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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The 75th World Science Fiction Convention (commonly known as WorldCon) is being held this weekend in Helsinki, Finland. The convention is where the annual Hugo Awards are presented, and today, the convention announced the latest recipients.
This year, women almost completely swept the Hugo Awards, taking home the top prizes for literature in the science fiction community. That's particularly notable, given how the awards have been increasingly recognizing works from female and minority creators. The trend prompted a counter-movement from two group of fans, the self-described "Sad Puppies," and their alt-right equivalents, the "Rabid Puppies." These groups gamed the awards and forced a slate of nominees onto the Hugo ballot in 2015, prompting widespread backlash within the wider genre community. Another award, the Dragon, faced similar issues earlier this week when several authors asked to pull their nominations over concerns about Puppy interference and the award's integrity.
This year's sweep by female creators seems to be a strong repudiation of anti-diversity groups. 2017 also marked the year the ceremony earned its own award: a representative from the Guinness Book of World Records certified that the Hugos are the longest-running science fiction awards ever.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @10:18AM (36 children)
Congratulations. You may see this as a win for diversity but your en masse virtue signaling has done what the Puppies couldn't manage. It has firmly declared a Hugo to be an irrelevant award. Puppies win.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @10:27AM (17 children)
Or, women are just better at writing science fiction, and always have been. The Sad Puppies have only served to make that manifest! Poor Sad Puppies! Maybe they could win a "Red Pillar" award, instead?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @10:43AM
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, to suggest her work stood the test of time merely by the non-virtue of having being written by an individual without a Y chromosome is stupid. To suggest there was not always equality of opportunity at the Hugo awards is stupid and to force equality of outcome by politicising the awards is stupid. If females are "just better at writing science fiction" then why would it be newsworthy that women win the majority of awards? And if that were the case, wouldn't neo-marxists be looking to force women out to ensure their precious equality of outcome?
(Score: -1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @10:54AM (11 children)
Your trolling aside, that's actually a good idea. The SJW fix is so firmly in at the Hugos that there's nothing for it but to ignore them and start an award actually based on merit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @11:04AM (10 children)
Except the "Sad Puppy" criteria of "merit" sucks! Or at least wishes it could.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @01:27PM
And, you wish you could suck a sad puppy, right?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 16 2017, @03:01PM (8 children)
Yeah, that's the problem here: reactionism. When you have one group that turns extremist, other people join another reactionary group on the opposite, but also extreme side. Then the reasonably people in the middle get sick of the bullshit and leave.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @03:16PM (7 children)
Seems to be like the problem would be the original group turning extremist then, no?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:20PM
Yeah, but that's not uncommon. There's always extremists. I guess the problem is when you give the extremists too much attention instead of just ignoring them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:45PM (4 children)
Your intellectual acuity couldn't cut a wet noodle.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:24PM (3 children)
Buzzards are better at tearing fetid carcasses. Don't know what to do with noodles, or real literature.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:01PM (2 children)
I do so. You hang the literature on a nail in the outhouse and hope it has softish pages.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:17PM (1 child)
That's the Sears & Roebuck's Catalog! But if that is your standard for literature, I can see why the Hugo Awards disappoint you so. (Does Sears even print a hardcopy catalog anymore? I tried wiping with Amazon, and it seemed to just spread it around.)
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:47AM
Nah, I like those nice, thin-paged books you get at religious establishments. You can also roll a cigarette with them if you're in a bind.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:28PM
No! there is bad writing on both sides! Didn't you see those Happy Kittens that attacked the poor sexist/racist Sad Puppies? So sad, so sad! I know that no one is going to say it, no one besides TMB is going to say it, but David Duke wrote a fine book, too!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 16 2017, @01:26PM (3 children)
In your wildest fucking dreams. Or, in my worst nightmares. Once again, there have been excellent female authors all along. Those authors wrote SCIENCE FICTION. Today's authors are writing something different and new. They maybe deserve awards, but not SCIENCE FICTION AWARDS.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @02:21PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 16 2017, @03:06PM
Just going by that one link someone posted to "The Art of Space Travel", it seems like it's become basically "chick-lit" (e.g., stories about characters exploring their feelings and experiencing drama) set in the not-too-far future, rather than speculative fiction which explores the societal impact of possible new technologies and discoveries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @06:37PM
Poor, poor Runaway! Why does the world have to keep changing so much?
(Score: 2, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @12:59PM (12 children)
I think someone needs to read the moderator guidelines. Not liking what someone says != you should downmod it. You should be ashamed of yourself for bringing down the quality of moderation on the site.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by https on Wednesday August 16 2017, @03:35PM (7 children)
You could stop using "virtue signalling", "SJW" etc. in your posts. It's meaningless babble at best, and the intent to insult is not even thinly veiled. Then we could see if you have anything to say worth upmodding!
