• SpookyAlex03@lemmy.zip
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    9 months ago

    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.

  • callyral [he/they]@pawb.social
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    9 months ago

    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.

  • morrowind@lemmy.mlOP
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    9 months ago

    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”).

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • morrowind@lemmy.mlOP
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        9 months ago

        I mean, relatively practical. Just the fact that they actually made an effort. It’s not much different from having it in a footnote

      • alehc@slrpnk.net
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        9 months ago

        Easy fix (for html). Just embed js to randomly shuffle the order of the authors every time you hover or something.

      • MBM@lemmings.world
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        9 months ago

        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.

  • mokus
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    9 months ago

    Now whoever has the longest name has an advantage

  • 667@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Every paper comes with an author appendix as cut-out scrabble tiles (scrambled) so readers assemble the names in the order they prefer.

  • capital@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    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?

  • SquirrelX@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I may be missing the point, but why not instead list names in whatever order, but clarify who contributed what.

    • jagungal@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      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”.