------------------------ Submission 4571, Review 4 ------------------------ Title: Hoarding and Minimalism: Tendencies in Digital Data Preservation Reviewer: AC Overall rating: 5 (scale is 0.5..5; 5 is best) Expertise 3 (Knowledgeable) Recommendation Strong Accept: I would argue strongly for accepting this paper; 5.0 1AC: The Meta-Review ==Post-PC Comments: This paper was discussed as a candidate for best paper award. I will not know the results, but nonetheless I commend the authors on an excellent paper. I look forward to the paper and publication.== Overall, reviewers found this to be a strong, clear, and polished paper. The paper nicely frames practices of digital data preservation around the notion of hoarding and minimalism. The work represents a well-done qualitative research study that will have strong relevance to HCI and related disciplines. Strengths: Reviewers commended the literature review as comprehensive (R1) and good (R2). All reviewers also enjoyed the findings and how the data was presented. R3 highlights how the work considers the informants' views from a temporal lens (what things they would keep or dispose of 10 years later). Weaknesses: Literature review is good but claims on novelty are perhaps overreached (R2). Some of the categorizations that the authors choose to label findings struck all the reviewers as too blunt (fliers/pliers, the strict delineation between hoarding and minimalism, etc.). There seems to be an inherent tension in the paper in both wanting to simplify the explanation of the findings while acknowledging the nuances of each individual; this tension is not quite successfully resolved or explained in the paper. R2 notes that the preamble to methodology is confusing. I agree that the text "we believe that reality is socially constructed" is awkwardly placed and that such a statement needs more elaboration. If the authors wish to situate themselves in a social constructivist camp (which is fine for me and is sometimes called a "constructivist" grounded theory approach), I suggest the authors cite Kathy Charmaz's book on qualitative analysis and perhaps explain how this perspective informed their analytic approach and findings. An important component of constructivist approaches is that the authors reflect on their own positions. A good example of how this approach is used and explained is in Anne-Marie Piper's work (e.g., see Technological Caregiving paper in CHI). Rebuttal Pointers: Authors have the opportunity for an optional 5000 character rebuttal to address any misunderstanding or factual errors in reviews. I encourage the authors to carefully read and, if necessary, respond to the reviewers' comments. In particular, I suggest the authors o Address the bluntness of their thematic analysis remarked on by all reviewers. R1 have R3 have good suggestions on how to reach a more nuanced perspective on hoarding and minimalist practices (e.g., seeing it as a spectrum). o Address R1's concern about the explicit and implicit judgments on minimalism vs hoarding. While the authors do say, "we do not intend to present the tendency of hoarding as a compulsive disorder," I do agree with R1 that certain statements still come across as unduly judgmental. This should be fixed. o Qualify their claims (R2) on novelty of research. o Elaborate on their analytic perspective and process (R2). This would be a good opportunity for the authors to engage (in a meaningful, specific way) with the social constructivist point of view that the authors use by reflecting on their own practices, biases, and the inherently incomplete/interpretative nature of this kind of analysis. In the rebuttal, authors should be as specific as possible on how they plan to address reviewer's comments. Rebuttal response Thank you for the substantial rebuttal. For me, it was one of the best crafted rebuttals I've read, even with the relatively high-prior scores. Regarding the point about "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": I will leave it to the authors to decide, but I think this debate itself is valuable to surface in the paper. All reviewers were very happy with the rebuttal. R2 and R3 offer further clarifying points that I encourage the authors to address to refine and polish their paper. ------------------------ Submission 4571, Review 1 ------------------------ Title: Hoarding and Minimalism: Tendencies in Digital Data Preservation Overall rating: 4.5 (scale is 0.5..5; 5 is best) Expertise 4 (Expert ) Recommendation . . . Between possibly accept and strong accept; 4.5 Review This is a solid paper that is well written, and particularly well grounded in the research: their literature review is solid and articulate. The one thing that the authors *need* to fix is their judgemental attitude towards their subjects. Identifying two characteristic methods of dealing with data, which the authors refer to as hording and minimalism, is a reasonable thing to do. But then deciding that one of them is bad and the other one is good, which the authors have basically done in this paper, makes for bad research and a bad paper. As the authors say, the value in this paper comes from identifying the two tendencies, contrasting them and showing their roles in identity construction, and putting them in