I am one of those missing. I joined Sasquan so as to vote for the Hugo Awards, there was a glitch in their PIN process which was corrected, but nothing yet from Midamericon.

I have checked my spam trap.

I find myself asking why I bothered joining an American worldcon. Was the vote worth it? I have never had a good experience from membership, almost as if people in the USA think the world stops at the 12-mile limit, and I know that's not true.

Frankly, I have reached the point where I don't care any more. If the juvenile hounds of hell are trying to mess with the nominations again, let 'em.

I understand you have a saying in Chicago, and, as a foreign member of an American Worldcon, this is the third time.

And I really did have a great-uncle named James Bond.

Dave Bell @1:

Email the address I listed and they'll sort you out. It's just a computer snafu, not a personal slight.

Proof? I noticed on Patrick's Twitter stream that a convention GOH, indisputably resident in the US, had a problem and had to email.

I bought supporting memberships for my wife and I. She got her PIN. I didn’t :/ It’s pretty easy to get burned by rate limits and anti-spam measures when sending lots of emails, so I’m somewhat sympathetic. I’ve emailed and hopefully it’ll all be cleared up quickly.

I think I had to do this a couple years ago, so this isn’t unheard of.

FWIW (since the amended date is also past), this page has an update indicating that the emailing of PINs was taking longer than anticipated, but should be complete by 8 Feb.

I didn't get my PIN, and emailed. A day later, still PINless in Minneapolis, I emailed again. I got an email from a person, saying that he had sent it to me, and I not received it? Since I was scanning my spam trap for Hugo and MidAmeriCon, it's distinctly possible that I discarded the first email.

However, I got my PIN, the person was very pleasant, and it worked on the first try. (Which was a surprise to both of us, as he had said it looked like there was a duplicate error.) And I'm weirdly excited and delighted, since I've never, you know, done the nomination thing before. I usually just wait for the short list.

There's still time to expand and refine. My ballot's a bit thin, as I didn't read a lot this year. But it's neat to be involved in the process.

I'll be interested to see if there's an uptick in paper ballots this year, from people who never get their PIN and who never even hear about the problem/solution.

Steve @6:

My concern would be an uptick in not nominating from people who had signed up for electronic notifications only, want to nominate, but don't do it in time because the email with the PIN was the reminder they were waiting for.

Were I not deeply enough connected into the community to hear about this on Twitter, that would be me.

From the MAC2 twitter account, a few hours ago: "I have an update from the Hugo team that they have identified an issue with the Hugo PIN mailing software. They are working to resolve the problem and will be resending pins to everyone as soon as possible. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and delay this has caused."

I emailed and a pparently am a member of an entire class of screwed-upness that they had not previously known about.

I still don't have my pin, but apparently now they know what bushes to beat.

Oh yes, I'm sure that most people who never got a PIN would not vote at all, instead of figuring out how to fill out a paper ballot. I was just thinking that this would be a quantifiable measure of the screwup: someone who never gets their PIN doesn't vote at all is hard to distinguish from someone who never intended to vote, but a sharp uptick in paper ballots would be a clear indication of people wanting to vote electronically and not being able to.

A solution would be far better than a post-election autopsy technique, however.

I hadn't received my PIN, so I requested it. They sent it, and I found the email in my spam trap. I don't know whether a previous email was caught in my spam trap.

Panix has changed their spam settings. I hope it helps.

Thanks for that public service announcement. I'm still pinless, but just emailed them. Without this post, which says exactly what to do in that case, I probably wouldn't have gotten around to it before it was too late.

alisea @12:

That is the precise situation that I realized I could well have ended up in, and the reason I wrote the post. Win!

I got my PIN without any problem, but I have yet to try it out.
Some of the reported solutions include swapping first and last names, and using A or S with the membership number.

A quick note that others may find useful: It took me two tries to log in to the nominating ballot. The trick was to specify "S200" as my membership number, instead of just "200". This may or may not be related to the fact that I received my nominating credentials as someone who was a supporting member of Sasquan, since I hadn't bought my MAC2 membership yet.

I've gotten my PIN at least twice -- which is a much happier situation than not getting it at all! Good on you, Abi, for making this post happen.

The Internal Server didn't like me complimenting Abi for writing this post. Maybe this will make it happier.

Thanks for the reminder; I'm another one who didn't receive their PIN. (Forgot to go looking because I'm on the road at present. Midamericon Hugo folks emailed per blog entry).

