wsdm-supplementary

WSDM Supplementary Material

Allocate content across WSDM's three containers. The defining constraint,

verified for the 2026 edition: appendices are inside the 9-page cap, and

only references plus the required ethical-considerations section sit outside

it (2025: 8 pages + at most 2 for references-plus-ethics). WSDM has kept a

famously lean budget since its early editions, and no separate

supplementary-upload channel was verified for current cycles (待核实 - if the

current CFP adds one, re-plan around it). So "put it in the supplement" is not

an available sentence here; the real containers are:

| Container | Counted? | Reviewer obligation | Right contents |

|---|---|---|---|

| Body (≤9 pp incl. appendices, 2026) | Yes | Read | Claims, method, all decisive evidence |

| References | No | Consulted | Complete citations - never compressed |

| Ethics section | No | Read as ethics | Societal impact, privacy, misuse, mitigations |

| Cited anonymous repository | No | Voluntary | Code, configs, raw results, full prompts, extra ablations |

Triage rule: decisive vs supporting vs archival

• Decisive evidence - anything a reviewer needs to believe a headline claim

(main comparisons, the ablation that isolates the mechanism, the bias-control

analysis) - must be in the body. A decisive table living only in the repo is

invisible: consulting it is voluntary and many reviewers will not.

• Supporting material - per-dataset breakdowns, sensitivity sweeps,

secondary metrics - goes to a compact in-budget appendix if space remains,

else to the repository with a one-line pointer stating what is there.

• Archival material - raw logs of runs, full hyperparameter grids, prompt

transcripts - always repository.

The failure mode to catch in review-of-the-draft: a 9th page spent on a

supporting sensitivity sweep while the decisive ablation is squeezed into a

footnote. Rank content by claim-criticality, not by writing order.

Compression tactics that keep meaning

1. Merge, don't shrink, tables. Two 6-column tables over the same systems

become one 8-column table; dropping font size below the class minimum is a

format violation, merging is craft.

1. Plot the sweep, table the winner. A hyperparameter study is one small

figure; the chosen values go in one row of a settings table; the full grid

goes to the repo.

1. State theorems, sketch proofs. WSDM papers with formal results give the

statement plus a 3-5 line proof sketch in the body and the full proof in an

in-budget appendix only when it is short; otherwise the repo carries a PDF

note - and the claim sentence must not overreach what the sketch shows.

1. Prompts by exemplar. For foundation-model components, show one

representative prompt inline (verbatim, boxed) and point to the repo for the

full set; paraphrased prompts are unreproducible.

1. Ethics section carries ethics. Resist parking experimental overflow

there; the SPC reads it and the move is transparent.

The pointer pattern

Every externalized item gets an explicit, specific in-body pointer so reviewers

know evidence exists and was not hidden:

% Good: specific, verifiable, sets expectations
Full per-locale results (12 markets), the complete prompt set, and the
seed-level metric dumps behind Tables~2--4 are in the anonymous
repository \cite{anonrepo}, directory \texttt{results/}.

% Bad: vague hand-wave reviewers rightly distrust
Additional experiments are available in our repository.

And the repository must deliver: a pointer to a directory that does not exist,

or to results that mismatch the paper's numbers, is worse than no pointer.

Budget worksheet

Run this a week before the deadline, not the night of:

page budget (2026 anchor)        9.00
- title/abstract/intro           1.25
- related work                   0.75
- method                         2.50
- experimental setup             1.25
- results + ablations            2.50
- discussion/limitations/concl.  0.50
- in-budget appendix             0.25
                                 ----
head-room                        0.00   <- if negative, cut supporting
references                       uncounted
ethics section                   uncounted (but write it properly)

If head-room is negative, cut in this order: supporting appendix -> secondary

metric columns -> related-work prose (compress to positioning, see

wsdm-related-work) -> introduction repetition. Never cut: setup details that

gate reproducibility, limitations, or the decisive ablation.

Edge cases

• Short-track papers (track introduced in 2026) compress the same triage

into a smaller budget: there is no room for any in-budget appendix at all,

so the split is binary - body or repository. Verify the short-paper cap in

the current call; the pack could not pin the 2026 number (待核实).

• Demonstrations were capped at 4 pages inclusive of references in 2026
• a different counting rule than the long track in the same year. Never

assume counting rules transfer across tracks of the same edition.

• Theory-heavy papers: when full proofs genuinely cannot fit in budget,

the honest structures are (a) a shortened conference claim whose proof does

fit, or (b) a companion technical-report/preprint cited openly - checking

first that the current anonymity rules permit citing it without breaking

blinding (an anonymized preprint pointer in the repo is the safe default).

• Cross-edition drift: the 2025→2026 change moved references and ethics

from a shared 2-page allowance to unrestricted space while pulling

appendices inside the cap. Assume the containers change again; re-derive

this skill's table from the current CFP before applying it.

Output format

[Container map] body / references / ethics / repo allocation per artifact
[Decisive-in-body check] all headline-claim evidence in the 9 pages: yes / no
[Budget] worksheet head-room: +/- N pages; cut list if negative
[Pointers] each external item has a specific in-body pointer: yes / gaps
[Repo delivery] pointers resolve and numbers match: verified / pending