What’s in a site?
The rules for nominating Web sites for the Hugo made clear that the definition of site was a flexible one:
Q. My site contains numerous sub-sites. Are they separately eligible?
ConJosé has no control over how voters nominate. If a nomination is made for a specific sub-site then we will probably accept that as separate from a nomination for the main site. If your site contains a number of separately edited sections, each with its own distinct identity (for example you host the sites of several authors or clubs) it would probably be polite to suggest to voters that those sub-sites be nominated separately. However, if your "sub-sites" are effectively the equivalent of the columns or departments of a newspaper then you should probably ask voters to consider the site as a whole.
I've been thinking that scifi.com is a formidable nominee, given that it encompasses Sci Fiction, Science Fiction Weekly, and SF Wire, not to mention Seeing Ear Theatre, in addition to all the Sci Fi Channel stuff (which I'm guessing won't draw a lot of Hugo voters). But if by some strange chance you don't happen to know that the site includes those sub-areas, if you go to the top-level scifi.com site, those areas aren't necessarily obvious. It's obviously a huge site, but (for example) it's not immediately obvious that it publishes fiction. (I don't actually think this'll lose it any votes; I suspect most Hugo voters think of the site mainly as the host for Sci Fiction and Science Fiction Weekly. But I do think it's interesting to look at these sites from the point of view of someone unfamiliar with the context.)
Along similar lines, I hadn't been paying much attention to SF Site as a nominee, but that's because when I go there, I notice all the reviews (and interviews), and tend to forget the site's major role as a host. Among the sites they host:
- The Asimov's site
- The Analog site
- The F&SF site
- The Interzone site (where I just renewed my subscription the other day)
- Fantastic Metropolis, the hip angry young e-zine with an attitude
- Michael Swanwick's site
- Bright Weavings, the Guy Gavriel Kay site
- Charles de Lint's site
- And, last but in my opinion greatest, the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, which I included on my nominating ballot; a superb resource.
(I think they used to also host the DNA Publications site, but I think they don't any more.)
So how are we to judge SF Site? As a review'zine? As a hosting site? Or as the sum of all of the above sites?
As I noted back in December, I wanted to nominate the A.I. online game/story (written by Sean Stewart and Alex Irvine, among others); I ended up nominating Cloudmakers as a representative of the story, but I wasn't very satisfied with that solution, and I never got around to doing much to spread the idea. But I still think that one of the most ambitious pieces of interactive hyperfiction ever attempted deserved some recognition, even though it didn't fit nicely into the notion of a "site."
I dunno. It'll be interesting to see how it goes. I think each nominee has various potential advantages over the others; how those advantages stack up against each other is anyone's guess at this point, as far as I'm concerned. (I've now heard three different people announce with great assurance that nominee X was guaranteed to win—and they'd each picked a different X. I have my own guesses, but I'm not gonna make them public, at least not yet.)