Ranking

Paper ranking is a way to extract the PC’s preference order for submitted papers. Each PC member ranks the submitted papers, and a voting algorithm, the Schulze method by default, combines these rankings into a global preference order.

HotCRP supports ranking through tags. The chair chooses a tag for ranking—“rank” is a good default—and enters it on the settings page. PC members then rank papers using their private versions of this tag, tagging their first preference with “~rank#1”, their second preference with “~rank#2”, and so forth. To combine PC rankings into a global preference order, the PC chair selects all papers on the search page and chooses Tags > Calculate rank, entering “rank” for the tag. At that point, the global rank can be viewed by searching for “order:rank”.

PC members can enter rankings by reordering rows in a paper list. For example, for rank tag “rank”, PC members should search for “editsort:#~rank”. Ranks can be entered directly in the text fields, or the rows can be dragged into position using the dotted areas on the right-hand side of the list.

Alternately, PC members can use an offline ranking form. Download a ranking file, rearrange the lines to create a rank, and upload the form again. For example, here is an initial ranking file:

# Edit the rank order by rearranging this file's lines.
# The first line has the highest rank.

# Lines that start with "#" are ignored.  Unranked papers appear at the end
# in lines starting with "X", sorted by overall merit.  Create a rank by
# removing the "X"s and rearranging the lines.  A line that starts with "="
# marks a paper with the same rank as the preceding paper.  A line that starts
# with ">>", ">>>", and so forth indicates a rank gap between the preceding
# paper and the current paper.  When you are done, upload the file at
#   http://your.site.here.com/offline

Tag: ~rank


X       1       Write-Back Caches Considered Harmful
X       2       Deconstructing Suffix Trees
X       4       Deploying Congestion Control Using Homogeneous Modalities
X       5       The Effect of Collaborative Epistemologies on Theory
X       6       The Influence of Probabilistic Methodologies on Networking
X       8       Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy
X       10      Decoupling Lambda Calculus from 802.11 Mesh Networks in Moore's Law
X       11      Analyzing Scatter/Gather I/O Using Encrypted Epistemologies

The user might edit the file as follows:

        8       Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy
        5       The Effect of Collaborative Epistemologies on Theory
=       1       Write-Back Caches Considered Harmful
        2       Deconstructing Suffix Trees
>>      4       Deploying Congestion Control Using Homogeneous Modalities

X       6       The Influence of Probabilistic Methodologies on Networking
X       10      Decoupling Lambda Calculus from 802.11 Mesh Networks in Moore's Law
X       11      Analyzing Scatter/Gather I/O Using Encrypted Epistemologies

Uploading this file produces the following ranking:

ID	Title	Rank tag
#8	Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy	~rank#1
#5	The Effect of Collaborative Epistemologies on Theory	~rank#2
#1	Write-Back Caches Considered Harmful	~rank#2
#2	Deconstructing Suffix Trees	~rank#3
#4	Deploying Congestion Control Using Homogeneous Modalities	~rank#5

Since #6, #10, and #11 still had X prefixes, they were not assigned a rank. Searching for “order:~rank” returns the user’s personal ranking; administrators can search for “order:pcname~rank” to see a PC member’s ranking. Once a global ranking is assigned, “order:rank” will show it.