NOTES AND THINGS TO DO TO THE SIGPLAN WEB PAGES
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Comments and questions are in HTML comments in the respective .md files, marked BCP/AF as appropriate. Do
grep -R -n --exclude *.html '<!-- ' .to find them.
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Weird stuff to check
- SIGPLAN Notices articles listed twice in GenChair and ProChair?
- By-laws.md seems to be an ancient LCETS thing?
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(Benjamin) Read through the conference-specific documents (Principles of POPL, etc.) and see if there are any duplications / inconsistencies
- put the edited / commented versions into the repo (it was sent in email)
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(Azadeh) Trim the "private information for GCs" document and make sure that it ONLY contains sensitive information that does not belong in public places; all information that can be public should go in .md files someplace, and this document should include a note asking that this be maintained as an invariant going forward.
- Basically, all that should remain in the secret document is the "Per-Workshop or Symposium Fund" section: everything else can be moved to GenChair
- The trimmed secret document should have a little note prepended saying that it was written by Jeremy for ICFP and adapted by Yannis for general distribution, and explaining that Annabel or somebody should give it to each GC that needs it.
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(Azadeh and Jens)
- look through all BCP comments and either fix things or leave responses for further discussion
- reintegrate Yannis's Google doc with the .md files (either following or adapting BCP's suggestions in comments in the Google doc)
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Add a note to the GC (and PCC and SC?) documents about the relationship between this document and the conference-specific ones
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Investigate why the site is always so slow to load (created by Azadeh).
[Requests from Kathryn]
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On this web page, http://sigplan.org/Resources/Policies/Review/ where it says Contacts, I suggest starting with Authors (versus now it starts with Reviewers).
Contacts Authors may contact only the Program Chair about submitted papers during and after the review process. Contacting PC, EPC, or ERC members about submitted paper(s) is an ethical violation and may be grounds for summary rejection. Reviewers should not interact with authors about their submitted papers. Any interaction should go through the program chair. -
Please also add it also to the advice Program Chairs, that they should link to the above page from the CFP http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/ProChair/
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In this page, it should also just copy the above about Contacts. http://sigplan.org/Resources/Author/
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Also, we should add a top level page with the code of conduct we expect from participation at our events, that includes a link to the ACM page.
- some of the award information is out of date (e.g., the OOPSLA most influential paper award, the list of ACM fellows)
- the CC conference is missing, and the rest of the list should be reordered with the flagship conferences at the top -- the current order is kind of random. (Harry will do this one.)
- the "author information" item doesn't really fit with the rest of "conference information". How about we break it out into a separate category all by itself?
- Remove the "Conference Policies" reference (to the Google doc at the bottom)!
- Actually, I propose replacing all the links to conference organization pages (from "Steering Committee Guidelines" to "Colocation guidelines") with just a single link to ConferenceOrganzers.md. This will leave us with one clearly marked landing page for authors and one clearly marked page for organizers. Both of these landing pages should include links to critical policies (reviewing, code of conduct, etc.).
- The "Policies" box should include a link to the Errata policy.
(BCP: We should consider these after one round of consolidation is done.)
- If one wants to identify the real needs of the community, I'd say
these are the clarification and codification of what event
organizers need to do in terms of
sponsorship/in-cooperation/co-location status and what control
SIGPLAN exerts. (Multiple people have told me this at conferences
and I've raised the topic before.)
Basically, I'm saying that it's perhaps wrong to focus on the
Steering <http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/SCommittee>/GC
<http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/GenChair>/PC
<http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/ProChair> part of the
SIGPLAN Conference Information. That's kind of commonplace info, and
well-codified. The real wasp's nest over people's heads is the
Sponsorship
<http://sigplan.org/Resources/Proposals/Sponsored>/In-cooperation
<http://sigplan.org/Resources/Proposals/Cooperated>/colocation
<http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/Colocation> documents.
Although they don't seem to say anything wrong, there is a lot of
important information implied, or just omitted.
Here are is a sampling of specific topics that people die to know
about (also some include SIGPLAN policy decisions):
* There is the concept of "standing sponsorship" by SIGPLAN, such
as that enjoyed by most of the long-running conferences we all know.
Where is this documented? How is it differentiated from the normal
sponsorship forms, as far as the SC or the GC of the year is
concerned? What freedom does a conference *lose* if they apply for
such sponsorship?
