[e2e] double bland reviewing

[Craig Partridge]

In message <6.0.1.1.2.20040429064852.03104568 at 127.0.0.1>, "David P. Reed" write
s:

>If you want to eliminate the effect of cheap shots and logrolling, make the 
>program committee process transparent and public - it's there (in my 
>experience) that the integrity of a conference is lost.

Having served on dozens of program committees over the past 15 years or
so, my reaction is that this is a cheap shot.  (Sorry!).

I've served on only two program committees where I felt that some participants
weren't trying their best to be careful, candid, appraisers of the work
submitted.  In one case, I was happy to see Vint Cerf take the relevant
party out of the PC meeting for what I expect was a "candid" discussion.

That isn't to say that glitches don't happen.  My experience shows many
cases of risk avoidance (PCs unwilling to risk presenting wild ideas
given a choice of many safe ideas to present instead) and a certain
element of topic numbness (e.g. in the 1990s when you might have 1/4 of
the papers submitted be about ATM -- at some point it got hard to be
interested in an ATM paper, even if there was a valuable contribution).

Craig