense to take the bullet by accepting sole blame for the stuff-up instead of making excuses to pretend like nothing’s wrong while the world is burning. He seems smart enough to know that this junk wouldn’t fool anyone, right? Basic human self-preservation instinct seems to indicate that the more desirable outcome at this point is to admit fault and take the walk of shame, rather than triple down and allow people to believe you’re either a) a giant asshole who shouldn’t come within 500 feet of another con, b) involved in CPcoNG or c) literally evil.

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    • I don’t know Dave but I’ve worked with men (and one woman) who would much rather you think they were obnoxious or even evil than have you think they where ignorant, wrong or mistaken about an issue that they saw as within their technical expertise. Like self-destructively so. I can see elements of that within myself TBH

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        • This is something we can legit blame on the patriarchy.

          “Real Men” aren’t allowed to admit they were wrong, and will try to bluff it out with sarcasm and insults. Dave’s an older guy, and it was worse in previous generations.

          I get the feeling (experts may correct me) that “failing up” is NOT a thing that can happen in PRC.

          Blame someone else, never admit your screw-ups, no matter how small. So the local members of the team — who must have been under heavy scrutiny with the new facility and all those foreigners to impress — certainly aren’t going to say whether or not they caused some/all of the problems. And I don’t blame them if that’s what they did; they still have to live there.

          I do think Dave’s a complete asshole who is also incompetent. Hopefully the Glasgow and Seattle concoms are taking notes on What Not To Do.

          Glasgow should get out in front of this ASAP; I’m sure they’re busily figuring out what to say right now.

          Liked by 6 people

          • Eh, in this case, I’ll allow it. He could have easily come up with a better cover story (like a massive server crash) instead of doing all this insulting and probably bad data-manipulation.

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          • I certainly think a good chunk of Dave’s behavior was rooted in the principle that he was largely talking shit to folks on his Facebook page. You don’t like what I have to say, screw you, it’s my facebook page! Once it was clear the story had escaped containment, he stopped responding completely.

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            • I agree – he was like that back when we were talking just about the delay. Then the tone was sort of well only a small group of Hugo meganerds who all know me care about the stats so I’m talking about it here so my pals will let other people know. Was that fake? Did he know then he was sitting on a timebomb? I can’t tell.

              Liked by 1 person

              • My theory is he knew he was sitting on a timebomb, but it would be some shouting in the usual circle of People Who Really Care About The Hugos, the delay would help blunt its impact, and it would blow over in a day. 

                And he was quite wrong about that.

                Liked by 3 people

                • Yes, I think you are right. I’ve had the impression anyway that Dave likes Worldcon but things the Hugos are a bit of a sideshow nobody cares about. Which is weird because it was the Hugos that led to the Chengdu Worldcon.

                  Liked by 3 people

                • I think there’s also a decent possibility that he intended to use the delay to fudge the numbers better to hide the tampering, but didn’t get around to it. Or tried to but found out that making up believable EPH numbers is harder than he expected.

                  (If you still have the ballots in a database, it’s relatively easy to delete 20 % of the nominations for an undesirable work and rerun the EPH calculation. But if you have deleted the ballots and only have the EPH tables to work on, it’s difficult to edit the numbers enough to move something from 3rd to 7th place, without getting the kind of errors people spot now.)

                  Liked by 3 people

                  • Babel was seen as a likely winner – which guarantees that it’s absence on the Best Novel list would be noticed, and that absence sadly devalues the award.

                    I’d say that given the shortlist Nettle and Bone might well still have won – but we can’t trust the shortlist.

                    Liked by 3 people

                    • Yes – and 2023 had a different voting base, so “likely winner” was on the basis of a kind of moving median taste preference of a conceptual model of nebulous Hugo voters. Preferences in general are also weird – change the line up and people reorder their preferences i.e. N&B beat KPS but add Babel then KPS might beat N&B just because people are flippin’ weird

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    • Yes, I think we can call that the self-censorship theory. It is plausible but it doesn’t cover the stats oddities (and true that could be largely an external issue). I can’t rule it out

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      • He’s said he’s definitely planning to be there.

