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I think what they're saying is this: USENIX ATC at its best was always focused on operations and real use of Unix. It was the Unix User's Group. But academic

by mlyle 1y ago

I think what they're saying is this: USENIX ATC at its best was always focused on operations and real use of Unix. It was the Unix User's Group. But academic CS has a shortage of real publishing opportunities, causing less immediately practical things to flood USENIX ATC and smother it.

Ar-Curunir 1y ago
Academic CS has no shortage of prestigious or even good publishing venues. Just within systems and networking, there is SOSP, OSDI, NSDI, EuroSys, PODC, DISC, FAST, SIGCOMM, CIDR. If you extend to databases there's also VLDB, SIGMOD, etc. These are all Tier-1/Tier-1.5 venues. Academic CS didn't take over ATC because of a shortage of venues.
- bcantrill 1y ago
  You made this comment twice, so I guess I'll reply to it twice, but the reality is that the acceptance rates of ATC was very, very low (again, under 13% in 2004). Low acceptance rates actually do indicate a shortage of good publishing venues (certainly relative to the number of submissions), but it would be interesting to look at the ATC acceptance rate over time; if it was much (much) higher in its final years, it would be easier to accept your assertion.
  - musicale 1y ago
    17% in 2024. More submissions than other conferences. Attendance numbers probably skewed by cross-registration with OSDI.
  - Ar-Curunir 1y ago
    https://github.com/emeryberger/csconferences https://github.com/emeryberger/csconferences indicates that ATC acceptance rate has averaged 20% in the last five years, so better than ~13%, but not by too much. However, at least speaking as an academic, I wouldn't say that ~20% acceptance rate is necessarily indicative of a shortage of good venues. There is plenty of not-so-good research that is submitted to top places that has no hope of getting in. (My experience is from computer security research, where the acceptance rate of security conferences has gone down, but the fraction of good papers has also actually gone down, so the fraction of good papers getting in has roughly stayed the same.) That being said, ATC seems to indeed have been a high-prestige conference back in the day, and hence indeed competitive. My experience is from recent years, where it was viewed as a good-but-not-tier-1 conference in systems research.

by mlyle 1y ago

Ar-Curunir 1y ago

Academic CS has no shortage of prestigious or even good publishing venues. Just within systems and networking, there is SOSP, OSDI, NSDI, EuroSys, PODC, DISC, FAST, SIGCOMM, CIDR. If you extend to databases there's also VLDB, SIGMOD, etc. These are all Tier-1/Tier-1.5 venues. Academic CS didn't take over ATC because of a shortage of venues.

bcantrill 1y ago
You made this comment twice, so I guess I'll reply to it twice, but the reality is that the acceptance rates of ATC was very, very low (again, under 13% in 2004). Low acceptance rates actually do indicate a shortage of good publishing venues (certainly relative to the number of submissions), but it would be interesting to look at the ATC acceptance rate over time; if it was much (much) higher in its final years, it would be easier to accept your assertion.
- musicale 1y ago
  17% in 2024. More submissions than other conferences. Attendance numbers probably skewed by cross-registration with OSDI.
- Ar-Curunir 1y ago
  https://github.com/emeryberger/csconferences https://github.com/emeryberger/csconferences indicates that ATC acceptance rate has averaged 20% in the last five years, so better than ~13%, but not by too much. However, at least speaking as an academic, I wouldn't say that ~20% acceptance rate is necessarily indicative of a shortage of good venues. There is plenty of not-so-good research that is submitted to top places that has no hope of getting in. (My experience is from computer security research, where the acceptance rate of security conferences has gone down, but the fraction of good papers has also actually gone down, so the fraction of good papers getting in has roughly stayed the same.) That being said, ATC seems to indeed have been a high-prestige conference back in the day, and hence indeed competitive. My experience is from recent years, where it was viewed as a good-but-not-tier-1 conference in systems research.