There have been *people* trying to make it about some kind of "general and absolute quality".
The canatics and fanonatics love to claim that they are able to judge if a story has this kind of quality. And HASA has (had) its share of such members. There are reasons why there are prejudices against HASA and negative opinions about HASA.
But... I think if I analyze the system as objectively as I can, sort of slipping into my political analyst mode, then I don't find the claim of general/absolute/universal quality wired into the system. It's rather an attempt to prevent a single person or a clique to completely taking over submissions procedures. The system is, of course, less than perfect... if people vote yes, just because they recognize a story, if people vote just because their friends told them to, if the reviewer pool is so small that only canatics and fanonatics review (who do indeed believe that they are upholding TEH absolute quality)... *sigh* no man made system is perfect. But for a system without open posting, HASA's approach is not that bad, because it does rely on the individual opinion of quality of nine random readers.
no subject
The canatics and fanonatics love to claim that they are able to judge if a story has this kind of quality. And HASA has (had) its share of such members. There are reasons why there are prejudices against HASA and negative opinions about HASA.
But... I think if I analyze the system as objectively as I can, sort of slipping into my political analyst mode, then I don't find the claim of general/absolute/universal quality wired into the system. It's rather an attempt to prevent a single person or a clique to completely taking over submissions procedures. The system is, of course, less than perfect... if people vote yes, just because they recognize a story, if people vote just because their friends told them to, if the reviewer pool is so small that only canatics and fanonatics review (who do indeed believe that they are upholding TEH absolute quality)... *sigh* no man made system is perfect. But for a system without open posting, HASA's approach is not that bad, because it does rely on the individual opinion of quality of nine random readers.