Wiki-fied Papers - NetScale Laboratory

In the absence of having time to do a lengthy writeup, we have posted a quick Q and A regarding the papers.

Can I cite the Wiki article directly?

We would prefer that you do not cite the URL directly but rather cite either the appropriate paper (listed as a citation near the front of the article). URLs make librarians a bit grumpy and actual paper titles / information are much easier to track on citation engines than URLs. We can't stop you from citing the URL but will put you on the honor system, ala the citation policy for IETF drafts.

On the plus side, we can add updates to Wiki content unlike a published paper. Hence, if you have a new piece of fantastic work that should really be cited or discussed in our work, we can tack on an addendum speedy quick along with a link. We do highly encourage you to link to the paper on a website if you would like or even better yet, link to us from your own Wiki.

Why are you posting reviews on-line?

Transparency for the process is the short answer. The conference review process is unnecessarily opaque despite the best intentions (usually) of those in charge of said conferences. A transparent review process offers a few benefits:

• It allows others to build on reviewer commentary. While reviewer feedback can be hit or miss, there are the occasional extremely insightful reviews that identify truly exciting expansions of the work. Besides giving you as a potential author building on our work a heads up, it gives you the insight of more than just "us" as the authors. Where appropriate, we have also attempted to include succinct responses to reviewer commentary.
• It gives our work more exposure. C is for citations
• You see the review process in all of its glory, good reviews, bad reviews, etc. rather than just the polished product. One of the most distressing aspects as a newly minted graduate student can be that first soul-crushing reviews. While we have not broken out the hall of fame reviews (those will be added over time), helping to improve the quality of reviews for the community would be a wonderful side effect if it came to pass.

Without jumping onto our soapbox for reviewing, reviewers should be more like a prospector trying to find, new exciting content rather than serving as a gatekeeper attempting to poke the maximum holes in a topic. Certainly, gatekeeping has its role most especially for archival content (journals) but the review process for conferences has drifted for off of its intended course.