        I’m wondering if Dave M. will dare to show up to Glasgow or Seattle.

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          • In which case I encourage the attendees of Dublin Worldcon to embrace the power of shunning, even if they don’t go so far as to embrace the (considerable) Irish power of taking the mickey.

            And I’m going to want reports on said taking — anonymous OK, but the better ones made known to those who can’t go.

            Liked by 2 people

                • The Worlds are on Glasgow Green on the 16/17th August. The Scottish is in Dumbarton on 27th July. Apparently there are no date or locations yet for the European and British (also the Irish, but that’s clearly not going to be in Glasgow or the environs).

                  Piping Live overlaps the Worlds, running from the 10th to the 18th of August.

                  Liked by 2 people

              • I did, but as you say, not a great deal of difference between the locales in that regard.Also all non-Celtic persons should feel free to get stuck in whatever idiom their tribe is best at.

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        • Stross announced on Bluesky he’d booked his hotel room before the Glasgow team released the discounted bookings form.

          Looks like the business meeting is going to be more interesting than I had anticipated!

          Liked by 3 people

  18. I am sure from the document released that there was tempering with the results to put it midly. Why both disqualifications (without any reasons) and numbers that are obvious fabricated happened is something that I don’t understand. How did they exspect to get away with it, in the sense that there wouldn’t be public outcry when the cheating was obvios is one think.

    Did Dave believe people would forget about the longlist? Did he belive they could fabricate somethink and his chinesse friends did leave him to die alone?

    What is obvious to me is that Dave and Ben Yellow should never got nearer to a Hugo then beeing (perhaps) be allowed to vote for it.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. What about this clause in the WSFS Constitution:Remember, McCarty’s official response has been “”After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.”and I find the following in the WSFS Constitution:”Section 1.3: Restrictions. No part of the Society’s net earnings shall be paid to its members, officers, or other private persons except in furtherance of the Society’s purposes. The Society shall not attempt to influence legislation or any political campaign for public office. Should the Society dissolve, its assets shall be distributed by the current Worldcon Committee or the appropriate court having jurisdiction, exclusively for charitable purposes. In this section, references to the Society include the Mark Protection Committee and all other agencies of the Society but not convention bidding or operating committees.”

    Particularly this line: “The Society shall not attempt to influence legislation or any political campaign for public office.”A statement to the effect that a particular work is deemed to “influence legislation” would be sufficient, and would not necessarily constitute “telling” someone what to do.

    Liked by 2 people

  20. I disagree that this would be less damaging. For me, ‘I made several mistakes in counting votes’ is worse than ‘there was government censorship’ Censorship happens, several commentators have already said that we should be more understanding of the dangers the committee members might face. Miscounting, not once but in several categories, is not something that has happened before.

    Liked by 2 people

  21. Relevant to your interests: check out what happened in Column 6 of Best Fan Writer. Molly Templeton, an American, is knocked out. All of her votes go to the Chinese fans <Riverflow> and <Heavendule>. Those are the only transferable votes they get over the course of the whole EPH — which is understandable, since the rest of the longlist consists of English-language writers.

    If <Riverflow> and <Heavendule> don’t get those votes, then you knock them out in the last 2 rounds of EPH due to being on more ballots and end up on the final ballot.

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    • I noticed the transfers but I hadn’t thought through that it would change my result. However, I don’t think “Molly Templeton” is Molly Templeton. I think that label is wrong and we are seeing the votes of a different fan writer (i.e.the transfers are legit, it is just the name that is wrong). However,at this point who knows. Maybe I’m Paul Weimer! He’s not the strangest person I’ve been!