Oddly, I received my pin three times.

PIN requested and received within less than 2 hours. My first and last name are reversed, but that's fine. Thanks for the reminder to track this down!

Thank you for this. I'd begun to vaguely wonder if I'd missed an email with my pin, or whether I actually hadn't gotten one and should contact someone about it. The confirmation that it's a widespread problem is much appreciated- I'd probably have put off dealing with it until it was too late, otherwise.

For my part, I got my PIN with no problem, on the second or third day of the initial mailing period; and when I went to use the login information it worked without a hitch. Who knew that I was a special snowflake?

I was one of the missing. In less than 3 hours it was all sorted out and I now have my PIN.

Well done Terry and MidAmericon2.

I had gotten my PIN on time, but thanks for the tip about including "A" or "S" as part of your member number. My Midamericon member number (sans A) was including in the email I got, but it didn't work until I put the A on front.

Thank you for the reminder, Abi. I had seen the talk on Twitter but not actually done anything about it yet.

Given the (understandable) weight with which nominations this year are frought, I would quite rather they just sent everybody's PIN again, at the risk of duplicates, rather than making some hundreds of us go bother a person individually.

As it turned out, I didn't need to add a letter to my membership number, but I did need to reverse my first and last names.

I haven't had an email with a pin yet. I'll email them in a minute with my details, because I do want to nominate a couple of things.

I strolled over to the site, planning to solve the problem by buying a supporting membership

As a small nocturnal marsupial predator I also have a short memory. I could have sworn a supporting membership was less than US$50 last year. Like, exactly half that.

But, largely insectivorous australasian hunters have poor memories. Perhaps that's what it's always costed. With the current strength of the US dollar, I won't be buying one. Which is a shame, but nobody's fault. I am well aware that conventions do not run themselves.

I had to add a "A" to the front of my membership number.

I paid $40 for a supporting membership last year, but it might have been cheaper if I'd bought it earlier.

According to Loncon 3's web site, the site selection fee (which includes a supporting membership to the winning bid) was $40. The price for a supporting membership is sometimes higher than the site selection fee, but in my experience it's never lower. (There may even be a Constitutional impediment to offering cheaper supporting memberships, but I'm too lazy to check.)

In case anyone else is confused by this---the thing beginning 'KC' followed by 10 digits is your PIN, not your membership number.

If you put your PIN in the 'membership number' field it will silently drop the last two digits but not otherwise behave differently than if some other error were present.

I also had to reverse my names.

I have received my PIN, but it doesn't work.

Things I have tried, separately and in combination with each other:

1. Reversing the order of my names
2. Adding an S to the start of my membership number
3. Adding an A to the start of my membership number
4. Adding an M to the start of my membership number, because... I don't know
5. Hand-typing instead of copy-pasting
6. Lowercasing everything
7. Using my first initial only

One of the admins mentioned something about "duplicate PINs". Does anyone have any further information about this? When should I reach out to them again, and when should I forbear in order to keep their inboxes from exploding?

I am still waiting, six days after initial bug report, for anything other than, "Sorry, we're working on it." Apparently the previously-unknown-to-tech-support group I'm part of is ... tenacious.

(that group being "bought a Helsinki membership in the last week before Jan 31", in case any of you are in the same boat)

Was Sasquan Supporting Member, had to email to get my PIN. It arrived overnight to my inbox (a prompt response especially given timezone differences) and worked without having to try the variations listed above.

As a contrasting data point... I got my PIN, five times in total. (All the same PIN, and it works without any problems; I don't have to add an S to my membership number or anything.)

I suspect the sound of people at Midamericon tearing their hair out over this issue might be audible even in the UK... all I can do from here, of course, is offer my best wishes that it gets sorted out to everyone's ultimate satisfaction!

(And, of course, use the darn PIN and get nominating. My ballot is taking shape.)

Let's see... I bought a Midamericon supporting membership on... January 18. So I dunno what that says about it all.

Scrabble (36): Given Elliott's problems, it sounds like the timing could be an issue.

Also, since you have a supporting membership, it would be an 'S' that you might need to add to your member number. (S=supporting, A=attending)

@Mary Aileen: Alas, I've tried it, to no avail. [Tragedy face.]

Scrabble (38): Yes, you said you had tried all possible combinations. I was just trying to save you a little trouble the next time, when they get your PIN sorted out. :)

I just managed to log in. Had to swap my first & last names.

