[DespairYeMighty]

She was a CS PhD and somewhat itinerant professor with a long career who wrote a prominent CS paper about computer memory, Hitting the Memory Wall: Implications of the Obvious

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/216585.216588

on her obituary page, you will see a prominent "Memory Wall" link that is NOT a reference to her paper, but a place for sharing your thoughts about her life

[deater]

you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee"

I notice these things a bit more as she was my PhD thesis advisor

[thaumasiotes]

> you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee"

    Wulf et al.
    Wulf and McKee

35% less isn't usually described as "practically more".

It'd be interesting to see someone use the unabbreviated form; I have a hunch they wouldn't know to say "et alia".

[tomjakubowski]

How did you arrive at 35% less? The first is 11 characters, the second is 14, and 3/14 is 21%.

[thaumasiotes]

That is a good question. As you say, it's 21%. I had the 11 and the 14 correct; I don't remember how I got 35%.

[marricks]

There's only two authors! That's so rude!

[setgree]

It’s also not correct; et al. is conventionally applied to three or more authors (it means “and others,” plural)

[trvz]

No, plural can’t be deduced from how it is written.

[cperciva]

"et alia" usually means "and others", but technically in Latin "alia" can be either plural neuter or singular female!

[setgree]

Pardon, you’re right

[bjourne]

Why? For all the automatic academic score tracking systems it doesn't matter one bit if it is Wulf et al. or Wulf and McKee.

[mattkrause]

The automated ones don't care, but it absolutely matters for the informal credit assignment process that actually runs academia.

I really wish we had a better way to "name" papers. Big clinical trials often have an acronym (often hilariously forced: "CXCessoR4"). That takes the emphasis off (one) lead author but it's implausibly hard to make up one for every research paper.

[bjourne]

What "informal credit assignment"? It's automated and it runs entirely on quantitative data.

[remexre]

the one where i think of a particular piece of work, and i know who did it, then tell a student "oh, see if $author's group published anything else about this."

i'm not using software for this if this is off the top of my head, and it's the sort of thing that, at scale, hurts the forgotten author and their students

[halJordan]

So we're talking about this woman's contribution. And you're talking about how the system is depriving her of recognition.

Do you see the inherent tension in what you're claiming vs the lived experience of everyone in this post (including you!)?

[mattkrause]

Cmon…We’re saying that a certain style of reference gives her less credit than might be due. Not none at all.

One paper doesn’t make a career (she wrote many dozens), it’s not always cited weirdly, and even if it is, some people may remember the coauthors (as they should).

But since you mention lived experience, I’ll add that I’ve certainly been asked if I’m "even aware" of results from co-authored papers where my name was listed second—-and I don’t think this is very uncommon experience.

[john_strinlai]

its about respect, not about academic score tracking systems

[SecretDreams]

et al should never be applied when only two authors!!!

[fsckboy]

...unless the second one is named Alfred and is an informal person

[SecretDreams]

Bruce et al

[b473a]

Yeah tenure is nice but there's just a hint of mystery behind the title "itinerant professor." Like a wizard that just pops up in places to work computer science magic.

[seanmcdirmid]

I was a phd student when sally was a professor at Utah. I get the feeling that a lot of people came together for an interesting project (systems/memory related, I can’t even remember the name ATM) and dispersed when the project was at its later stages. I think it’s common in our field for many phds to work as professors for just a few years and not commit to it as a career.

[swyx]

bit ironic i guess but unintentionally fitting