one last asa gripe

I’ve just learned that I messed up.  I was supposed to choose WHICH roundtable session to forward those incoming papers to .  According to Kendra at ASA, I should have known this because last October I received an email that says “second priority organizers are responsible for forwarding unused acceptable papers to the appropriate roundtable organizer.”  Apparently just clicking reject did not automatically forward the paper (unlike the first round process), and apparently submitters don’t get to choose their roundtable back up, their second choice session organizer is supposed to make this choice for them.  Bad word bad word bad word.  I sent a complaint pointing out that this system makes no sense, as it is the paper submitter who ought to choose which roundtable session to go to, and that important instructions should be posted on the organizer web site, not hidden in old email messages four months removed from when and where they would be needed.  I also alerted Kendra at ASA to this problem so she can hopefully find the lost papers and put them in the right place.  Warning to everyone whose paper got “rejected” rather than forwarded to a roundtable: this is probably what happened.   It appears that Kendra at ASA is watching for orphan papers that need to be forwarded to roundtables, so I think she is the person to talk to if you got messed with in this way.  If you are mad, please curse your session organizer for inability to decipher a cryptic and counter-intuitive system, not an indifference to your career.

asa session organizer site

Quick question.  ASA’s session organizer site appears non-functional.  First no response, then administrator’s login where it has never heard of me.  Anybody know what is going on?  ASA isn’t answering email; I did not try calling.  (I’m almost done, just need to forward 1 paper to round tables if it gets released by its first choice.  I can see why people don’t remember to do this.)

dysfunctional ASA rules?

I like on-line paper submission a lot. But I’m worried that the rigid selection rules ASA has imposed along with the on-line system are dysfunctional, specifically that a paper can only be seen by the organizer to whom it has been submitted and that organizer of choice #2 only sees the paper if organizer of choice #1 rejects it. Back in the bad old days, we had to deal with boxes and boxes of paper — I got several hundred submissions one year —