Why Awards Matter or Not

[mishalak]

This is not an original idea; I'm just applying it to the Hugos.

Awards for the arts only matter for two reasons; either to celebrate people's works or to increase sales of those works. These two functions are not exclusive; indeed they are often mixed and depend upon each other. The increases in sales of a work only happen when people assume that the award meaningfully measures quality in some fashion. Conversely if a work is not already popular it is hard for it to gain lauds as being great for lack of people to promote or vote for it.

Both of these goals can negatively influence the other as well as positively reinforce each other. If a work is lauded only by an elite without any reference to popularity it may be dismissed as being pointless for the general public to pay attention to or if it is all popularity contest we might as well count sales and call that voting for an award.

As near as I can tell the Hugos are well respected mostly by those who don't know anything about the Hugos. They are a popular measurement of a group of people who are interested in going to WorldCon and only a few of them at that. Worse it is highly doubtful that the majority of voters have read or seen all the works in the categories they vote upon. Less dire, but also worth noting, is the fact that the voting comes at least 2/3 of a year after their first release. This makes them much less useful for the sales promotion aspect especially so in the case of the movies and less so in the case of books. Also the awards are seemingly vulnerable to being "stolen" by a group of fanatics all getting supporting memberships to the WorldCon solely to vote for their beloved icon <cough>L. Ron Hubbard</cough> due to voting being open to anyone who pays the fee and the relatively low voting numbers, though it has yet to happen beyond the nomination stage.

The Hugos are unlikely to change so in many ways this sort of analysis is pointless as will be any of my thoughts on how to improve them. However here it goes nonetheless.

Hugo voting should not be open to just anyone because when you poll people who don't know anything you get a meaningless results. Instead there needs to be found a group of individuals who have read, watched, or whatever widely in the category being voted upon, not just this year but for a number of years. Furthermore works should be voted upon individually rather than against one another as there have been years with a embarrassment of riches and others with none that should be awarded. The system would have to be weighted to award on average one or a bit more than one per year but not favoring an award every year. Perhaps with nomination being a well-respected secondary award. It should also be considered, at least in the case of the media forms if we want the Hugo to be at all significant, that the cut off date be somewhat closer to the time of the actual award.

Under this scheme I myself would probably not be widely enough read to qualify as a nominator or voter. So the biggest problem with the idea would be finding these reviewers who are in tune enough with the common tastes, but still widely read enough to give a good overview of what is best to those of us who are less widely read. Critics and editors might be a good place to start with fanzine writers also being possibly useful. But I don't know. But I thought releasing these thoughts upon the world would be more useful than not.

(Do please offer corrections and constructive criticism before I release this into wider circulation. Note that the evolution of this article is ongoing in the comments.)

Comments

[akicif.livejournal.com]

I'd add a third reason: to increase awareness of a work.

For the rest, it feels almost as if you're re-inventing the Nebulas, except for the "should be voted upon individually rather than against one another" bit which would be pretty hard to implement. I think what you're saying there is "lose the shortlist", which contradicts your suggestion of making nomination almost as high-status as winning.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

So do you think it would be a more useful article just paired down to criticisms with an acknowledgment that the Nebulas answer most, if not all, of the problems with the Hugos?

Or I had a lightning struck my brain moment a bit ago. Perhaps I would put in a radical suggestion since anything I put forth is totally unlikely to ever be implemented in whole or part.

So my wildly unpractical suggestion would be that the barriers should be lowered, rather than raised, and the method of selection changed. Make it like a version of the Internet Movie Database voting system with to formula tweaked to produce a nomination and award system rather than a moving top 100.

If a certain percentage of the readers or viewers of a genre work loved it and vote for it being perfect by whatever their personal standards it gets a nomination. Minimum numbers to mostly keep out promotion of vanity works and higher percentage required if fewer people have voted on the work. The nomination generates interest and if there is sufficient enthusiasm maintained then it gets the award.

Problems: Maintaining an open online database, though hopefully the yearly Fan Membership (like a supporting membership but without site selection voting) will not only make that worthwhile but provide a modest income to each Worldcon. Mildly arcane process needing much tweaking to get it to work right. Lack of the big surprise moment at the ceremony unless voting after a work is nominated is kept obscure. I've no idea how to make it work for things like best editor or fanwriter.

Plus side: A nomination without award would indicate a work that is well liked by a subgroup of fandom, but not widely loved. Could possibly leave enough time for people to consider a work for a year or two rather than having to nominate this year while leaving open quick nomination and award for works that are widely recognized as classic. And it fulfils my earlier vague idea about not putting works up against each other.

Provided the voters are mostly honest and the fee is sufficient to keep out most ballot box stuffing yet low enough to let in anyone who is interested it would work rather like the self organizing intelligence of a financial market. Mostly people would be honest and not play games, so they'd only vote up or down on works they have read or watched.

[fairmer.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, and yes. (sigh)

My personal solution is to: 1) nominate things I actually read last year (done!) and 2) read/view everything in any category I intend to vote in.

Last year, I only voted in 4 categories--I'd actually seen all the movies and all the tv shows, and I read all the short stories after they were on the ballot. And half the novels. I still feel bad about voting on the novels.

I have no actual solution. The above is merely my response to a flawed system.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

But writing wise do you think this would work better with the moderate solution, the radical solution (suggested in my comments above), or without getting bogged down in solutions?

Personally the one time I did vote I gave into the popularity contestness of it all and voted if I had read/watched half and thought I knew something about the rest. I had to! Connie was up for yet another Hugo and she needed my support! <grin> I felt so High School about it all.

[fairmer.livejournal.com]

I like the radical solution a lot, but that's partly because I like the top 100 list IMDB produces. However, I think that wouldn't be a Hugo anymore. Part of the... charm... of the Hugos is the fact that it doesn't exactly make sense, that you can get outliers of absurdity.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point. And really we have more than enough awards already so we don't need a new one. Eh. Not like I'm going to do something about it.