Thanks Deryck, that's the kind of experience that would be really useful in the 
guidebook!

Sent from my iPhone

On 31 Mar 2014, at 17:11, Deryck Chan <[email protected]> wrote:

> And that neatly introduces me to the lectern.
> 
> In 2011 and 2012 (and possibly earlier) there was only one "abstract" field 
> with the instruction "min. 100 words". So, submission authors wrote at all 
> kinds of lengths from 101 words to 1000+ words. This created two problems:
> 1. Judging was difficult because different authors give wildly different 
> levels of detail.
> 2. Most of the abstracts are too long for the programme booklet. In 2011 they 
> asked successful submitters to submit a 100-word tl;dr with a one-week time 
> limit shortly before Wikimania itself, which was a bit hectic.
> 
> So in 2013, I split the "abstract" field into two: a tl;dr of "max. 100 
> words", and a "detailed proposal" of "min. 300 words". I put in comments that 
> authors are encouraged to reuse material between the two fields as they see 
> fit. I felt that it was useful to have 300+ words from every lecture proposal 
> because that actually gives reviewers some more detail about the line of 
> argument that the speaker would take.
> 
> Someone who's going to deliver a 25-min lecture should find no difficulty 
> writing more than 300 words to give a taster of the lecture. The speaker will 
> typically monologue for 17 minutes, which would be about 2000 words (assume 
> typical English speeches in Wikimania). If you can speak 2000, you can write 
> 300.
> 
> Of course the exception would be proposals for open discussions, which were 
> introduced to the submission system after the 2013 submission template was 
> made. So maybe Ed can make a note to say that purely open-floor sessions are 
> exempt from the 300-word proposal.
> 
> Hope that helps.
> Deryck
> 
> 
> On 30 March 2014 08:53, Ed Saperia <[email protected]> wrote:
>> The real reason was of course "we inherited the template from last year".
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> On 30 Mar 2014, at 08:52, Steven Walling <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Saturday, March 29, 2014, Andy Mabbett <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> I'm drafting a couple of submissions for sessions at Wikimania, and
>>>> (having successfully made submissions for Wikimania 2012, for
>>>> Wikimedia UK AGMs, and for other conferences) have come to the
>>>> conclusion that 300 words is too much text to require.
>>> 
>>> To be honest I always ignore this requirement. It's silly. A well-written 
>>> proposal should be concise. 
>>>  
>>>> 
>>>> What is the thinking behind this figure?
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Andy Mabbett
>>>> @pigsonthewing
>>>> http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikimania-l mailing list
>>>> [email protected]
>>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikimania-l mailing list
>>> [email protected]
>>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikimania-l mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimania-l mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
_______________________________________________
Wikimania-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l

Reply via email to