Worldcon 2022 Day 3: First Main Business Meeting Report
Today was the first Main Business Meeting, but not the last. We did get some substantive business done, with some decent debate, and we did accomplish some things, although probably not as much as we would have liked. For the summary, see my report to Chicon's online newsletter.
You can also watch the meeting here. Once again Lisa was able to make the recording work by swapping battery packs around and shuttling used batteries out into the lobby of the Crystal Ballroom and recharging them enough to (barely) manage to be usable again by the time they were needed. This would probably not work if the meeting lasted much more than three hours, but we got it to work.
Here's Lisa's "camera nest." The medium Panasonic is on the tripod. The lens is connected by a cable to the recording box, which is what uses the proprietary batteries. At Lisa's left is the small Sony with the 3xD battery external pack. The Panasonic has enough memory to hold the entire meeting but only enough battery life to run about 30-40 minutes. The Sony has enough battery to record the entire meeting but can only record 30 minutes at a time.
Between 130 and 150 people attended. You can't get a single count because people did come and go.
Once again, if you want to follow along with my report of the details, you need a copy of the 2022 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda, because I'm going to refer to the item numbers in the agenda.
Resolutions
We started with the two resolutions not considered at Friday's meeting, both of which were controversial.
D.5, "Solidarity with Ukraine" expressed solidarity with Ukrainian fans over their country being invaded by Russia and called for people "to boycott those who would platform or champion the illegal invasion."
There is a serious technical issue with even considering this motion. Cliff Dunn raised a point of order that this motion was ultra vires, meaning that the subject matter was beyond the scope of WSFS's purposes and therefore should not be considered. The Chair ruled that it was in order, citing other things like WSFS's complaint about Pluto being removed from the list of major planets. Cliff then appealed that ruling, but the Business Meeting voted to sustain the chair's ruling that this motion was within the scope of WSFS's remit, and then the meeting after further debate voted by an uncounted show of hands to adopt the motion.
D.6, "Sergey Lukianenko," condemned the 2023 Worldcon's choice of Lukianenko as a guest of honor, and said that he "should neither be platformed nor celebrated," and further said that "it is shameful that he is honored by Worldcon."
As with D.5, there are serious issues of whether this motion is within the scope of WSFS's authority at all. This time it was Ben Yalow who raised a point of order that this motion was ultra vires. The chair ruled the point of order not well taken, and Ben appealed the ruling, pointing out how there is, as he said, a clear delineation between things that are within WSFS's authority and things that are a Worldcon committee's authority, and that guest of honor selection is part of the latter. The meeting sustained the Chair's ruling, and once again, after a significant debate, the meeting voted by an uncounted show of hands to adopt this resolution.
Neither of these resolutions have anything other than a symbolic effect, but as they are continuing resolutions, they will go into the permanent list of resolutions on the WSFS website.
Standing Rules Changes
There were two proposed changes to the Standing Rules. Both of them were referred to committees. The first, which attempted to codify a procedure for setting up debate at the Business Meeting for proposals not necessarily intended to be adopted at that meeting, was referred to the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee. It is possible that this motion is not really needed, as there is a suggestion that there are existing ways to accomplish the same thing.
The second standing rule change would modify the requirements for printing the agenda and for how many copies members submitting new business must supply of their proposals, in light of Worldcons' reluctance to print large numbers of paper copies, but to instead publish things only electronically. This was referred to a special committee to consider the question more generally and report back to next year's Worldcon.
The resolutions and standing-rule debates used up the first half of the Main Meeting. We did not get to consideration of any Constitutional amendments until about 11:40.
Ratification of Constitutional Amendments
Last year's Business Meeting gave first passage to four amendments to the WSFS Constitution, but there were five amendments on the agenda for ratification, because the "E Pluribus Hugo" rules adopted in 2015 at Sasquan that changed the way we count nominations for the Hugo Award had a requirement to bring the rule back up for a final re-ratification vote. This was a long debate, but unlike a lot of the debate to this point, was mostly focused on the substance of EPH. That is, it was a genuine debate on the merits of the proposal. Eventually, EPH was re-ratified (i.e. permanently adopted, or at least as permanently as anything in the WSFS Constitution can be considered to be adopted) on a vote by an uncounted show of hands.
Note that "uncounted show of hands" means that the Chair asks for a show of hands of those in favor, then those opposed, and declares how the Chair thinks the vote went. If enough members call for a "division," then we take a counted standing vote using the "serpentine" method that you can see on the video.
