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Notes -
WorldCon didn't require physical attendance, but it did require membership, and few people realized how open the membership requirements were. Even for people who were in the know, most were aware of WorldCon membership as a great deal for voracious readers, since an annual remote membership (I think 40 USD?) would get you a free copy of most of the nominated works in a big folder, than for the ability to vote remotely.
Correia et all's claim was that regardless of who was allowed to vote, the actual voting for both nominations and final round was actually done by a pretty small and intellectually-cloistered group, turning from the
100 sort of people who read the WorldCon constitution to the500 sort of people who'd read Scalzi's and Glover's blog and somehow stay awake. Moreover, because of the nature of the nomination phase, it was very easy for a fairly small amount of coordination to overcome a lot of other more popular works.More options
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This is the basic outline, but it's worth mentioning that all this played out over the pattern of Social Justice driving community closure, as it was doing to countless communities at the time. 2013-2015 was when Social Justice hit critical mass, and started enforcing its preferences on online and offline communities. People who weren't on board became aware that it was happening, and tried to push back; in almost all cases, this resulted in a fight over legible, objective mechanisms of power and status; moderation positions, awards, control of events and so on.
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