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:04PM (2 children)
Waste of breath, this whole thread is reactionary garbage and people like TMB are beyond reason when it comes to the dreaded sjws. The persecution complex from the conservative base is getting ridiculous. At least we can laugh at them, but it is still somewhat depressing.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @04:44PM (1 child)
How dare people use pejorative names that I don't like! That just proves how bad everybody is who doesn't agree with me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @05:23PM
Nope, your sarcasm misses the mark. TMB is the one who shouldn't be whining about getting downmodded for using reactionary phrases. All political "sides" get frequently downmodded for using nasty wording.
I see your problem though, you can't tell the difference between helpful advice and personal attacks.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @07:02PM (3 children)
The insult isn't veiled at all. I absolutely meant it to be blatant. When you're a shitty excuse for a human being, expect to be insulted.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @08:43PM
You are a piece of human trash your mom wishes she had aborted. Your brain is comparable to a walnut, and your nuts long ago abandoned ship. You stink, literally. Please take a shower. Your writing is tired, your arguments lame, your logic nonexistent. Your face looks more like a shit I took last week and your best friend is a dirty rag you drew a smiley face on.
I'm not sure if that was quiiiite enough insults to accurately depict your value as a human being, but at least you get the picture.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:48PM (1 child)
is this not a signaling of virtue as well?
social justice too -- he wants the old guard back.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:48AM
You're mistaking actual justice for social justice. It's an easy mistake to make if you're blindingly stupid.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Thursday August 17 2017, @10:14AM (3 children)
2. There is no "reason for moderation" box. Unless you were talking about how you yourself moderated posts, you cannot know why someone downmodded. Oh, sure, you can say "I don't like the downmod, so it must be because the moderator didn't like the post!" But that that's an assumption, which makes an ass out of u and mption.
1. Next time you complain about people needing to read something, put a link there will you?
Moderator guidelines [soylentnews.org]
0. I have no clue which moderation to which post you're complaining about. From the moderation FAQ:
Under these guidelines, plenty of posts deserve downmodding, including some of yours.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 17 2017, @12:19PM (2 children)
I can see how you'd make that mistake, not being able to see every single moderation on the admin pages. Given enough data though, you absolutely can tell with a very high level of certainty why someone moderated a given post a certain way.
We have about half a dozen people who, if I were a tyrannical type, I would permanently mod-ban. Their moderation history is majority negative and the posts they choose to downmod all have common political positions. Strangely, they are all from the progressive camp. There literally is not a single person in the middle or on the right who abuses the system in this particular way on a regular basis, though we all have our moments.
I've done a Troll hall of fame a few times and it was met with humor and pride. Somehow I don't get the feeling that I'd get the same response if I did a Shitty Moderator hall of fame and listed the people with the highest percentage of negative moderations under their belts. Actually, I think I'll float this past the rest of the staff. We could do with some well earned humiliation as a deterrent around here.
And, yeah, plenty of my posts deserve downmodding. I don't bitch when I'm trolling and get modded Troll. I take pride in that moderation. I bitch when I say something in all sincerity that someone vehemently disagrees with and get modded Troll.
The above is not meant to stir shit up. It's simply a venting. I'm mostly happy with how our moderation system works; everyone having the ability to correct a bad downmod if they see one. Usually they do. It doesn't work for every comment but it works for enough of them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:02PM (1 child)
I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing that out!
(I'd moderate your post "+1 informative", except I ran out of points for today).
That sounds like a good plan - you've got my vote.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 17 2017, @02:55PM
Well it's kind of a given that anyone with DB access could have that information any time they wanted. What I was specifically referring to was our "potential mod-bombs page" though. It lists everyone who's been down-modded more than three times in the past 72 hours by default and then lists who down-modded them, when, which comment, and other related shat. I check it for actual full-on mod-bombs several times a day usually (Though I almost never find any. Good work, folks.). There are like half a dozen people who show up way, way too much on the moderator column and if you click on through to the comment it's almost always something they politically disagree with.
It's just kind of discouraging at times.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @01:46PM (4 children)
The HUGO awards for womens literature have made their choice, I'm unsure of their goal. I was uncomfortable with the mixing of fantasy with science fiction back in the day, as I didn't see the connection and had no wish to read fantasy. Now that science fiction has been redefined to... well this HUGO definition and the counter push to it seems to be mostly play ground 'bang bang, your dead, no I'm not, yes you are' military scifi which seems to fixate on a US centric need to describe guns in excruciating detail, I think the genre is pretty much dead.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @02:08PM (3 children)
Their goal was simple but twofold: to signal virtue just as hard as they possibly could and to take away a means of giving credit to men for excelling at something that they are better at.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Wednesday August 16 2017, @02:35PM (2 children)
Its annoying because it isn't that women are writing bad SF, they just arent even trying. They changed the definition of SF so women could win for the same fantasy they have always written.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 16 2017, @02:54PM (1 child)
Yeah, the bitch of it all is that I enjoy well-written fantasy just as much as I enjoy sci-fi. They are not even kind of the same thing though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 16 2017, @09:52PM
I take it the star wars (take your pick) does not fall under the category of both?
Although to your point, they are not the same thing... even if it was treated that way because George wasn't entirely clear on the concept.