Item E.2 really should have been non-controversial. It moves a requirement currently in the Standing Rules into the Constitution about the deadline for submitting new business. The reason for moving it was that the Standing Rules are subordinate to the Constitution, so the feeling was that the junior document shouldn't restrict amendments to the senior document. However, the existing rule can be suspended by a 2/3 vote (the same as with nearly all standing rules), and the constitutional version did not explicitly allow for its own suspension. When Don Eastlake moved to add a self-suspending clause to the proposal, a few people got confused, and as a result the meeting voted to refer E.2 to an ad hoc committee chaired by Don to clarify things and report back tomorrow.
E.3 and E.4 were uncontroversial and passed by a show of hands, either unanimously or nearly so.
E.5 was controversial. It prohibits members from transferring the voting rights of their membership in WSFS. Instead of there being a "supporting membership" and an "attending membership," there will now be a "WSFS membership" (the former supporting membership, which includes the voting rights) and an "attending supplement" (the right of a WSFS member to attend the annual conference, i.e. Worldcon). You can transfer the attending supplement to anyone, but that person must be already be a WSFS (formerly supporting) member or purchase a WSFS (formerly supporting) membership. Essentially, this is to put a stop to people partially using their voting rights and then transferring part of the membership to someone else.
After a long debate, the vote on this was close enough that we needed to do a serpentine count. "Non-transferability of Voting Rights" was ratified on a 46-40 vote.
So aside from the matter of clarifying E.2 (which as I mentioned above will come back tomorrow), we have now completed consideration of all of the constitutional amendments pending ratification. We have not, however, even started to address the eight new constitutional amendments that were submitted to this year's meeting. If we do try to consider all of them, it seems very clear to me that we will not be able to get everything done by the end of the meeting on Sunday. After all, we have to do Site Selection business for both the 2024 Worldcon and the 2023 NASFiC at the start of Sunday's meeting. This probably means that we will need an "overflow" session on Monday morning.
Now once the meeting deals with Site Selection business and E.2 (the last constitutional amendment pending a ratification vote), the meeting can adjourn sine die ("without date," which ends the session for this Worldcon) at any time. If the meeting so adjourns, all matters not otherwise passed or sent to committees "fall to the floor," i.e. they die. So the meeting does not have to consider everything.
There's one other factor in play here. Due to the convention facility schedule, there is a hard stop on the meeting at 1 PM on Monday. In other words, if the meeting futzes around long enough, it may be forced to adjourn sine die even if members still want to keep talking. I really hope it doesn't get to that point. We still have a lot of work do do with WSFS this year.
You can also watch the meeting here. Once again Lisa was able to make the recording work by swapping battery packs around and shuttling used batteries out into the lobby of the Crystal Ballroom and recharging them enough to (barely) manage to be usable again by the time they were needed. This would probably not work if the meeting lasted much more than three hours, but we got it to work.
Here's Lisa's "camera nest." The medium Panasonic is on the tripod. The lens is connected by a cable to the recording box, which is what uses the proprietary batteries. At Lisa's left is the small Sony with the 3xD battery external pack. The Panasonic has enough memory to hold the entire meeting but only enough battery life to run about 30-40 minutes. The Sony has enough battery to record the entire meeting but can only record 30 minutes at a time.
Between 130 and 150 people attended. You can't get a single count because people did come and go.
Once again, if you want to follow along with my report of the details, you need a copy of the 2022 WSFS Business Meeting Agenda, because I'm going to refer to the item numbers in the agenda.
Resolutions
We started with the two resolutions not considered at Friday's meeting, both of which were controversial.
D.5, "Solidarity with Ukraine" expressed solidarity with Ukrainian fans over their country being invaded by Russia and called for people "to boycott those who would platform or champion the illegal invasion."
There is a serious technical issue with even considering this motion. Cliff Dunn raised a point of order that this motion was ultra vires, meaning that the subject matter was beyond the scope of WSFS's purposes and therefore should not be considered. The Chair ruled that it was in order, citing other things like WSFS's complaint about Pluto being removed from the list of major planets. Cliff then appealed that ruling, but the Business Meeting voted to sustain the chair's ruling that this motion was within the scope of WSFS's remit, and then the meeting after further debate voted by an uncounted show of hands to adopt the motion.
D.6, "Sergey Lukianenko," condemned the 2023 Worldcon's choice of Lukianenko as a guest of honor, and said that he "should neither be platformed nor celebrated," and further said that "it is shameful that he is honored by Worldcon."
As with D.5, there are serious issues of whether this motion is within the scope of WSFS's authority at all. This time it was Ben Yalow who raised a point of order that this motion was ultra vires. The chair ruled the point of order not well taken, and Ben appealed the ruling, pointing out how there is, as he said, a clear delineation between things that are within WSFS's authority and things that are a Worldcon committee's authority, and that guest of honor selection is part of the latter. The meeting sustained the Chair's ruling, and once again, after a significant debate, the meeting voted by an uncounted show of hands to adopt this resolution.
