SFWA thinks it's the Bush Administration

[sleigh]

I used to have the SFWA anti-piracy logo on the front page of my website. I've now taken it off, as it appears SFWA has become overzealous in its pursuit of piracy. When you order the takedown of Creative Commons fiction for an author who you are not representing, when you evidently do a simple search for an author's name and order a site to remove all the files the search returns, you have overstepped all reasonable bounds.

I sent in my dues to SFWA this year, as I seem to do every year lately, with increasing reluctance. SFWA seems to be becoming less and less relevant with each passing year -- overrun by stupid flame wars, by award-nomination-trading, by the voting drag of a population of people who are no longer professionally-publishing writers but who remain in Active status because once attained, that status is retained for as long as you care to pay your dues.

It's far past time for SFWA to require that Active members 're-credential' their Active status, so that the voting members of the organization are all writers whose careers will be directly affected by the outcome of any vote. I'm getting far, far more 'bang for my buck' from SFNovelists, the new group Toby Buckell started strictly for published novelists of the genre (and which does require that you publish every so often.)

Dear Officers of SFWA, I'm ashamed and I'm angry reading about this. You have cast all members in a poor light by this action, and I want an explanation as to why and how this happened....

Comments

[tobias-buckell.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

Oh, the SF Novelists link is to the wiki (which would confuse outsiders, since that's our login members page, the www.sfnovelists.com link might be more useful in this context).

And, thanks for the compliment re: the usefulness of SF Novelists. I've been very happy with it :-)

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

"Oh, the SF Novelists link is to the wiki..."

Oops, my bad. I'll change that.

"thanks for the compliment re: the usefulness of SF Novelists..."

Wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true!

[tobias-buckell.livejournal.com]

Oops, my bad. I'll change that.

TB: :-)

Wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true!

TB: I'm just so pleased with all we've done over the last year or so, particularly after the humble beginnings. And as for me on a selfish note, I've learned a ton of information from it, so I'm a very happy author :-)

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

SF Novelists has been great, and I would love to see SFWA follow its lead in some areas. I suspect size would make that problematic, though. Much easier to get 50 people to some sort of consensus than it is 1500, ya know?

[tobias-buckell.livejournal.com]

Fifty, yeah. The trick is also to create programs that are not dependent on consensus as much as you can, from my own experiences with large groups. Create mini working groups that the people excited about them can focus on or participate in.

Also, figuring out ways to compartmentalize your groups so that they don't exceed 200-300 people is crucial! 1500 is too many networks/faces/interpersonal issues and a facelessness, there's plenty of evidence that shows groups break down and need ways to great subgroups due to that.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I do suspect that size is a large part of SFWA's issues (as I perceive them, anyway) -- and that's one of the reasons I'm a firm proponent of "re-certification"... because if an Active member had to prove that he or she was still actively publishing in the field every five years or so (one novel in that time frame, or three short stories, in 'professional' venues), then we wouldn't have so 1,500 members.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

... please mentally delete the "so" before "1,500". I wish you could edit comments...

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too.

I'd be okay with a re-qual of some sort. Perhaps not something that kicks folks out completely, but maybe a bump from active back down to associate... I've never understood exactly why you'd want to stay active if you were no longer active in the field.