# Brief for program committee

Thank you for being a part of the inaugural FOSSY and Community: Open Source in Practice track! With your help as a reviewer, we will deliver an edifying experience that provides value for attendees, speakers, the organizations they work in, and the communities they serve.

This document aims to provide high level guidance for reviewing proposals, to maximize consistency across perspectives and minimize uncertainty about how to review proposals.

We, the track organizing team and in particular the program chair, will use your reviews to guide decision making. Our final review pass involves, for instance: ensuring a good balance of topics and a representative speaker lineup, and perhaps even deduplication in coordination with other track organizers.

We'll let you know once the decisions have all been made and the schedule is published!

**Thank you again for being a part of the program committee!** We're looking forward to FOSSY 2023, and many many more to come.

With gratitude,
Josh Simmons, Monica Ayhens-Madon, julia ferraioli, and Stephen Michael Kellat

## About the Community: Open Source in Practice track

_Make sure you're familiar with the [official track description](https://2023.fossy.us/pages/tracks/#community) and don't hesitate to revisit it as you go about your reviews!_

## Timeline

In an ideal world, there would be more time for folks to conduct their reviews. Alas, the first year of a conference with volunteer-run tracks comes with many challenges! An accelerated review window is one of those challenges.

* Thursday, May 18: **CFP closes** at end of day
* Friday, May 19: **Reviewer period begins** mid-day
* Saturday, May 20
* Sunday, May 21: **Reviewer period ends** at end of day
* Monday, May 22: **Final cut** at end of day

## Evaluating proposals

Every evaluation consists of a grade and a comment.

Guidelines:

* Evaluate the proposal, not the submitter.
_If there is information about the submitter that we should be aware of, please let us know privately by emailing [e-mail]._
* Leave comments as often as possible.
_These illuminate your chosen grade and help us provide specific and anonymized feedback to help submitters do even better next time._
* Review as many proposals as you can.
_Every proposal needs a bare minimum of 2 reviews, so prioritize proposals with the fewest number of reviews._

### Desireable qualities

Here are a few of the qualities that add up to making a proposal a strong fit for the Community: Open Source in Practice track. You may use other qualities in making your assessment!

As much as possible, when you review a proposal and choose a grade, please mention the salient qualities that helped you arrive at the chosen grade in the comment.

* **Clear**: the proposal is well structured and articulated.
* **Impactful**: the proposal gives attendees new tools or mental models to use, important challenges to explore, or dives into experiences in the practice of open source.
* **Relevant**: the proposal is on-topic, and may be timely.

### Grade scale

FOSSY uses a 5 point scale centered on 0. The conference website has a brief explanation of each grade in the interface of the review process. This table is offered as a slightly expanded take on the guidance in the review interface.

If your vote on a proposal is to Abstain, please elaborate on why in the comments.

| -2 | -1 | 0 | +1 | +2 |
| -------- | -------- | -------- | -------- | -------- |
| **Strong NO** | **Disfavored** | **Abstain** | **Favored** | **Strong YES** |
| I find the proposal to be harmful *or* of extremely low quality. | I find the proposal to be off-topic *or* of low quality. | I'm recusing myself due to a conflict of interest. | I find the proposal to be on-topic *and* of decent quality. | I find the proposal to be of good quality *and* it covers important material. |
| I'd fight for this proposal to be excluded. | | I don't feel qualified to grade this proposal. | | I'd fight for this proposal to be included. |