Neither of these resolutions have anything other than a symbolic effect, but as they are continuing resolutions, they will go into the permanent list of resolutions on the WSFS website.
Standing Rules Changes
There were two proposed changes to the Standing Rules. Both of them were referred to committees. The first, which attempted to codify a procedure for setting up debate at the Business Meeting for proposals not necessarily intended to be adopted at that meeting, was referred to the Nitpicking & Flyspecking Committee. It is possible that this motion is not really needed, as there is a suggestion that there are existing ways to accomplish the same thing.
The second standing rule change would modify the requirements for printing the agenda and for how many copies members submitting new business must supply of their proposals, in light of Worldcons' reluctance to print large numbers of paper copies, but to instead publish things only electronically. This was referred to a special committee to consider the question more generally and report back to next year's Worldcon.
The resolutions and standing-rule debates used up the first half of the Main Meeting. We did not get to consideration of any Constitutional amendments until about 11:40.
Ratification of Constitutional Amendments
Last year's Business Meeting gave first passage to four amendments to the WSFS Constitution, but there were five amendments on the agenda for ratification, because the "E Pluribus Hugo" rules adopted in 2015 at Sasquan that changed the way we count nominations for the Hugo Award had a requirement to bring the rule back up for a final re-ratification vote. This was a long debate, but unlike a lot of the debate to this point, was mostly focused on the substance of EPH. That is, it was a genuine debate on the merits of the proposal. Eventually, EPH was re-ratified (i.e. permanently adopted, or at least as permanently as anything in the WSFS Constitution can be considered to be adopted) on a vote by an uncounted show of hands.
Note that "uncounted show of hands" means that the Chair asks for a show of hands of those in favor, then those opposed, and declares how the Chair thinks the vote went. If enough members call for a "division," then we take a counted standing vote using the "serpentine" method that you can see on the video.
Item E.2 really should have been non-controversial. It moves a requirement currently in the Standing Rules into the Constitution about the deadline for submitting new business. The reason for moving it was that the Standing Rules are subordinate to the Constitution, so the feeling was that the junior document shouldn't restrict amendments to the senior document. However, the existing rule can be suspended by a 2/3 vote (the same as with nearly all standing rules), and the constitutional version did not explicitly allow for its own suspension. When Don Eastlake moved to add a self-suspending clause to the proposal, a few people got confused, and as a result the meeting voted to refer E.2 to an ad hoc committee chaired by Don to clarify things and report back tomorrow.
E.3 and E.4 were uncontroversial and passed by a show of hands, either unanimously or nearly so.
E.5 was controversial. It prohibits members from transferring the voting rights of their membership in WSFS. Instead of there being a "supporting membership" and an "attending membership," there will now be a "WSFS membership" (the former supporting membership, which includes the voting rights) and an "attending supplement" (the right of a WSFS member to attend the annual conference, i.e. Worldcon). You can transfer the attending supplement to anyone, but that person must be already be a WSFS (formerly supporting) member or purchase a WSFS (formerly supporting) membership. Essentially, this is to put a stop to people partially using their voting rights and then transferring part of the membership to someone else.
After a long debate, the vote on this was close enough that we needed to do a serpentine count. "Non-transferability of Voting Rights" was ratified on a 46-40 vote.
So aside from the matter of clarifying E.2 (which as I mentioned above will come back tomorrow), we have now completed consideration of all of the constitutional amendments pending ratification. We have not, however, even started to address the eight new constitutional amendments that were submitted to this year's meeting. If we do try to consider all of them, it seems very clear to me that we will not be able to get everything done by the end of the meeting on Sunday. After all, we have to do Site Selection business for both the 2024 Worldcon and the 2023 NASFiC at the start of Sunday's meeting. This probably means that we will need an "overflow" session on Monday morning.
Now once the meeting deals with Site Selection business and E.2 (the last constitutional amendment pending a ratification vote), the meeting can adjourn sine die ("without date," which ends the session for this Worldcon) at any time. If the meeting so adjourns, all matters not otherwise passed or sent to committees "fall to the floor," i.e. they die. So the meeting does not have to consider everything.
There's one other factor in play here. Due to the convention facility schedule, there is a hard stop on the meeting at 1 PM on Monday. In other words, if the meeting futzes around long enough, it may be forced to adjourn sine die even if members still want to keep talking. I really hope it doesn't get to that point. We still have a lot of work do do with WSFS this year.