* I have a secondary conference that I want to affiliate with one
of the main SIGPLAN conferences. Do I apply for SIGPLAN sponsorship
<http://sigplan.org/Resources/Proposals/Sponsored/>? Or do I just
talk to the main conference's GC for the specific year and he/she
assumes financial responsibility? (Both are legitimate ways, which
is confusing, and people just don't know about this.) Also, for
workshops there is a clear distinction between SIGPLAN-approved and
conference-approved
<http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/Workshops/>, but the name
"workshop" is a problem for many events--see next point.
* We have an event that we fear that, if it gets SIGPLAN status,
it will be demoted to a "workshop", because it only gets <100
attendees. But it's very important to us that the event be called a
"conference": otherwise it doesn't count as a publication for
anyone. What options do we have? Only special deals every year for
co-location with one of ICFP/OOPSLA/PLDI/POPL? (Note that some of
the norms about the naming of events have to do with tradition,
which is opaque and does not reassure people.) Also, what are the
specific rules for naming an event a "symposium"? (Neither a
"conference" nor a "workshop" but synonym to "conference" for most
purposes.) If the rule is that it's a workshop with tons of
attendees (see "Haskell Symposium") why does ISMM get to be called a
"symposium"? How about the DLS (Dynamic Languages Symposium)? (Just
that they have it in the acronym? Nice loophole that others may want
to exploit!) How about the "Scala Symposium"? Can *any* workshop
call themselves a symposium if they commit to run forever? What
repercussions does this have for proceedings publishing? (Also see a
related Piazza discussion
<https://piazza.com/group/hi3oetct4zo4lo?cid=503>, which implies a
decision on more liberal "Symposium" naming has been made, just not
communicated to anyone.)
- A google doc that Yannis wrote
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w5T6bGmUO-8vjHSHpwegkpyFzYypi9HcheUxMTjo-Jw/edit
(This will be deleted)
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For each the major conferences, a document that codifies its contract with the community. (Principles of POPL, Practices of PLDI, etc.)
https://popl.mpi-sws.org/PrinciplesofPOPL.pdf http://www.sigplan.org/sites/default/files/PracticesofPLDI.pdf https://www.icfpconference.org/TheFunctioningofICFP.pdf
(These may want trimming.)
- A SIGPLAN Conference Policies google doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w5T6bGmUO-8vjHSHpwegkpyFzYypi9HcheUxMTjo-Jw/edit)
- For each the major conferences, a document that codifies its contract with the community. (Principles of POPL, Practices of PLDI, etc.)
- A document I haven?t seen that apparently you were asked to create codifying commonalities between these contracts.
1 and 3 are the same, as you suspected. This document is derived from #2 and is not intended to replace the #2 documents. (The Steering Committees know best the extensions and refinements of the common document that they need for their community.) Instead, the #1/#3 document is intended a) for SIGPLAN conferences that don't have their own "constitution", b) as a baseline for future constitutions.
Now on the GC/PC documents:
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Several public web pages listing policies and guides on the SIGPLAN web site ? e.g., Guidelines for the General Chair of a SIGPLAN Event http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/GenChair/ and
Guidelines for the Program Chair of a SIGPLAN Event http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/ProChair/.
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A .txt document with private GC guidelines, to be shared by Annabel to GCs.
#4 is the standard SIGPLAN set of documents. It contains what we want the community to know about conferences, the role of the GC/PC, etc. Most of the text in these is inherited from the depths of time. #5 (which I've sent to Azadeh and Jens by email) concerns financial issues (i.e., revenue sharing with workshops) and hence is not intended for public sharing. It contains the currently-approved guidelines to GCs regarding what they should pass on to satellite events (i.e., money and accommodations that should be guaranteed to secondary conferences and workshops of one of the big SIGPLAN events).
Generally I and possibly the information director (Matthew) have been responsible for these documents. But really, "responsible" has had a loose meaning: every non-trivial change has been approved by the whole EC, either via on-Piazza or via in-person discussions. On most of these topics there are extensive Piazza conversations, which I've linked in my emails to Azadeh or you can find via search.
Hope this helps... Yannis.
Yannis: Many thanks for your list of "topics that people die to know about". I am on board: we gotta have policies and improved documents about those topics.
