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 <edsaperia(a)gmail.com> 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 <steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, March 29, 2014, Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk>
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
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