Please note that Kevin Standlee is a good egg here, and was not involved with this iteration of the Hugo awards and everything which went wrong with it.
His only fault was saying something impolitic at the wrong time, which people feared would be misunderstood due to his position as Chair. (You can see the difference in censured/reprimanded and in the reasoning behind it, but it's easy to skip over that and just retain the list of names. Kevin does not deserve to be lumped in with the others!)
Thanks for this. Kevin has been a part of the Bay Area SF fandom community for a very long time, and I’ve never known him to be anything other than a good, honorable person. I was saddened to see his name on the list of people associated with this, and would have a hard time believing he’d ever act intentionally to undermine Worldcon or the Hugos.
I think this is important to note, and a good call-out.
I think Kevin’s statements were dangerous and problematic (from a maintaining the Hugo trademark perspective) but were more of an administrative/legal concern, regarding the organization’s ability to effectively police the trademark.
His statements also probably weren’t wrong about what was possible, but just not something that an entity that represents the Trademark holder should say in public.
But, he wasn’t associated with the disaster that was the awards presentation. McCarty and other administrators of the award committee should be banned from being near this process for life. Standlee hasn’t done _anything_ so problematic, and seems to have good intentions about the whole thing.
His only fault was saying something impolitic at the wrong time, which people feared would be misunderstood due to his position as Chair. (You can see the difference in censured/reprimanded and in the reasoning behind it, but it's easy to skip over that and just retain the list of names. Kevin does not deserve to be lumped in with the others!)