Criteria Original Page

My list is rather short (which I think is good, since most of it will be based on common sense anyway). Please comment on it and enhance it. I will compile them. -- DirkRiehle

?WritingStyleCriteria

• clear technical writing is preferred over academic diction
• tool papers should prove their usefulness over technical novelty
• consider length of pattern description carefully

• no single form is imposed but consider using a known and proven form
• if you use your own form, clearly motivate it and make sure that people don't get lost

• demonstrate pattern character by showing applications
• best: refer to published designs
• second best: refer to unpublished designs/projects from other people
• third best: refer only to your own projects/designs
• forth best (actually, pretty bad): no known uses

• try to put your pattern in context. which related/similar patterns exist? this will help us editors a lot and will serve the community as a whole since classification efforts will be undertaken.

I'm faced with a problem with one of my papers this year. One of the new categories of papers allowable at this years PLoP was "metadiscussion" about the pattern form or categorization.

While the previous points from Dirk about Technical writing apply (and I've been applying them in my shepherding) the remainder do not apply to papers about patterns (as opposed to papers OF patterns).

Does anyone have any suggestions? Some of my thoughts were:

* Will the average joe programmer interested in patterns find this interesting and/or useful?

* Is the contribution new or something rehashed over many times? (aha! Novelty is good only when speaking of patterns, not in patterns themselves)

* Can you imagine someone caring about this topic five years from now?

--KyleBrown