PLoP is a Trademark of the Hillside Group.
The original motivation for trademarking the name was to be able to guarantee some uniform Quality to these forums. So far the Quality has been upheld largely by the overlap in membership from Plop Conference to Plop Conference. That would have been the ideal way to sustain the Quality.
The community has grown and there are details that both matter and that elude a common base of understanding. The example that elicited the creation of this page was a repeated instance of authors submitting a paper to PLoP, enjoying the benefit of shepherding, and then declining to attend the conference. There was a common understanding that submission to the process implied commitment to attending the conference. But I'm not sure it's a policy that is universally understood across the pattern community. There is no explicit incentive to adhere to this policy (if it is indeed a policy) nor disincentive to violating it.
That's just one example. There are more.
What I propose here is a minimal set of policies for the Plop Conference community. I'm hopeful that Hillside Group can take over ownership of these and use them as a consideration in granting the use of the term PLoP to aspiring groups. These policies can also help unify the administrative superstructure of the existing PLoPs. It can give PLoPs the teeth they need to guide participants from outside the pattern community into the practices of our community. And it provides a forum for these values and practices to evolve as we learn from each other, both within our community and otherwise.
The goal of these policies should not be to homogenize the PLoP culture; each Plop Conference is unique. However, the pattern community builds on hitherto unspoken principles. It would be a good exercise to evaluate our common principles and to articulate them.
If you're a member of the Pattern Community, please join in here. Please keep it minimal. Let's try to capture the essence of PLoPness rather than a set of rules. Keep recommendations to simple and direct English without legalese: phrases that are easy to understand, easy to follow, and to which compliance is easy to judge.
PLoP attendees expect authors of PLoP papers to join them at the PLoP to which the paper was submitted.
When resources (such as lodging) are limited, attendance priority belongs with authors of accepted works.
Every author has a right to Effective Shepherding.
Every author has a responsibility to do Dutiful Revision.
A Writers Workshop participant commits himself or herself to attend all sessions of that workshop unless granted leave by the workshop.
A Writers Workshop participant has a responsibility to study the submissions to that workshop in advance, preferably before the conference.
No author may have more than two works submitted to a single PLoP.
What about a person who is coauthor on 2 papers? In theory this doesn't dilute the workshop too much. Coauthoring more than 2 would seem to be too much. I think this also depends upon how many other authors are at the plop. But we can be pragmatic:
do we have enough papers at PLoPs? If so, we can forbid coauthorship :-)
Being coauthor on two papers does not violate the policy, and I think such cases should be allowed. We should encourage co-authorship! But it leads to a pragmatic consideration that all the papers be handled in a single workshop, by policy #5 above.
1 No work may be under consideration for acceptance at any venue other than PLoP between the time it is submitted and the time the author submits the final version for publication in the PLoP proceedings. (alternative option to consider:
until after the paper is workshopped at the PloP).
1 In the event that no paper authors are able to attend a PLoP, the paper will not be workshopped at that PLoP. Authors may resubmit such papers to subsequent PLoPs:
however they must notify that PLoP's chair that this is a submission of an unworkshopped paper from another PLoP before submitting the paper. The subsequent PLoP's chair has absolute discretion to reject the paper outright, to accept the paper to a workshop without shepherding (assuming it has been shepherded before) or to accept the paper into shepherding as normal.
Authors are expected to give back to the community by becoming shepherds themselves. They should attend shepherding training, which should be provided at each PLoP. [While this is a Good Idea that we should encourage, I don't know if it's a policy we should enforce. Well, the proposed policy says "expected", not "required". Making it a policy instills it into the culture, which is where we need it.]
Shepherds should bear credentials. One of several qualifying credentials is that they have published at least two pattern works. [Maybe this could be put on a Proposed Shepherding Policy page.]
Add your policy here
See original on c2.com 