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        • I think 90% I’d have declined anyway and I’m glad RiverFlow and HeavenDuke got a slot – its been great interacting with them but that’s a whole weird What If there. Given we don’t know why Paul got hit, it could have been me instead! *^%$^#@!! Imagine, I was hassling Dave on Facebook for the stats last year and imagine if then months later it looked like I’d be canned for no reason?

          Good grief – not glad that all this shit fell on Paul obviously but very glad I’m not going through that level of mindfucking right now. Jesus. OMG. Freaking out a bit just thinking about it.

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  22. One last crazy theory. What if Dave did this to disprove EPH? Yes, yes, I know, he was the Hugo committee chair in 2018, but there was still a lot of scrutiny on the subject at that point and people paying attention. But I know he wasn’t thrilled about the whole idea.

    So what if he, seeing his chance, deliberately fucked the whole thing up to prove how you can’t trust EPH?

    It’s just as much a possibility as anything else, I suppose

    Liked by 1 person

    • I think Courtney Milan floated the theory that this whole thing was done to sabotage having a Worldcon in China – which I don’t think works specifically with McCarty as the plan involves sabotaging himself in the process.

      EPH? Yeah, he didn’t like it, so maybe. Again though 1. he’s blown his own reputation up first and 2. EPH is really demonstrating its power here. Bloody hard to fake the data with EPH. eg I think the final vote results are also suspect but when I looked at them I can only show a few odd things not any glaring problems. Of course now, I don’t know if I believe ANY number anywhere in that document!

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      • I think it’s mostly to do with sheer incompetence. Dave may have objected to having a Chinese Worldcon, Courtney and others would know better than me.

        Maybe Dave figured he’d be able to falsify data enough to cover up his true motivations, but he couldn’t.

        So we’re back to unified stuff-up again.

        And as you say, we can’t trust any of the numbers thanks to Dave’s lack of ability in data control, counting, and obfuscating. I feel bad for Chengdu, but am taking EPH ruining Dave’s rep as sweet poetic justice. Let us all praise Jameson.

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        • Lurkertype: <em>Dave may have objected to having a Chinese Worldcon</em>

          Dave Fucking McCarty avidly promoted and advocated for the Chinese Worldcon, accepted numerous free trips and vacations (and apparently a bunch of lavish gifts) for doing so, and accused those of us who objected due to concerns about whether a clean Hugo Awards program could be run due to Chinese censorship laws of being racist and xenophobic.

          Please stop trying to provide excuses and cover to McCarty for his choices. He is totally culpable here.

          Liked by 2 people

          • Aha, I stand corrected! Thank you.

            This gives him even more reason to monkey around with the data, particularly in eliminating so-called “ineligible” works.

            If he felt warm ‘n cuddly towards and bribed to be sympathetic to the the local officials, that gives him even more motive to futz with the nominations and the math.

            Frankly, when it was stated that the local government reserved the right to overrule the will of the voters, Chengdu should have lost the con, or at least the Hugo administration RIGHT THEN.

            I guess in a way, he was kind of right. The Chinese fen didn’t do the fixing — that was a White American dude! No racism needed.

            I really do hold the Chinese fen completely innocent in this. They did their best, I’m sure, and I’m glad they had a good time. Their reaction to this on Weibo seems generally “what do you expect in China?” but in this case, none of it may be the fault of any Chinese fen. I mean, China’s been good at math longer than anyone else.

            I wonder if the Chinese staffers ever got a look at the real stats. I’d bet all the money in my pocket* not.

            *$1.22 and a strawberry Starburst. Just looked. Because I believe in accurate math.

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    • Well it could prove that it could be a problem if the chair doesn’t understand EPH.

      But EPH is (besides making the wrong more obvious) not the cause of problems. EPH or not we still have fantasynumbers and unlawful disqualifications.

      So if that was the goal, it is so far of the list, that no it is unreachable.

