Allow Modification Reformulations (Shaw-Barseghyan-2019)

This is an answer to the question Workflow - Reformulating Suggesting Modifications that states "The commentators of suggested modifications are allowed to suggest reformulations of the original formulations in the comments. By default, the new formulation should bear the original author’s name, unless the author decides to give credit to those who significantly contributed to the new reformulation."

Allow Modification Reformulations was formulated by Hakob Barseghyan and Jamie Shaw in 2019.1 It is currently accepted by Scientonomy community as the best available answer to the question.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this theory:

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	25 February 2023	The idea became accepted as a result of the acceptance of the respective modification.	Yes

Suggestions To Accept

Here are all the modifications where the acceptance of this theory has been suggested:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2019-0003	Scientonomy	22 December 2019	Accept that the commentators of suggested modifications are allowed to suggest reformulations of the original formulations. Also accept that, by default, the new formulation should bear the original author’s name, unless the author decides to give credit to those who significantly contributed to the new reformulation. This should be decided collegially by the author, the commentators, and the editors on a case-by-case basis.	Accepted	The decision was made during the 2023 scientonomy workshop. It was noted that the idea is compatible with other consensus systems where one is allowed to modify the proposal in order to reach consensus. The modification sparked important discussion about our iterative process. Paul Patton highlighted a potential problem with our workflow where, by the time we are discussing acceptance, the paper has already been formatted and published. He raised a question if it might be more advisable to use a two-stage process, where a paper is first posted in some preliminary form and then, following the debate on acceptance, it is reformulated as needed and the final version is considered published. Hakob Barseghyan responded that there always has to be a chance of commenting on something published post factum. Instead of the two-step process, he suggested allowing small alterations to modifications after the publication and publishing the commentaries to modifications in a separate article (as the community just accepted with modification 2019-0002), while leaving the original article intact. Greg Rupik also suggested the potential for a special designation for a tweaked modification identifier (e.g. 2019-0003a instead of 2019-0003) to make it more apparent which modifications were reformulated. Barseghyan responded that the wiki is well-suited to make reformulations apparent (most specifically, in the Preamble and Verdict sections) without the need to multiply modifications. He also emphasized that this modification pertains to smaller reformulations and not to significant changes to the content, making some concerns about the modification less immediately relevant. Barseghyan also addressed the question posted prior to the workshop by Ameer Sarwar: when other authors cite a modification that has been altered, what exactly should they cite? Barseghyan suggested that, since both the original modification and the altered one will be published, one can cite both. The modification was accepted unanimously.	25 February 2023

Question Answered

Allow Modification Reformulations (Shaw-Barseghyan-2019) is an attempt to answer the following question: Are the commentators of suggested modifications allowed to suggest reformulations of the original formulations?

See Workflow - Reformulating Suggesting Modifications for more details.

Description

By allowing the discussants to suggest alternative formulations in their comments, the workflow incentivizes commenting and aids consensus building. It often happens that the discussants agree that a little tweak in the original formulation would solve the problem. This can help speed up the advancement of our communal knowledge. In contrast, when the discussants are not permitted to reformulate the original formulations, the discussants have no other choice than to write a whole new paper arguing for what is otherwise a little tweak to the original formulation. Not only is this wasteful, but it also creates a bottleneck where a consensus formation is postponed due to bureaucratic restrictions. Thus, it is important to remove this bottleneck and allow the participants to alter original formulations.

If a discussion yielded a new formulation, any such formulation should be clearly stated and added to the respective suggested modification, possibly under a separate heading (e.g. by distinguishing “Original Suggestion” from “Final Suggestion”). By default, the new formulation should bear the name of the author(s) of the original suggested modification, unless the original author(s) decides to give credit to those who significantly contributed to the reformulation. This should be decided collegially by the author, the commentators, and the editors on a case-by-case basis.

Reasons

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Questions About This Theory

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