This was probably discussed months ago and I missed it but

[frayadjacent]

Does anyone understand the new Hugo nomination tallying? I read the description but frankly had trouble following it. Speaking as someone who knew nothing about the previous methods.

Obviously what I'm most interested in is how it might prevent Evil Puppies.

Comments

[melannen]

Basically, if people such as Evil Puppies nominate a slate, it makes each of their individual slate votes worth less until most of the slate is eliminated from the ballot by runoffs.

So say we're looking for three finalists.
4 puppies all nominate the same four works, A, B, C, D
And 4 kittens have four different ballots:
1234
1356
1247
2358

Under the old system, ABCD have four votes each, 123 have three votes each, 45 have two votes, 678 have one vote. Puppies win and none of the kitten noms get in.

Under the new system, each voter gets one vote TOTAL, split among all their noms.
So in the first round,
ABCD each have 4 * .25= 1 vote each.
1,2, and 3 have 3 * .25 = .75 of a vote.
4 and 5 have 2 * .25 = .5 of a vote.
6, 7, 8 have .25 vote each.

But then we eliminate 6, 7, 8 because they are tied for lowest point total and lowest nomination count, so in second round voting, some of the kittens have fewer noms and their noms are worth more.

ABCD still have 1 point each.
1, 2, and 3 now has .25 + .66 = .92
4 has 1/4 + 1/3 = .28
5 has 1/3 + 1/3 = .66

4 and 5 are lowest, so we eliminate them for the third round.

Third round:
ABCD still have 1 vote each total
(because puppies have lost no noms so each of their noms is still only worth .25)
1, 2, and 3 have .33 + .5 + .5 = 1.33
(because the first kitten has 3 noms left, so their noms are worth 1/3 each, and the other kittens only have 2 noms left, so their noms are now worth 1/2 each.)

Eliminate the 4 noms that are tied for lowest point value, ABCD.
Three noms are left, 123.
Results are the same as if there had been no puppies ever.

It gets more complicated with more votes and more complicated voting patterns (for example, if A was not 100% awful and got a kitten vote, it could win even if it was mostly awful) and there are still ways evil puppies could game the system if they wanted (if the puppies ONLY voted for A, A would get on the ballot, but there would also be room for non-puppies.) A lot of worst-cases were figured out during the debate over the rules change.

But simple slate noms can no longer take an entire category, and more complicated things would be a lot harder to get minions to do correctly.

[frayadjacent]

Thanks so much for this explanation! It makes a lot more sense now. I'm looking forward to seeing how things go.

[rahirah]

What they said. Here's a link to an example run with a lot more data: http://sasquan.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/E_PLURIBUS_HUGO1.pdf

[frayadjacent]

Thank you!