Initially didn't get my PIN, mailed and inquired, got PIN by return email within, oh, half an hour or so. Stellar work, Terry.

Managed to log in, but ended up having to swap first and last name (and, alas, mis-spell my last name, seems an "s" went walksies at some point). Can't recall if I needed to play shenanigans with an A prefix for the membership number, but think I didn't.

Datum: I had to request a PIN but it's worked great & was able to log in first try; no need to swap names, add prefixes, or any other trick needed. So even if I get run over by a truck tomorrow, my nominating ballot will have some items.

Thanks, Mary Aileen!

Ingvar M, was your name misspelled/swapped around in the official email or did you have to make some kind of intuitive leap?

I got my PIN; it didn't work. I emailed them, the person who responded said it looked like I had a duplicate PIN and he'd escalate it to an admin. A week later I asked if there was any news and got a "We're working on it, sorry!" Which, OK, but keep me in the loop, eh?

I did not receive my PIN. Have just emailed to ask for it. (Sasquan supporting member in NJ, if we're doing some sort of statistics.)

I got my member number and PIN email 8 times! But I just checked it, and it works.

Now I need to know what's eligible. I meant to keep track of what I read, but I didn't. The "I see you read science fiction" thread had some ideas, but I am wondering where else I could look. I don't pay much attention to publication date, and would be nice to have my memory jogged, as in, "oh, *that* was published in 2015, and I liked it."

Scrabble @ #43:

It was (and probably is) mis-spelled on the membership list, happily I'd checked it mere hours before. When it didn't work with all the esses in, I tried dropping one.

The name-swapping was mentioned as a possible issue in the email.

Technology is so cool.
When it works.
And you can figure out how to use it.

@Magenta Griffith: there's a few sites out there listing Hugo-eligible works for this year; a couple that I visit regularly are

Rocket Stack Rank

and

the Hugo Nominations Wikia

(There's also this blog by Ken Marable, where I've been known to stick my own oar in, more than occasionally.)

There's plenty of opinions, pro and con, about the stories on offer - but these sites will, at least, give you some idea of the sort of stuff that's eligible (and maybe point you at other things the sites' collators have missed, who knows?)

Wholly off topic I know, but some people here might enjoy the Nixoniad: nixoniad.blogspot.com...

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There's also Renay's Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom.

I didn't receive a PIN automatically. I emailed asking for my PIN on 17 February and received it a few hours later. I just tried logging in and had to prepend an S to the membership number to get it to work. Also, MAC seems from the PIN email to think my name is Henry James, but logging in that way didn't work; the correct James Henry did work.

And here I was going to ask you to autograph my copy of Portrait of a Lady.

So according to one of the admins, the solution to my problem was to ignore the "invalid info" error message and just enter the exact same info a second time. I have no idea why that works and I find it very foolish, but I'm glad I can actually get in now...

I have just received mine for the third time - first time after querying, second and now entirely unlooked-for.

I also had to preface my membership number with an S.

I just received mine again. This time it correctly had an A in front of the membership ID.

I receieved mine for the first time just now.

I have still not received my PIN, after several queries. All responses boil down to, "No, haven't fixed it yet, working on it."

I just got mine again, too. Like Steve Halter's, mine now had the necessary A in front of the member number.

The first time around, it took them a few days to send out all the PINs. I'm guessing it may take awhile to complete this re-send, too.

Just got my PIN, for the first time, and I hadn't contacted the admins at all.

I just got my PIN again.

The first one they sent me worked fine, once I got the 'S' on the correct end of the membership number.

Thanks to Steve Wright and P J Evans for links to Hugo list sites. This is what I was looking for.

The PIN I just received includes an apology that wasn't present with the PIN I received a while ago.

My PIN arrived, for the first time, and without prompting (although I was about to). No messing around with the membership number or swapping the name fields required. The membership number does not have a letter prefix.

I have just made my first ever Hugo nominations!

J Homes.

Has anyone mentioned the Hugo eligible art tumblrs?

http://2015hugoart.tumblr.com/
http://hugoeligibleart.tumblr.com/

Are there any sites listing works that are eligible for nominating to the retro-Hugos this year? I'd love to see a list so I can know which of the various stories I remember from my youth might have been originally published in the correct year.

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There are several collections of stories that are public domain and eligible.
Go to File 770 and search for 1941 Hugo - that gets you all the posts where they're linked.