Paper Champion

Once the OopslaProgramCommitteeMeeting has made its decisions, responsibility for those decisions is anonymous (although the program chair gets all the hassles). In the committee meeting, though, it is important to have personal responsibility. Otherwise, you will get half hour debates that will end with all the participants saying, "Well, I don't think the paper should be accepted either, I just thought we should talk about it." Near as I can tell, if nobody thinks the paper should be accepted, it shouldn't be accepted, and no amount of discussion will change that.

Therefore, for each paper to be discussed, open by asking someone to champion the paper, explaining in a minute or less why it should be accepted. If no one speaks up, the paper gets put in the reject pile (from which it can be revisited during PaperResurrection?. )

Related Patterns

IdentifyTheChampion is a PatternLanguage that discusses how to set up other phases of the review process so that PaperChampion is more likely to work well.