The agenda for this year’s World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting was released last night. I’ll have more to say about this year’s business in due course, but I was surprised to see that I got a name check. Don’t worry, I don’t think I have done anything awful. I just happen to be one of the people responsible for updating the WSFS wesbites, and I got named in connection with a particular update that has just been made (because I did it).

The job in question was to upload a copy of the current version of the Worldcon Runners’ Guide.

“The what?” I hear you ask. After all, following the recent meltdown over programming at Worldcon 76, lots of people were asking on Twitter why there is no means of passing wisdom on from one Worldcon to the next. Well of course there is. It is just that people tend not to take any notice of it, or in some cases deliberately ignore it. But the Guide is also badly out of date, and work is in progress to update it.

As I understand that problem (and I haven’t been involved in the responsible committee so I may be wrong here), what happened in this. Back in the days when the Internet was a new and shiny thing, people came up with the bright idea of putting the Guide online as a wiki. However, they soon discovered that there was far more work involved in protecting it from spammers and trolls than might have been saved by having it editable online. So a bunch of people are in the process of editing it back down to an offline document, and hopefully updating it to include things like sections on diverse programming, use of the Grenadine programming software, and social media management.

In the meantime, a version of the existing material has been posted on the WSFS website. You can find it here. Please note that it has a bunch of formatting issues, and as I said it is out of date. If you want to be helpful, I’m sure that the people responsible for creating the new version would prefer you to wait until they have finished tidying it up before commenting. On the other hand, if you would like to offer your expertise and be part of the editing committee, they would probably be delighted to hear from you.