SODA 2010 papers: 20 pages!

The list of the 136 papers accepted to SODA 2010 is out. But the real news is this little tidbit in the acceptance emails:

One significant change from previous years is that your conference paper can be up to twenty (20) pages, including the title, authors names and addresses, references or bibliography, and appendix (if desired). In some cases, the program committee may choose to verify that the final version incorporates changes requested in the feedback you receive.

It can? It may? I guess this is a pretty strong indication that paper SODA proceedings are a thing of the past, which is good. But still... Who decided this all of a sudden, with no warning and no community discussion?

Oh, who am I kidding. We all know exactly who decided this with, as usual, no warning and no community discussion.

Update 8/5: I was wrong. According to a PC member:

Actually, it was moses, together with SIAM, that did the 20 page thingie. this after Claire Mathieu suggested it.

My apologies to David. On the other hand, my complaint about lack of warning and community discussion stands.

Comments

[Michael Mitzenmacher]

Hey Jeff. I remember back in the day -- even back when we were graduate students -- how no matter what the discussion was in the business meetings at SODA, pretty much at the end of the day what David Johnson thought was the proper outcome was what happened. I remember finding that pretty disturbing at the time.

Having lived through being on the other side of conference organization a few times, I've found my attitude has softened quite a bit. We can argue about how well SODA is actually run and how it might be better, but the fact is that it's a large annual conference that has a lot of work behind it, a fair bit of that work seems to be David's, and he gets the train to run on time. Personally, I think having David be akin to a "benevolent dictator" is a far better thing than a lot of wackiness I'm used to hearing at the business meeting, and I thank him for taking on this community service, especially in a community that (in my opinion) suffers from a below-average output of community service and people willing to take on some of the less fun tasks that need to get done.