[TYPES/announce] Two phase reviewing for POPL; a response

[Philip Wadler]

Many thanks to Simon and everyone else who has posted in
this thread for their thoughtful comments.

The POPL Steering Committee has considered whether to increase
the number of papers accepted, and indeed there is slow growth
in the numbers accepted.  The two-phase proposal is largely
orthogonal to this.

I initiated discussion in the POPL Steering Committee, and
now the wider community, because after serving as program
chair for POPL 2008, I felt that the system was carrying
more weight than it could bear.  We all know that refereeing
is rough and ready, and decisions are not perfect.  But my
experience in 2008 suggested that under the increasing level
of submissions that the quality of decisions was going down,
while their impact on tenure and careers was going up.

Anyone who's sat in a pc meeting knows there will be papers
where expert reviews are lacking, and someone volunteers to
read the paper overnight and provide an opinion.  They will
also know that innovative papers often have flaws, and the
dynamics of pc meetings is that the detractors usually win
out over the champions.  These are the issues that two-phase
reviewing is intended to address.

That said, if the sense of the POPL community is similar to
the sense expressed by the Types readership to date, I doubt
the two-phase proposal will be adopted.  If you want
two-phase, speak up.  If you want something else, please
contact a member of the POPL Steering Committee and work
with them to formulate an alternative proposal.  It would be
great to have a number of constructive alternatives to
consider at the community meeting next week.

Yours, -- P


REMINDERS, FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

POPL community meeting:
5:15-6:30pm Wednesday 20 January 2010.

POPL Steering Committee:

  * Philip Wadler, current SIGPLAN Chair and 2008 Program Chair
  * Kathleen Fisher, past SIGPLAN Chair
  * Graham Hutton, current SIGPLAN Vice Chair
  * Chandra Krintz, past SIGPLAN Vice Chair
  * Thomas Ball, 2011 General Chair
  * Mooly Sagiv, 2011 Program Chair
  * Manuel Hermenegildo, 2010 General Chair
  * Jens Palsberg, 2010 Program Chair
  * Zhong Shao, 2009 General Chair
  * Benjamin Pierce, 2009 Program Chair
  * George Necula, 2008 General Chair
  * Martin Hofman, 2007 General Chair
  * Matthias Felleisen, 2007 Program Chair

-- 
.\ Philip Wadler, Professor of Theoretical Computer Science
./\ School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
/  \ http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/

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