Re:Conferences in computer science

At 16:39 +0200 15.4.05, Alessio Guglielmi wrote:
> Hi, Ugo just informed me that a randomly computer generated paper 
> has been accepted at a computer science conference, so I thought I 
> should pass this info on: <http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scigen/>. 
> Ciao, -Alessio

The main Italian newspaper, "Corriere della Sera", has reported on 
this today: 
<http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Scienze_e_Tecnologie/2005/04_Aprile/15/mit.shtml>.

As naturally happens with outsiders, for the reporter the conference 
is `worldwide known', its promoters are `first-rate scholars', 
conferences are held in `luxury hotels' and there are `participation 
gifts'. Imagine how keen the average reader of the article is to 
finance research.

Obviously, this degeneracy is possible because we slowly lowered our 
quality standards and pressed for quantity at the expense of quality. 
In this case, the conference is clearly crap, but what about the 
recent Montreux one? They asked to write the conference program to 
the Monty Python, but still attracted some first-rate scientists in 
the committee and as authors.

In the beginning, I had a doubt that maybe something like Montreux 
could have its usefulness anyway, but I was wrong: I think we should 
boycott!

One (excellent) participant told me that 20% of the people there knew 
about logic, and had interesting scientific exchange and fun talking 
about the rest 80% of completely clueless people. In a situation like 
this, you could see the 20% full glass, and say that the event was 
useful to the people with a clue. I think we should look at the 80% 
empty glass, and insist that there is a danger of degeneracy that in 
the end will damage us all.

-Alessio Guevara