Azadeh: Let us work us on this! We need a process; what do you suggest? You might run Yannis' points by the SIGPLAN EC, which includes many experienced conference and workshop organizers. --Jens
Quoting Yannis Smaragdakis (yannis@smaragd.org): Let me briefly comment:
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Consolidation will be very welcome. It would be good to have a streamlined set of documents. My fear is that they will degenerate in the current set of documents, if they need to include all the information currently there. Also, there is a current "landing page" of sorts: the "Conference Information" column of the left bar of sigplan.org. Everything is reachable from there, and rarely requires two clicks.
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If one wants to identify the real needs of the community, I'd say these are the clarification and codification of what event organizers need to do in terms of sponsorship/in-cooperation/co-location status and what control SIGPLAN exerts. (Multiple people have told me this at conferences and I've raised the topic before.)
Basically, I'm saying that it's perhaps wrong to focus on the Steering http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/SCommittee/GC http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/GenChair/PC http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/ProChair part of the SIGPLAN Conference Information. That's kind of commonplace info, and well-codified. The real wasp's nest over people's heads is the Sponsorship http://sigplan.org/Resources/Proposals/Sponsored/In-cooperation http://sigplan.org/Resources/Proposals/Cooperated/colocation http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/Colocation documents. Although they don't seem to say anything wrong, there is a lot of important information implied, or just omitted.
Here are is a sampling of specific topics that people die to know about (also some include SIGPLAN policy decisions):
-
There is the concept of "standing sponsorship" by SIGPLAN, such as that enjoyed by most of the long-running conferences we all know. Where is this documented? How is it differentiated from the normal sponsorship forms, as far as the SC or the GC of the year is concerned? What freedom does a conference lose if they apply for such sponsorship?
-
I have a secondary conference that I want to affiliate with one of the main SIGPLAN conferences. Do I apply for SIGPLAN sponsorship http://sigplan.org/Resources/Proposals/Sponsored/? Or do I just talk to the main conference's GC for the specific year and he/she assumes financial responsibility? (Both are legitimate ways, which is confusing, and people just don't know about this.) Also, for workshops there is a clear distinction between SIGPLAN-approved and conference-approved http://sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/Workshops/, but the name "workshop" is a problem for many events--see next point.
-
We have an event that we fear that, if it gets SIGPLAN status, it will be demoted to a "workshop", because it only gets <100 attendees. But it's very important to us that the event be called a "conference": otherwise it doesn't count as a publication for anyone. What options do we have? Only special deals every year for co-location with one of ICFP/OOPSLA/PLDI/POPL? (Note that some of the norms about the naming of events have to do with tradition, which is opaque and does not reassure people.) Also, what are the specific rules for naming an event a "symposium"? (Neither a "conference" nor a "workshop" but synonym to "conference" for most purposes.) If the rule is that it's a workshop with tons of attendees (see "Haskell Symposium") why does ISMM get to be called a "symposium"? How about the DLS (Dynamic Languages Symposium)? (Just that they have it in the acronym? Nice loophole that others may want to exploit!) How about the "Scala Symposium"? Can any workshop call themselves a symposium if they commit to run forever? What repercussions does this have for proceedings publishing? (Also see a related Piazza discussion https://piazza.com/group/hi3oetct4zo4lo?cid=503, which implies a decision on more liberal "Symposium" naming has been made, just not communicated to anyone.)
Codifying and publicly documenting the above is the main pain point I see in the community. I think you get a glimpse of the rabbithole.
Good luck in the new EC! Yannis.
On 09/16/2018 01:06 AM, Benjamin C. Pierce wrote: ? Of course, this will still leave open the question of how we /communicate/ where people should look. But I think that question is easier: new GCs will know that they need some instructions, so they will either look around or ask; then, if part of the instructions are ?you should tell your PC chair, workshops chair, etc. to read this document too,? we will be all set.
- B
On Sep 15, 2018, at 6:03 PM, Benjamin C. Pierce <bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu mailto:bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
This is all as I suspected? :-|
Azadeh was busy this week and has not had a chance yet to look over all the documents. I suggest that, once she has, she and I (in consultation with the rest of you, perhaps omitting Yannis who has already done his time :-) try to put together a streamlined set of documents, both public and private, with a single ?landing page" for all users (GC, PCCs, workshop organizers, workshop chairs) and instructions about what other documents each set of users should be looking at.
