editor’s;letter
DOI:;10.1145/1785414.1785415
Moshe;Y.;Vardi

hypercriticality

In the two years since we launched the revitalized Communications of the ACM, I have received hundreds of email messages from readers. The feedback has been mostly, but not universally, positive.

What is the source of
this harshness within
our discipline?

name can lead to a catastrophic failure. Computing embodies the principle of “For lack of a nail, the kingdom was lost.” This makes us eternally vigilant, looking for the slightest flaw. In our eternal hunt for flaws, we often focus on the negative and lose perspective of the positive.

My second theory refers to the so-
ciology of our field. We typically pub-
lish in conferences where acceptance
rates are 1/3, 1/4, or even lower. Re-
viewers read papers with “reject” as
the default mode. They pounce on
every weakness, finding justification
for a decision that, in some sense, has
already been made. It is particularly
easy to be harsh when reviewing pro-
posals. If the proposal is not detailed
enough, then the proposer “does not
have a clear enough plan of research,”
but if the proposal is rich in detail,
then “it is clear that the proposer has
already done the work for which fund-
ing is sought.”
What is to be done? Remember, we
are the authors and we are the review-
ers. It is not “them reviewers;” it is “us
reviewers.” Hillel the Elder, a Jewish
scholar, 30 B.C.– 10 A.D., said “What is
hateful to you, do not do to your fel-
low.” This is known as the Silver Rule
in moral philosophy. The Golden
Rule, which strengthens the Silver
Rule, asserts “do unto others as you
would have them do to you.” Allow me
to rephrase this as the Golden Rule of
Reviewing: “Write a review as if you are
writing it to yourself.” This does not
mean that we should not write critical
reviews! But the reviews we write must
be fair, weighing both strengths and
weaknesses; they must be construc-
tive, suggesting how the weaknesses
can be addressed; and, above all, they
must be respectful.

After all, these are the reviews that we would like to receive!

 

Moshe Y. Vardi, EDITOR-In-CHIEF