The Chengdu Worldcon has announced its membership rates.

https://file770.com/chengdu-worldcon-publishes-qas-to-explain-their-membership-and-admission-structure/

Its Q&A says: "WSFS membership is not a requirement to buy the in-person admission package, but if you buy both, you’ll be given a full ATTENDING MEMBERSHIP."

At first I thought this must go against the WSFS constitution. The WSFS
site says: "The World Science Fiction Society is an unincorporated
literary society whose membership is defined by the WSFS Constitution as
the membership of the current Worldcon."

https://www.wsfs.org/membership/

But WSFS also says: "The current Worldcon is allowed to define other
types of memberships to their convention. Some of these membership types
may include the membership types listed above, but others (e.g. 'Single
Day Admissions' or 'Babe in Arms') may include only admission to the
Worldcon without membership rights."

Allowing full convention attendance without a WSFS membership strikes me
as falling under the letter of this rule, but not the intent. I'm no
expert on this, and there are people here who understand WSFS operations
much better than I do. Could someone give an informed opinion on this?

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

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Gary McGath <[email protected]> wrote:

Allowing full convention attendance without a WSFS membership strikes me
as falling under the letter of this rule, but not the intent. I'm no
expert on this, and there are people here who understand WSFS operations
much better than I do. Could someone give an informed opinion on this?

I think this is legal by my reading of the rules, and I understand why they want to do it. But I also think it is a very bad idea because it helps to
add a barrier between different fans. What I like about fan-run cons is that everyone is in the same position whether they are a guest, the con chair, or
a guy who goes to a couple panels.

The Helsinki folks wanted the same sort of thing, but they approached it in
a MUCH better way by giving a "first worldcon" discount. This brings in more people who wouldn't otherwise have gone to worldcon, but at the same time
it does nothing to set up a line between different classes of attendees.

It is possible that the Chengdu folks took the route they did rather than
the route taken in Helsinki because they didn't want a huge flush of new
people voting on the Hugos. On the other hand, that happened after Helsinki and it was a good thing on the whole.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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On 4/1/22 9:35 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

The Helsinki folks wanted the same sort of thing, but they approached it in
a MUCH better way by giving a "first worldcon" discount. This brings in more people who wouldn't otherwise have gone to worldcon, but at the same time
it does nothing to set up a line between different classes of attendees.

It is possible that the Chengdu folks took the route they did rather than
the route taken in Helsinki because they didn't want a huge flush of new people voting on the Hugos. On the other hand, that happened after Helsinki and it was a good thing on the whole.

According to everyone's predictions, the large majority of the
attendance at the 2023 Worldcon will be Chinese who have never attended
a Worldcon before. Maybe the concom wanted to avoid having them dominate
the Hugo voting.

--
Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Gary McGath <[email protected]> wrote:

On 4/1/22 9:35 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:

The Helsinki folks wanted the same sort of thing, but they approached it in >> a MUCH better way by giving a "first worldcon" discount. This brings in more
people who wouldn't otherwise have gone to worldcon, but at the same time
it does nothing to set up a line between different classes of attendees.

It is possible that the Chengdu folks took the route they did rather than
the route taken in Helsinki because they didn't want a huge flush of new
people voting on the Hugos. On the other hand, that happened after Helsinki >> and it was a good thing on the whole.

According to everyone's predictions, the large majority of the
attendance at the 2023 Worldcon will be Chinese who have never attended
a Worldcon before. Maybe the concom wanted to avoid having them dominate
the Hugo voting.

Right, the same thing happened at Helsinki. Vast numbers of people who had never attended any con before, but who had long wanted to. I think that's probably a good thing in itself (although in Helsinki it was a problem
because there wasn't the infrastructure to support the unexpected flood of members).

It turns out there are a whole lot of Scandinavian SF fans and not very many cons, so there was a big pent up demand when Worldcon came along. The same will happen in Chengdu I suspect, and we'll see how they manage it.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)