4 ms·

The Journey of a Complaint at SIGCOMM HotNets 2020

32 points by luu 5y ago

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I would normally think that this is the population that matters was meant as since this is the predominant number of users these are the people that matter in delivery of services, since if you can make a logical demarcation of your userbase then you can use that logic to determines who 'matters'. Since they then showed that the statement was factually incorrect and the largest number of users was not in the developed world I would personally have found that an adequate take down of the report. Personally if I had written it I would feel like a fool and be depressed at my own stupidity. So, since I don't think that this is the population that matters was meant as anything other than 'our preponderance of the users are here and thus they matter more' and my belief that the takedown, touching on the intellectual vanity of the authors, would be more than adequate. I found the whole PC HotNets complaint story a bit overdone. But obviously the author and his friends thought the this is the population that matters bit was meant as more derogatory than I took it as.
- zibzab 5y ago
  The initial text could be a misunderstanding or just an unfortunate choice of words. But the reviewer doubled down and went political 8n his response, showing that this was not really the case. I would probably have let it rest at this point, but I am happy she did not. It sometimes takes a "naive idiot" (her words) to improve things.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    frankly I had a hard time understanding the response, my feelings on it were: This guy is too arrogant and insecure to just admit he got it wrong Failing that this guy is too stupid to come up with a rationally understandable argument why his report is worthwhile anyway, or in place of too stupid which after all is rude, to poor in the skill of rhetoric to craft a response that does not make them sound like a raving loony. Although when you're arguing you own case the emotional connection makes other things more difficult, hence the saying that a lawyer who represents themselves in court has a fool for a client. So I guess I just sort of discount the response as in too weird to decipher. Probably shouldn't do that though.
zibzab 5y ago
Was that initial review written by an AI? Seriously, the text is grammatically correct but beyond that it is all nonsense. Update: a friend submitted a paper to a related sigcomm conference in 2021 and the reviews were extremely unhelpful. There were so many incorrect statements from multiple reviews the he just gave up, submitted to another (higher rank) conference and got it accepted with much more useful comments. I remember we had some serious laugh looking at reviewers who claimed they were very familiar with the subject but made a complete fool of themselves with their comments. And some of them came across as very mean-spirited, which is quite an accomplishment in a 1000 word anonymous technical statement. I guess what I am trying to say is that ACM needs to review the reviewers at some point to improve conference quality, because some are going downhill very fast. I understand finding good reviewers is hard, but getting rid of bad ones should not be a big issue...

32 points by luu 5y ago

I would normally think that this is the population that matters was meant as since this is the predominant number of users these are the people that matter in delivery of services, since if you can make a logical demarcation of your userbase then you can use that logic to determines who 'matters'. Since they then showed that the statement was factually incorrect and the largest number of users was not in the developed world I would personally have found that an adequate take down of the report. Personally if I had written it I would feel like a fool and be depressed at my own stupidity. So, since I don't think that this is the population that matters was meant as anything other than 'our preponderance of the users are here and thus they matter more' and my belief that the takedown, touching on the intellectual vanity of the authors, would be more than adequate. I found the whole PC HotNets complaint story a bit overdone. But obviously the author and his friends thought the this is the population that matters bit was meant as more derogatory than I took it as.

zibzab 5y ago
The initial text could be a misunderstanding or just an unfortunate choice of words. But the reviewer doubled down and went political 8n his response, showing that this was not really the case. I would probably have let it rest at this point, but I am happy she did not. It sometimes takes a "naive idiot" (her words) to improve things.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  frankly I had a hard time understanding the response, my feelings on it were: This guy is too arrogant and insecure to just admit he got it wrong Failing that this guy is too stupid to come up with a rationally understandable argument why his report is worthwhile anyway, or in place of too stupid which after all is rude, to poor in the skill of rhetoric to craft a response that does not make them sound like a raving loony. Although when you're arguing you own case the emotional connection makes other things more difficult, hence the saying that a lawyer who represents themselves in court has a fool for a client. So I guess I just sort of discount the response as in too weird to decipher. Probably shouldn't do that though.

zibzab 5y ago

Was that initial review written by an AI? Seriously, the text is grammatically correct but beyond that it is all nonsense. Update: a friend submitted a paper to a related sigcomm conference in 2021 and the reviews were extremely unhelpful. There were so many incorrect statements from multiple reviews the he just gave up, submitted to another (higher rank) conference and got it accepted with much more useful comments. I remember we had some serious laugh looking at reviewers who claimed they were very familiar with the subject but made a complete fool of themselves with their comments. And some of them came across as very mean-spirited, which is quite an accomplishment in a 1000 word anonymous technical statement. I guess what I am trying to say is that ACM needs to review the reviewers at some point to improve conference quality, because some are going downhill very fast. I understand finding good reviewers is hard, but getting rid of bad ones should not be a big issue...