# CHI 2018 rebuttal

We thank the reviewers for their time and insightful feedback. We are glad they found the paper grounded (R1), interesting (2AC), inspiring (R3), and with a strong relevance to HCI (1AC). We focus our response on the 4 issues listed by 1AC. We fully agree with all of them.

Bluntness of thematic analysis (1AC, 2AC, R1, R3):

Using the framing of a “spectrum” is a great idea (R1). We tried to point to the notion of a spectrum in the discussion, mentioning how hoarding and minimalism are not a binary categorization, but we fell short of actually calling it such. We will be more explicit and specify from the outset that the tendencies of hoarding and minimalism should be interpreted as being part of a spectrum. We will explain it with a statement in the Introduction, where we first introduce the two tendencies, and carry the framing through the rest of the paper. 

Judgement (R1):

We did not intend to be judgemental when presenting hoarding and minimalism, but in retrospect (re-reading the paper after some time) we see that this is indeed how the work comes across. We will soften our writing throughout the paper so that it is balanced. For example, we will replace the heading “When hoarding can be reasonable” (R1) with “The practical value of hoarding”, using that paragraph to illustrate that hoarding can have both an emotional and a practical component. “When hoarding becomes a problem” will become more generally “Challenges in hoarding”. In a similar way, we will rephrase or remove all other instances where we take a judgemental attitude towards participants (R1). (Two authors have already gone through the draft underlining the instances.) We will also remove all mentions of our preliminary perception that minimalism might be linked to user satisfaction and contentedness in the paper -- we agree that we cannot adequately support this (R1).

Interestingly, the digital data economy framework by Vertesi et al., that we used as a building block of our analysis, shows how people refer to moral values to reason about their own data management practice, thinking, for example, that there is a “right way” to manage data. Some participants in our study also expressed similar attitudes. We will add a short paragraph in the Discussion on how the assessment of satisfaction and other factors in relation to different approaches is a possible avenue for future work.  


Novelty of research (2AC):

We will better clarify how our work relates to previous categorizations of user behaviours and tone down the claims of novelty, integrating work from Cushing and Schiele in the Discussion and Related Work. 

Further, we see in retrospect that the distinction we tried to draw between hoarding and minimalism being linked more strongly to identity and other categorizations in the literature (e.g., filers) being linked more to actions does not work. Instead, we will reframe our claim of originality (2AC) as providing a broader and more comprehensive lens on user behaviours that builds on top and extends previous categorizations.  

Analytic perspective (2AC, 1AC):

We agree that our philosophical assumptions come across awkwardly (2AC, 1AC). We will move that “preamble” paragraph closer to the analysis description and further elaborate on our stance, following the example of Piper's work in CHI (1AC). More specifically, we will explain that taking a constructivist approach means that we saw interviews as an interactive process of meaning-making: we built knowledge together with participants. Therefore, we do not claim absolute truths about people's behaviours, but a shared understanding grounded in their reasoning and unique experience, reflective of their broader cultural environment. Focusing on the words used by participants, we arrived at the notion of hoarding and minimalism. These terms are socially constructed in the sense that they embody specific cultural connotations: we debated whether they were appropriate, reflecting on our assumptions about what they point to. Ultimately, we use them to describe and report user behaviours in an attempt to fairly represent the shared understanding we constructed with participants. We will also reflect on our position as researchers and the role it played in the process (1AC). We frame data preservation as a challenging task worth investigating but participants might have different perceptions. Additionally, we acknowledge that our Western cultural background and its values inform our views. This points to the inherently interpretive nature of our work (1AC) taking place in the context of the current socio-technical landscape.   

Others we will address: add citation to Charmaz’s book (we are very familiar with it and agree on its relevance) (1AC); fix reference to crystallization (2AC); further reflect on impact of different data types (R1); incorporate great suggestions for future work (R3).
We thank once again reviewers for their valuable input that will help us make the paper stronger.