      On the other hand, we can all agree no matter what Dave goal was with this data, he failed spectaculary. Competence is the only think that wasn’t part of his strategy.

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  23. It’s not a conspiracy at all to the think the Chinese goverment would have requested books to be ineligible. The CCP is extremely famous for censorship and have a sophisticated apparatus to control and censor Chinese social media in real time. Ask any China diaspora, or Chinese studies academic. Even the Chinese character for Xi is automatically censored on line even though it’s a common last name.

    Kuang, Zhao and Gaiman have all said things critical of the CCP. It’s not a coincidence those three were all made ineligible. Zhao herself believes she was targeted because of her past criticisms. Furthermore, on Chinese social media and Chinese Twitter the first explanation that everyone is going to is political interference. Because it’s a common occurrence for people living in China and seems the most likely, straight forward and unsurprising explanation for them.

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    • But at no previous Worldcon have the Hugos been influenced by the host country’s political apparatchiks or corporations. Raytheon (and the Federal government) didn’t put a thumb on the Hugo scale the year they sponsored Worldcon. The governor of whatever US state, Australian state, or state/province/county the con has been in didn’t demand the ouster of any nominees, either explicitly or heavily hinted at.

      Georgia’s got that big-ass mountain with the carvings and son et lumiere of Confederates just outside of Atlanta, but I don’t see them putting up barriers to who can be nominated when Worldcon was there, or any year of the Dragons. If South Dakota had RushmoreCon, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have to worry about being DQ for saying bad things about former presidents, and the Lakota are still rightly angry about that mountain. You could write a seriously anti-Disney work and LACon, right next to Disneyland, isn’t going to catch any flak. You can write a story about how the Space Needle is an abomination unto the Lord, and Seattle’s just going to laugh and maybe agree. No Canadian con has banned South Park. No Australian con has/would get in a huff about a tale of how all the venomous critters and drop bears will kill you and all of the citizens are descended from petty criminals. Etc. etc.

      Do individual voters object to some of the topics? Yes, as we all remember from Puppies. Do they fuck with the nominees and awards? Only Puppies — and now Dave. Both of whom also can’t math.

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      • Well yes, the reason why other Worldcons haven’t had the issue with political interference is because they were held in countries with a free and independent press, freedom of speech rule of law, an independent judiciary, and access to the world wide web, not in a one party authoritarian state with none of those things.

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  25. I have not read every comment so I apologize if this is repeating something others have said already.

    You suggest that the Chengdu Hugo  team should have just blamed incompetence. I am not Chinese, but my understanding of the culture is that this may not be viable? Particularly under circumstances like this, where Chengdu holding WorldCon could be seen as a soft power coup, especially by the local CCP officials. China currently wants very much to seize or create cultural hegemony. If these people screwed up China’s chance to grab soft power, particularly cultural soft power, admitting to it in public may not be a safe thing. They would have lost face not just for themselves but for Chengdu and all of China.

    Conversely, as others mention, within China the reaction to censorship and Party-motivated vote fudging seems to be that yes, it’s China, that’s what happens. We think it’s awful and horrifying, but the people around them are okay with that explanation as long as you don’t actually say it out loud.

    So the Chinese members of the committee may have been over a barrel, or at least believed they were. If they admit to incompetence, the rest of the world would shrug and nod, but they’d have potentially-serious local consequences. If they implicate the CCP, the rest of the world would be furious, but they’ll be okay locally.

    This has the advantage of explaining a number of other actions: it took so long to put out because Dave got the data and went “wait, these are all kinds of messed up?” and then spent the intervening 91 days trying to clean up what he could with limited success (and negotiating an  acceptable outcome with the other committee members—remember the comment about it being the statement they’d agreed on?). Some fudging might not be “real” in the sense that it might have been done post-hoc to cover incompetence in a way that looks like corruption so that the committee has plausible deniability locally. And then Dave is being cagey because he is protecting his team from this Cornelian dilemma.

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