context. Making poorly supported judgemental arguments like "we suggest minimalism was more closely associated with contentedness and satisfaction" or begrudging statements like "when hoarding can be reasonable" devalues the rest of the work in the paper. I suggest two strategies that might help unravel this problem and give the authors tools to move their analysis forward. First, this is a spectrum, with extreme hoarding on one end (I recommend looking at /r/datahoarders for something more like that real extreme), and extreme minimalism on the other (and I assure you there are people more extreme than your subjects like Sarah). Just clumping into two categories is not as useful as recognizing this as a spectrum. Second, these practices are not uniform across all types of data, and that axis is likely orthoganal to your hoarding-minimalism axis. For example, some people hoard contacts of people they know. Other people hoard music in the form of mp3s. Others hoard academic papers or emails so they can find them later, but only listen to streaming services so don't care about keeping music. You're lumping all of these together. If you can show that all of your hoarders hoard all the things, great, but my experience (and without de-anonymizing myself I'll point out that my work is pretty extensively cited in this paper), is that people are hetrogeneous in the categories they consider valuable and hoardable, or irrelevant and transient. Again, I think this is a good paper with huge potential, and that's why I've been quite so positive in my scoring. But if this fundamental flaw in this paper isn't fixed, then my post-rebuttal score would be significantly lower. Best of luck! Rebuttal response Good rebuttal which addresses the issues. I would agree that Vertesi et al.'s digital data economy framework does indeed show that people "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." It is a cornerstone of the paper. But the difference between that and what you had written in the document as we reviewed it, is that Vertesi et al. report on what they have found, but do not embrace their subjects' values and present them as fact. You should indeed seek to represent your subjects' values, but embracing them as correct (without extensive further evidence) is where your treatment fell down. With the changes indicated this will be a strong paper. Well done. ------------------------ Submission 4571, Review 2 ------------------------ Title: Hoarding and Minimalism: Tendencies in Digital Data Preservation Reviewer: 2AC Overall rating: 4.5 (scale is 0.5..5; 5 is best) Expertise 3 (Knowledgeable) Recommendation . . . Between possibly accept and strong accept; 4.5 Review I rather liked this paper. It was easy to read and overall pretty interesting – I think CHI conference goers would be interested too (not least in thinking about whether they were a ‘hoarder’ or a ‘minimalist’) and so I am generally in favour of acceptance, although I did note one or two problems. The paper concerns digital data preservation and the different tactics that individuals deploy and the extent to which this is in some sense bound up in their wider identity. The authors interview a number of participants and using thematic analysis uncover two ‘key underlining tendencies’ – hoarding and minimalism. They also compare this approach with other attempts at categorization; namely ‘filers and pilers’ and ‘cleaners and keepers’ – an attempt that I believe is not (yet) entirely successful. The authors begin by outlining their phenomenon of interest and other approaches to it as part of their claim to originality in their portrayal of ‘user practices’. I thought the review was good but perhaps (inevitably) overclaimed… so whilst Cushing (2013) is referenced there are other studies by Cushing (including a PhD) that explores the area in rather more detail than is credited, and I don’t understand why these are ignored. So whilst I agree that the authors are right to refrain from presenting hoarding as a compulsive disorder (that would be silly and anyway has already been done) I don’t agree with their claim to be the first ‘involving everyday technology users’ (see also Schiele on Pinterest). (Schiele, K. and Ucok Hughes, M., 2013. Possession rituals of the digital consumer: A study of Pinterest. ACR European Advances.: Cushing, A.L., 2010. Highlighting the archives perspective in the personal digital archiving discussion. Library Hi Tech, 28(2), pp.301-312.: Cushing, A.L., 2011. Self extension and the desire to preserve digital possessions. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 48(1), pp.1-3.) I must also admit to being just a little bit puzzled by the preamble to the methodology section – since its discussion of some complex philosophical issues was so brief - I wondered if it was worth it? I was also a little perturbed by the sentence “In essence, we believe that reality is socially constructed.”.. well.. yes but the position is rather more complex than that – read Hacking’s ‘The Social Construction of What?’