Yes, I know. Your write up of the membership change proposal for this year’s Business Meeting was linked to in the SMOFs email letter a couple of days ago.

I exchanged a couple of emails with some folks after reading the proposal and some of those conversations, the write up and the state of voting in general led to this piece. (Or the relevant part of it)

I’ve been very heavily involved in IP issues for the past decade or so (wrote patent apps, identified some interesting and arcane twists in the laws, helped develop IP strategies for a manufacturing company, etc).

Perhaps you’d care to talk some time about how you conduct your searches/monitoring and etc. I’ve done a bit of that myself, both in checking up on properties I’m interested in obtaining, in looking out for others and in regards to the ‘copyfight’ that’s going on in general (you know, on one side are the evil DRMs and on the other the evil Infomustbefreers argument.

(Remember the recent SFWA/Scribd debacle? I went and found some additional violations over at Scribd for authors who weren’t being looked out for.)

Again, thanks for the input, and if I happen to notice some potentially ‘improper’ usages of WSFS marks, I’ll give you a heads up.

Kevin – thanks for weighing in.

Hey, you invoked the Hugo Awards — speak their name in a place that Google indexes and I’m apt to appear. Seriously! As Chairman of WSFS’s Mark Protection Committee, I have a standing search for the WSFS service marks like “Worldcon” and “Hugo Award” so that we (we hope) catch misuses. That doesn’t mean people criticizing the Hugo Awards (that happens all the time, especially when the works they wanted to win did not), but people setting up their own awards and calling them “Hugo,” or establishing their own convention and calling it “Worldcon” — and both of these things have happened.

I wasn’t trying to disparage the Hugos in any way.

No worries; I didn’t take it as disparaging.

And I agree that most people consider the details of how the system works as boring. But then, most people consider the details of how any governmental system works as boring.

I wasn’t trying to disparage the Hugos in any way. I’ll say right now that having been involved in the process at SunCon in ‘77 is one of my fondest fannish memories.

It was also an educational one as it was the first time I was exposed to ‘Australian balloting’ (it helped launch my interest in all things statistical).

I should also mention that my assessment of the details as being ‘boring’ is not my own, but rather a reflection of the reaction I see from most people.

And yes, I agree that the process is a very open one and should be admired as such.

More people who can should vote: I’m betting that interest this year in the Presidential election will have at least a marginal positive effect on Hugo voting for 2008.

We try to fully explain the process by which the Hugo Awards are selected on the official Hugo Awards web site. In fact, I think the Hugo Awards can take some pride at a relatively open process. For instance, the administrator is required to publish a lot of information about who was nominated, how many nominations they got, and who got nominations but not enough to make the final ballot.

Yes, there are thousands of fans who are eligible to vote every year, of whom usually only hundreds actually make the effort to do so. Besides lowering the cost barrier to vote, though, it would be nice if more of the people who are already eligible voted. But look at how low voter turnout is in mundane elections. Most people can’t be bothered, for different reasons.

As I’ve said elsewhere, some people find themselves dismayed when they actually find out how the sausage is made.

Anyway, I never knew anything about how the Hugos work, but I’m disturbed to find they are based on such a small number of votes. I tend to agree with you; many more voters would be a good thing.

Please don’t be a stranger