A beauty contest is a close parallel, if we substitute for "beauty" "fan-pleasingness".
I do think that the Hugos generally show a general convergence on implicit standards of quality: just not particularly good standards of quality; whence comes the long-standing objection that they reward no quality at all ("Have we lived and fought in vain?").
What I found somewhere between amusing and irritating was the commenters trying to apply statistical analysis to a non-random pool which is in any case too small. (I gather that psychologists speak of a Law of Small Numbers which is "people believe the Law of Large Numbers applies to small numbers.")
The Puppies, thankfully, seem to have subsided into the background, or the morass of American right wing culture, though I'm sure James was implicitly responding to complaints coming from that general direction.
The irony in that is that this year's winner is as clear an homage to their god RAH in technique and style as I've seen since Panshin.
no subject
I do think that the Hugos generally show a general convergence on implicit standards of quality: just not particularly good standards of quality; whence comes the long-standing objection that they reward no quality at all ("Have we lived and fought in vain?").
What I found somewhere between amusing and irritating was the commenters trying to apply statistical analysis to a non-random pool which is in any case too small. (I gather that psychologists speak of a Law of Small Numbers which is "people believe the Law of Large Numbers applies to small numbers.")
The Puppies, thankfully, seem to have subsided into the background, or the morass of American right wing culture, though I'm sure James was implicitly responding to complaints coming from that general direction.
The irony in that is that this year's winner is as clear an homage to their god RAH in technique and style as I've seen since Panshin.