.. if reality is socially constructed and your epistemological stance sits within a bounded relativist ontology what warrant can we place on your claims to have produced ‘results’? what value should we place on them? are they only valid for the duration of the conference? I liked the account of the data collection and analysis – although I think that ‘crystallization’ is Richardson’s term rather than Tracy’s – and in the sections following on ‘uncovering hoarding and minimalism’, there was some really nice writing. I did wonder if perhaps there were too many single instances of particular data preservation approaches but overall I really liked the way in which the data was presented and analysed. The one area that I found less convincing came in the comparison with other attempts at categorizing and investigating data preservation practices.. I wasn’t convinced by the argument presented – that filers and pilers and cleaners and keepers were about ‘actions’ whilst hoarding and minimalism was about identity (certainly Cushing links these practices to identities). But overall I found the paper interesting and worthwhile and believe it should be accepted for the conference. Rebuttal response I have read and understood the rebuttal and re-read the paper and the original reviews. In general I think this is an excellent rebuttal, responding to the reviewers criticisms with eminently sensible suggestions that can be implemented quite simply. I remain just a little worried by some of the philosophical issues around 'social constructionism' but they are positing a very weak version of the idea and so I foresee no real (or socially constructed) problems. This is a good paper and an excellent rebuttal and I am raising my score to reflect the fact that I believe it should be accepted for the CHI conference. ------------------------ Submission 4571, Review 3 ------------------------ Title: Hoarding and Minimalism: Tendencies in Digital Data Preservation Overall rating: 4.5 (scale is 0.5..5; 5 is best) Expertise 3 (Knowledgeable) Recommendation . . . Between possibly accept and strong accept; 4.5 Review This paper elaborates the idea of hoarding in the digital data preservation. The authors conduct interview studies of how people approach data preservation now and in the past, how and why how people consider if some data is essential and other needs to be discarded. While exploring use scenario through interviews, the authors discovered another strategy that is the minimalism in data preservation. This research presents early empirical studies also comparison/contrast between the two tendencies, the digital hoarding, and the digital minimalism. The authors had framed their research projects nicely, and it is a pleasant and inspiring read. For example, this paper set a clear goal only discussing preservation under the overall concept of data management. The author also elaborates on a clear standing point, the epistemological meaning-making perspective. The temporal scale is also well-considered, and the researchers informed the participants in the interview for the future data preservation in ten years. Those considerations had made the data analysis and argument more convincing with sound rationale. I would suggest the following if the authors consider some minor iterations or continuing future research initiatives: 1. I have an impression in the first beginning that the authors were introducing only two extreme and opposite strategies in digital preservation, which were hoarding and minimalism. I then realized that the current draft spends many paragraphs discussing the nuances and many other potential behaviors beyond those two. I wonder the authors had chosen this title with particular standing points, such as surfacing these two specific strategies. IMHO, I am not entirely confident, through reading this piece of work, that there is a single spectrum of data preservation strategies, hoarding/minimalism are the two ends, and other preservation behaviors are somewhere in between. If the authors are open for future discussion in our field of HCI, maybe just start with digital hoarding is good enough. Minimalism is a beautiful discovery during the user studies and more to be found for other researchers. 2. Although I am not a big proponent of technology determinism, some of the current people's data preservation behaviors might have a casual relationship with the capabilities of technology applications. Beyond the existing epistemological analysis, the technology analysis might be an excellent supplementary to understand people's current data preservation behaviors. It might include technology in the past, and how it changed through now and how people expect it in the future. I will be more than excited to see if people change their strategy, such as from minimalism to free hoarding because the function is enhanced, such as unlimited cloud photo storage. 3. The comparison of hoarding in everyday life and hoarding in digital preservation can also be a fascinating next direction. The results of comparing preservation strategies in every aspect of people's daily life can profoundly contribute to the future design of technology and interaction. I have a wild guess that people might have consistent strategies across multiple aspects of day-to-day preservation decision making. The minimalism in data preservation might be an unwilling current temporary solution. Rebuttal response I have read the authors' rebuttal and would like to keep the current score.