2020 Ditmar Report

This page constitutes the Ditmar Sub-Committee Report for 2020.

Report

Nomination Process

Nominations were open for a period of 35 days.

A total of about 200 nominations were received from about 30 people; a precipitous drop from last year.

This year there were no email nominations, and as normal, no postal nominations.

Once again all nominations were processed using the software developed by Peter Lyons. With a little bit of effort, these could be cleaned up and made publicly available via a site such as Github.

Voting

Voting was open for 38 days.

Voter numbers were also down, though not quite as precipitously as for nominations. There were 28 voters down from 46 last year.

No postal or email ballots were received.

Once again, the ballots were processed using the automated system developed by <NAME>.

Summary

The decline in nominations was pretty much disastrous: it led to a very sparse ballot and questions about the nomination process. Some people suggested that the nomination process should be reopened (with various caveats to preserve those already on the ballot). After consultation with the Standing Committee, the Ditmar SubCommittee decided that overriding the rules in this instance was too much of a risk to the credibility of the awards.

A note has been added to the Ditmar procedure to consider extending nominations if the nomination count seems to be down. However, the typical timetable does not have more than about a week of slack built into it. Nomination and voting turnout has been a perennial problem, and while it could be argued that this year is far from typical, it is probably time for a rethink of the process.

One idea, may be to open the nominations as early as possible - say January 1st - and keep them open for much more than the required 30 days. And similarly, extend the voting period to much more than the required 30 days. Some conventions, however, are relatively early in the year and would only allow for a slight extension to the timetable.

We should also look at the way we publicize the award process. As normal, several announcements were sent out via Twitter and Facebook, and a few announcements via Australian SF mailing lists. For this year, it is difficult to say whether we could have done more, but it may be worth thinking more about the way we do publicity.

It should also be noted that for the last few years, the Ditmar SubCommittee has consisted of only one person. This is not sustainable in the long run.

Finally, we would like to thank Jeremy Byrne for providing access to the online systems used for administering the Ditmars.

Eligibility declarations

Peter: "I hereby declare any and all work of mine which might be nominated for the Awards to be ineligible".