Semantic Werks

Clearly I’m somewhat inexperienced, having only 2 papers published to date, and never having served on review committees. However, I find the issues raised by Moshe Vardie in the SIGMOD journal very cogent. He questions the model of publishing currently in use throughout computer science research.

The typical argument is that since this is a fast-changing field (a conjecture hitherto unproven by evidence — is it faster-changing than genetics? Than theoretical physics? Than sociology?), we need to publish at annual conferences, because journal turnaround times are much too slow to keep up. Firstly, if it takes 2 years to publish in a journal, I’d argue that’s a different problem.

Vardie’s central point is that conferences aren’t doing a good job in evaluating important research. At best, he says, the reviews serve to correctly identify 1/3 to 1/4 of the interesting work. The rest is of dubious quality (relative to that rejected). Furthermore, most reviews are hardly peer-review quality, and there is little opportunity to turn things around if a paper has flaws (I expect the model used is, What a lot of submissions - if it has a single flaw, reject it.

Here’s my possible amended model: agile conference development. The call is published as normal, six months or so beforehand. The call is very tightly focused on the conference theme. For example, ICSE is not just about “software engineering”, but software engineering in a particular context, e.g. testing, formal methods, industrial experience reports, etc. Authors submit abstracts 4 months ahead of the actual conference date. The editor and two associate editors  filter aggressively any submissions out of scope. 2 months later, full submissions are due. The editor and associates check the papers for obvious problems like spelling, illegible figures, etc. Then they arrange a publishing day, during which all the program committee get together and collaboratively decide on each paper.With sites like Google Documents and others, this is becoming feasible.

Papers get sorted after a quick 10 minute scan into piles based on suitability for the conference. Those that are ‘maybes’ then get further detailed review by one specialist.

The idea is to quickly filter the papers which won’t make it (e.g., insufficient empirical support). Then, the others remaining get true peer review, fact checking, etc. There may even be room for correspondence with the authors seeking clarification.

The subjunctive case, which has nearly died out in English, is used to express desire in speech. For example, “The Green party should win” is a subjunctive sentence but uses the word ’should’ to indicate the desire of the speaker. Other languages use verb endings to convey the same meaning. For example, in German:

gehen to go (infinitive)
ging went (imperfect, simple past)
ginge would go/gone (Subjunctive II) (courtesy http://german.about.com/library/blsubjun2.htm)

And French:
aller
… que je (j’) aille

http://www.ceafinney.com/subjunctive/excerpts.html

This is of interest to me because goal modeling is a process of establishing both established facts (the indicative mood) as well as what should or ought to happen (the optative mood). Clearly goal modelers in Germany and France need to know their subjunctive quite well (I think I slept through this part of French 12).

In some ways I see English and i* taking similar approaches to conversation and meaning. By that I mean both are quite flexible in terms of syntax: one can do whatever one wants, to a greater extent than other languages. We depend on the modeler and the client to determine the context for the model in i* (e.g., to distinguish between what is and what ought to be), while English similarly relies on speakers to contextualize parts of speech that other languages, like German, require special tenses and verb endings for.  The difficulty arises when someone who is not familiar with the context must interpret the model or dialog.

While Aldo may be an environmental nightmare, I must give respect to HP. We own a LaserJet 1018 (which is great, btw). The toner ran out the other day, so I picked up a new cartridge (95 bones!) to replace it. It comes in a cardboard box and bubble wrap. The cool thing is they include postage-paid address labels for the US and Canada. I took the old cartridge, repackaged it (the box is designed for re-use, with resealable tabs), and taped on the Canada Post label.  Then, while walking my dog at night, I dropped the whole thing in a mailbox for return.

As my wife pointed out, I’m not sure what they do with it when it gets back to the factory. They might ship them all to some developing-world country to be dumped in a trash heap. But HP gets big marks for making the whole process brain-dead simple. Being environmentally friendly seems to require that level of simplicity for people to change (guilty as charged!).

Before HP gets too much love, it should be noted that they deliberately sell the printer with a tiny amount of toner, forcing you to go buy more way too quickly. And I notice the Canadian toner prices are still much higher than the American prices, despite dollar parity. Next time I might investigate refilling the cartridge.