I wonder if this was inspired by a recent xkcd?
At text: People may complain about readability, but even with jpeg compression, extracting the data points is usually computationally feasible if there aren’t too many of them.
Maybe for the way in which they are layering them, but I’m pretty sure the reasoning behind it is inspired by content that has been made into comics for quite some time, for example
My idea: have it so every time the document is opened the names are randomly scrambled. I don’t think this would work with PDF or on paper but it’s a fun idea
Edit: While it wouldn’t work decently on paper, this would work with E-Ink display, and instead have it change every few seconds while the paper is being read.
I do the same but with all the words.
Are you the guy that reviewed the rat testicle paper?
How do you know my password?
PDF can… embed javascript. So, sadly it is possible.
It wouldn’t work with PDF, but probably would work with Postscript (being that it’s Turing-complete).
(I say “probably” because I don’t know for a fact that Postscript’s API has a
randomfunction.)You can embed javascript or 3D objects in PDF, surely you can reorder some words
That has to be the furthest possible opposite from what PDF is for.
Not only is this paper real: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.01393.pdf
But they actually made it practical:
We have implemented two ways to reveal the actual names present in an overlapping stack, when viewing a PDF file on a computer.
First, hovering over the stacked names should pop up a tooltip with the authors listed in their original order, as shown in Figure 1.
This feature works on many desktop PDF viewers (e.g., Acrobat, Evince, Firefox, VSCode), but notably not Chrome, Edge, Safari, or MacOS Preview. It also does not work on mobile devices we tested (probably because they lack a natural notion of “hovering”).
That doesn’t sound very practical at all.
All it’s done is force you to read a tooltip. Which is an awful idea. The tooltips still create a first-author situation, so now your forced to screw around with a tooltip for…. Nothing.
I mean, relatively practical. Just the fact that they actually made an effort. It’s not much different from having it in a footnote
Easy fix (for html). Just embed js to randomly shuffle the order of the authors every time you hover or something.
I think the point is to recognise a paper by its author blob so you don’t end up needing the tooltip that much (they talk about it in the paper) I’m not really convinced that it’s worth it, but they did think it through.
Hmm… it’s not working for me in either Firefox or Okular.
And the authors are father and son!
Now whoever has the longest name has an advantage
International collaboration with Spaniards and Hispanics instantly drops to 0.
Every paper comes with an author appendix as cut-out scrabble tiles (scrambled) so readers assemble the names in the order they prefer.
I thought we already did authorship in alphabetical order so as to avoid any implied hierarchy?
That’s just Adams supremacy
I thought I was hot shit with a low-priority B name, but the Adams in my collaboration showed me just how truly mid I am. If he wasn’t on my dissertation committee… and also a cool dude… and a good scientist…, I would have some choice words for him!
Get rid of that guy! And you don’t have to do it alone. B names of the university, unite! You have nothing to lose but your second place and all the first places to gain
I’ll make him rue the day he was born. I will make the kerning on the copy of my dissertation I send him just slightly weird so that it gives him uncanny discomfort while reading it. Any plots I cite from his work will be slightly lower resolution. He won’t know what hit him.
They talk about alphabetical order in the introduction, you can see a bit of it in the screenshot. It feels just slightly unfair because you’ll always get Adams et al. and never Zimmer et al.
I honestly didn’t know if this was serious at first…
Edit: lol the fuck? It is real? When you hover, the tooltip is still a list with an order… what’s the point?
It’s funny
I may be missing the point, but why not instead list names in whatever order, but clarify who contributed what.
Order matters in academia whether the authors want it to or not. Other academics will look at the order of the authors and make judgements based on that, so you’d have to specify something like “authors listed alphabetically”.
In math and (theoretical) physics alphabetical is the presumed norm.
Huh, TIL. That actually makes sense
