We do need some sort of quality control, because too much open vagueness is more likely to lead to unthought-through papers than exciting innovative ones. A public presentation is not the place to get advice on a diss. proposal -- you can do that in private or set up birds of a feather roundtables. But it is unfair to subject an audience to such stuff. This has been a problem with AoIR since the first Kansas meeting and one reason I have cut back on my attendance. While I would kvell to hear anything Terri Senft had to say about anything. Alas, we are all not Terri. YMMV Barry Wellman _______________________________________________________________________ S.D. Clark Professor FRSC NetLab Director Faculty of Information (iSchool) 611 Bissell Building 140 St. George St. University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 3G6 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman twitter: @barrywellman NETWORKED:The New Social Operating System. Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman MIT Press http://amzn.to/zXZg39 Print $22 Kindle $16 Old/NewCyberTimes http://bit.ly/c8N9V8 ________________________________________________________________________