This year’s Hugo ballot presented an unprecedented challenge, in that two of the nominations [by which I mean a work or individual that is nominated in some category] claimed more than five nominees [by which I mean a person who would claim the award should their nomination win in its category]. This has never happened before, not in the 35,000+ records for over 100 different awards compiled the past 10 or 12 years, since the first version of the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards, the predecessor to sfadb, was launched. (I should clarify that dramatic presentation nominations, in the Hugo Awards, do not indicate every producer, director, and writer, as a nominee; that is, whichever presentation wins, only a single trophy is handed out. Thus, sfadb compiles their credits as comments, not indexed as nominees. But if a semiprozine, say, claims three editors, sfadb indexes all three as nominees, and the Hugo committees provide three trophies.)
This year, the Hugo ballot indicates six nominees for fancast nomination SF Squeecast, and *nine* nominees for semiprozine nomination Strange Horizons.
I’m commenting about this because the databases underlying sfadb have allowed, until now, for up to five nominees per nomination, only. When I posted the Hugo Awards page for 2013 last Saturday, I elided the issue by mentioning the more than five nominees as a comment. Today, I have re-engineered my several databases (one to compile the awards records, one to assemble them, building linked bylines and whatnot, a third to build php pages) to allow for up to nine nominees, and have updated the Hugo pages and created additional Name pages for the plus 5 nominees.
http://www.sfadb.com/Hugo_Awards_2013
46 new and updated pages.
Aside from technical issues, I would note that the Academy Awards, the Oscars, have had a rule for some time allowing only some number — four? five? not sure — producers for a given Best Picture nomination. Not that they get individual trophies if they win; but if they win they can claim credit.
Will the Hugo committee produce six, or nine, Hugo trophies if one of these nominated works wins? Curious.
Anyway, the technical issue has been addressed. Sfadb can handle as many nominees as want to claim credit for any single nomination.