• Lcthulou
    +2

    The Hugos have open nominations. So long as you're a member of the World Fantasy Con, You can nominate up to five entries in each category. The Hugo Committee then picks the 5 entries with the most nominations, IF each has at least 5% of the nominations. With only 1K or so Nominators, and thousands of works possible to be nominated, a work can make the ballot with only a few votes. And it does happen. If there is so much of a spread than a top 5 gets less than 5%, it doesn't get listed (2013 had only three nominees in SS as 4 and 5 had too few nominations)

    So it' very easy for a concerned bloc to skew the vote. With about 15% of the nominations, the Rabid Puppy slate swept everything. Note they really didn't break the rules: This was a known bug, and there was a gentleman's agreement kinda in place that kept the community from exploiting it. The Puppies have said they feel there was a backroom conspiracy to promote a certain type of literary fiction over their own works, but by sweeping th categories, they themselves pretty much disproved it. THey proved the system wasn't being gamed precisely because it was so easy to be gamed, anybody could have done it at any time.

    • nauthas
      +3

      So they exploited an issue with the voting system, so where does the sexism come into this? Because it doesn't sound like anyone "broke" anything, it sounds like someone gamed a broken system.

      • Lcthulou
        +2

        There's a lot about the puppies where they say one thing and do another. It's been written about pretty extensively. Check out Jim C. Hines post for a comprehensive and fair article with lots of sources: http://www.jimchines.com/2015/06/puppies-in-their-own-words/ I agree with Jim that there is nothing explicitly Sexist about the puppies, but the fact is their slate was less diverse ( And has much weaker works) than most recent ballots.

        Personally, I think they only glommed onto the politics to get useful fools on board. This was always about sour grapes and self promotion.

        • nauthas
          +2

          I mean I'm well traversed in Gamergate, and I saw a clear attempt to connect the two for a time, but I just ignored it and it seemed to pass. Seems a bit silly to me. I think they are probably feeding off of these articles. They'll fall into obscurity if people just ignore them, it seems.