- B
On Sep 14, 2018, at 3:12 AM, Peter Thiemann <thiemann@informatik.uni-freiburg.de mailto:thiemann@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
Generally, this is not well communicated. Someone would have to be proactive. Jan (Vitek) told me that he made phone calls with prospective GCs. These days much is communicated via Annabel, but she only knows about the financial aspects. I started calling up the workshop chairs to avoid last-minute annoyances.
Cheers -Peter
On 13. September 2018 at 23:49:28, Benjamin C. Pierce (bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu mailto:bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu) wrote:
Many thanks, Yannis! That makes things much clearer.
So is the intention that conference organizers (e.g., the GC and PC chairs of the next POPL or whatever) look at 1/3 + 5, or at 1/3 + 4 + 5, or?? How is this expectation communicated to new GCs / PC chairs?
- B
On Sep 10, 2018, at 9:17 AM, Yannis Smaragdakis <yannis@smaragd.org mailto:yannis@smaragd.org> wrote:
Dear Benjamin, Let's start with the first three, numbered:
- A SIGPLAN Conference Policies google doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w5T6bGmUO-8vjHSHpwegkpyFzYypi9HcheUxMTjo-Jw/edit)
- For each the major conferences, a document that codifies its contract with the community. (Principles of POPL, Practices of PLDI, etc.)
- A document I haven?t seen that apparently you were asked to create codifying commonalities between these contracts.
1 and 3 are the same, as you suspected. This document is derived from #2 and is not intended to replace the #2 documents. (The Steering Committees know best the extensions and refinements of the common document that they need for their community.) Instead, the #1/#3 document is intended a) for SIGPLAN conferences that don't have their own "constitution", b) as a baseline for future constitutions.
Now on the GC/PC documents:
-
Several public web pages listing policies and guides on the SIGPLAN web site ? e.g., Guidelines for the General Chair of a SIGPLAN Event http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/GenChair/ and
Guidelines for the Program Chair of a SIGPLAN Event http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/ProChair/.
-
A .txt document with private GC guidelines, to be shared by Annabel to GCs.
#4 is the standard SIGPLAN set of documents. It contains what we want the community to know about conferences, the role of the GC/PC, etc. Most of the text in these is inherited from the depths of time. #5 (which I've sent to Azadeh and Jens by email) concerns financial issues (i.e., revenue sharing with workshops) and hence is not intended for public sharing. It contains the currently-approved guidelines to GCs regarding what they should pass on to satellite events (i.e., money and accommodations that should be guaranteed to secondary conferences and workshops of one of the big SIGPLAN events).
Generally I and possibly the information director (Matthew) have been responsible for these documents. But really, "responsible" has had a loose meaning: every non-trivial change has been approved by the whole EC, either via on-Piazza or via in-person discussions. On most of these topics there are extensive Piazza conversations, which I've linked in my emails to Azadeh or you can find via search.
Hope this helps... Yannis.
On 09/10/2018 02:42 PM, Benjamin C. Pierce wrote: Conversely, it just occurred to me that (1) and (3) on my list might be the same document!
Ooof.
On Sep 10, 2018, at 7:40 AM, Benjamin C. Pierce <bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu mailto:bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
P.S. Just realized that there may be one more document, separate from these ? a common SIGPLAN General Chair?s Guide. Is that right?
On Sep 10, 2018, at 7:38 AM, Benjamin C. Pierce <bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu mailto:bcpierce@cis.upenn.edu> wrote:
Dear Yannis,
We've seen or heard mention of several documents that seem to have overlapping purposes and audiences?
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A SIGPLAN Conference Policies google doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w5T6bGmUO-8vjHSHpwegkpyFzYypi9HcheUxMTjo-Jw/edit)
-
For each the major conferences, a document that codifies its contract with the community. (Principles of POPL, Practices of PLDI, etc.)
-
A document I haven?t seen that apparently you were asked to create codifying commonalities between these contracts.
-
Several public web pages listing policies and guides on the SIGPLAN web site ? e.g., Guidelines for the General Chair of a SIGPLAN Event http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/GenChair/ and
Guidelines for the Program Chair of a SIGPLAN Event <http://www.sigplan.org/Resources/Guidelines/ProChair/>.
Can you help me and Azadeh understand the exact relation between them?
Also, what has been the understanding who is responsible for which of these documents?
Thanks!
- Benjamin