--- name: popl-author-response description: Use when drafting a POPL author response during the optional multi-day window — triaging soundness objections against misread definitions, answering "what does Theorem 3 actually assume" questions with pointers rather than new material, staying concise per the CFP, and protecting the path to conditional acceptance. --- # POPL Author Response The POPL 2027 call describes the response phase plainly: authors get a multi-day period, responding is optional, and a response "must be concise, addressing specific points raised in the reviews" (read 2026-07-08; exact window dates were not rendered — 待核实 in `resources/official-source-map.md`). At POPL the response is usually the last input before the committee decides between reject and *conditional* acceptance, so its job is to remove doubts, not to renegotiate the paper. ## What POPL reviewers actually dispute Theory reviews rarely say "weak baselines." They say a definition does not mean what you think, a side condition is missing, a theorem is unsurprising given prior work, or the metatheory-to-motivation gap is too wide. Sort every review point into one of four bins before writing a word: | Bin | Example objection | Response move | |---|---|---| | Soundness doubt | "Lemma 4.2 seems to fail for open terms" | Quote the exact hypothesis that excludes the case; cite the proof line or mechanization file | | Misread formalism | "Your typing rule allows unrestricted duplication" | Point to the definition as written; concede unclear notation and promise a one-line clarification | | Significance | "This follows from [X] by standard techniques" | Name the specific step that fails under [X]'s assumptions — technical daylight, not adjectives | | Presentation | "Section 5 is unreadable" | Accept, state the concrete restructuring you will do in the conditional-acceptance revision | Soundness doubts come first and get the most space. One unresolved "the proof may be broken" outweighs every fixed typo. ## Rules of engagement - Answer the question asked, at the location asked. "See Section 3" without a page, definition number, or lemma name reads as evasion. - No new theorems, no new mechanization claims. If a reviewer's counterexample exposes a real gap, say what the repaired statement is and where the fix lands — the conditional-acceptance revision exists exactly for that. - Never hint at who you are; full double-blind holds through this phase, and identities unblind only after conditional-acceptance decisions. - Concede fast and precisely. "R2 is right that Definition 6 omits the well-formedness premise; the proofs already assume it (see App. C.1), and we will state it" is a strong sentence, not a weak one. ## A skeleton that fits a concise budget ```text Thank you — responses keyed to review points. [R1, soundness of Thm 3] The counterexample uses an open term; Thm 3's hypothesis "Γ ⊢ e : τ with Γ closed" excludes it (Def. 5, p.9). The mechanization checks the closed case only, as stated in §7. No change needed; we will flag the hypothesis in the theorem statement. [R2 + R3, relation to ] requires structural weakening (their Lemma 2); our substructural setting has no weakening, which is where their proof method stops. §2 example 2 will make this explicit. [R3, presentation of §5] Agreed. We will move the auxiliary judgments to the appendix and open §5 with the main invariant. ``` ## Output format ```text [Response status] drafted / needs-facts / not worth responding [Bin counts] soundness: misread: significance: presentation: [Highest-risk point] [Concessions] [Length check] ```