Xtranormal advertisement for multi-unit auction paper

March 5, 2011 by Noam Nisan

Heeding Rakesh’s call, and fascinated by xtranormal.com, I decided to try and explain why Shahar and me like our new paper (submitted to EC) so much, a point we do not seem to be able to explain by usual means.

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments

16 Responses

on March 5, 2011 at 11:13 am | Reply shaddin

The paper may be going to EC, but this video should go to STOC.
on March 5, 2011 at 11:00 pm | Reply anonymous

Is it fair for Noam to exercise his blog’s influence to advertise his paper which is currently under submission?

A technical point is, if the whole point of the paper is to exhibit some non-VCG type of mechanism, Dobzinski-Nisan-Shapira STOC06 is also not VCG type.

anonymous (who’s scared of Noam’s influence)
- on March 5, 2011 at 11:55 pm | Reply Shahar
  
  What’s the fundamental difference between posting this video and, say, giving a talk or writing a blog post about the paper?
  
  As for your technical question, the three main points are:
  (1) There are deterministic mechanisms that are “useful” (in the sense that they provide a good approximation ratio) and do not belong to the VCG family.
  (2) We can characterize all “useful” mechanisms.
  (3) The characterization leads to a lower bound on the power of polynomial time truthful mechanisms.
  
  The mechanism from STOC’06 is randomized and not deterministic as required in (1). In general, it is quite easy to come up with non-VCG mechanisms for auction domains, but previously we had no example of a “useful” mechanism.
  
  Shahar
  - on March 6, 2011 at 4:49 am anonymous
    
    difference? this video and post look more like cheerleading to me rather than a serious discussion.
    
    I just took a look at your paper. You are exaggerating your points IMHO.
    
    (1) I couldn’t really understand the definition of your triage mechanism. It’s a bit hard to imagine how such a strange mechanism can be useful.
    
    (2) You are dropping the important keyword phrases like the mechanisms have to be scalable and it’s for two-bidder only.
    
    I appreciate the value of this work. But I’m afraid I don’t find it as exciting as you might feel.
  - on March 6, 2011 at 6:59 am noamnisan
    
    Well, I did say that we find it hard to make others as excited as we are…
on March 6, 2011 at 5:47 am | Reply CriticalReader

I also feel that this blog post is inappropriate. In contrast to Rakesh’s original call, this video is not merely used to advertise a new paper (which I think is legitimate). Instead, it was posted exactly one day before EC reviews are due, and before the EC review discussion period starts. Thus, its purpose is clearly to influence the EC reviewers’ decisions. This is immoral. EC papers are supposed to be reviewed based on the content of the paper alone and not based on secondary marketing efforts.

Of course, influencing potential future reviewers can also be achieved by giving talks. However, the ability to have a broad-reaching influence (the expected number of reviewers reached) by giving talks is very limited and involves a costly process (one department at a time). Furthermore, at a talk, the author will generally present his whole paper, and the audience will be given a chance to ask critical questions and potentially reveal problems within the paper. Here, the video only presents the highlights of the paper, and thus a biased view (most visitors and commenters will not read the paper). Furthermore, on this blog, Noam has the power to remove any critical comments if he wants to (not that I believe he does), which does not guarantee a standard academic discussion.

Of course, the community as a whole could debate whether submitting secondary material (such as videos) alongside the actual paper submission could improve the review process. I am very open to this question, as I believe that for some work, a video, or a demo, could improve the review process. However, to guarantee fairness, all reviewers should be given this chance, i.e., it would have to be part of the review process. Of course, every author could post a video on his blog. However, this method clearly gives an advantage to well-known professors with even more well-known blogs, and disadvantages newcomers. This must be avoided! The non-double-blind review process of EC is already problematic (although that can be debated, and is a whole other debate), but allowing people to influence reviewers’ decisions via blog posts only exacerbates the problem!
- on March 6, 2011 at 6:57 am | Reply noamnisan
  
  Don’t be silly: it is completely common and appropriate for bloggers to talk about and advance their own work.
  - on March 6, 2011 at 8:26 am CriticalReader
    
    Of course it is common, and indeed ok, for bloggers to talk about and advance their own work. If you read my comment carefully, you will notice that I don’t criticize that at all.
    
    What I dislike is the way you are doing it, and in particular the timing of it (one day before the EC reviewing deadline). Do you really not see any problem with well-known professors making use of their widely-read blogs to influence reviewing decisions in this way? This is something a not yet well-known student cannot do, and thus it leads to biased, unfair reviewing decisions.
    
    But why don’t we turn this into a constructive discussion? How did you like my suggestion to allow all authors to upload videos (or other material) with their papers if they think it is useful? I think this could, in certain instances, greatly improve the reviewing process.
  - on March 6, 2011 at 9:38 am noamnisan
    
    I’m not sure that added material is reasonable as part of the submission, but definitely people should be encouraged to put any supporting material (such as lecture slides or movies) on their websites or other web repositories with their papers.
on March 6, 2011 at 4:29 pm | Reply John

I have to agree with the others; it is fine to promote one’s own work. However, that this was posted right in the thick of the EC reviewing process, and explicitly mentions changing EC reviews in the dialogue is beyond the pale.
on March 6, 2011 at 7:02 pm | Reply shaddin

I think this post is totally fine. It is hard to believe that EC reviewers would be so fickle as to be influenced by an xtranormal video.
- on March 6, 2011 at 8:31 pm | Reply CriticalReader
  
  Really, you believe that EC reviewers are not influenced by this video? I think that is very naive. Behavioral research has shown that we are influenced, on a conscious and subconscious level, by many different factors, even simple things like framing. It is hard to believe that a reviewer who watches this video is not influenced. And if you truly believed this, then why post this video one day before the EC reviewing deadline? Seriously, the timing only makes sense if you actually believe that the video DOES influence the reviewers’ decisions.
  - on March 6, 2011 at 8:58 pm Shahar
    
    I seriously hope that you are wrong regarding the subconscious influence. Otherwise we are going to end up with three weak rejects.
  - on March 6, 2011 at 9:52 pm another critical reader
    
    strong reject to weak reject in the end is said out of modesty. what you really said is improve the grade. you or at least Noam know that the paper is getting at least the weak reject (in the worst case), as strong rejects are reserved for incorrect and non-sense results.
    
    any suggestion of improvement might actually up the paper from reject to accept.
  - on March 8, 2011 at 9:22 pm CriticalReader of CriticalReader
    
    Do you know who are the EC reviewers? HIGHLY COMPETENT people. I strongly believe that a simple video like that is not enough to change their minds.
  - on March 9, 2011 at 4:58 pm CriticalReader
    
    If you believe, a video cannot possibly influence an EC reviewer’s opinion, then why post this one day before the EC reviewing deadline? That just doesn’t make sense to me…