Dear GECCO reviewer, Please IMMEDIATELY take a look at the titles and abstracts of the papers that you receive and establish in your own mind that you are able to finish your reviewing of these papers within the allotted time (approximately three weeks), and that you will probably be able to answer "yes" to QUESTION NUMBER 1 of the "paper review form" for EACH of these papers. Note that, while this is a "double blind" review process, the mere fact that you may recognise the identity of the author(s) of the paper does not disqualify you from reviewing it, so long as there is no conflict of interest in your reviewing work by that author (e.g., author is not at your institution, or a close associate, etc., as spelled out in Question Number 1). Also, while the authors are required to remove their names and institutions from the title page, they are NOT required to "disguise" any references to their own work... it is up to them how they wish to handle that, and no "points" should be deducted simply because it is possible to figure out who the author(s) likely are. After accept/reject decision have been made your reviews of these papers will be circulated to other reviewers of the same submission. Likewise you will receive copies of their reviews of these submissions. If you cannot answer "yes" to QUESTION NUMBER 1 for a particular paper (or have any other problem with completing the reviews of some or all of the papers by the deadline below), please contact gecco@aaai.org immediately by e-mail. NOTE: If, at some later point in the review process, you discover a conflict of interest in reviewing a particular paper, please immediately contact gecco@aaai.org and do not continue with review of that paper. The deadline for reviews is XXXXX. This is a critical and FIRM deadline. The reviewing will be by e-mail. Please insert your comments into the paper review form. Please send AAAI ONE SEPARATE MESSAGE FOR EACH PAPER to the following special address: gecco-revs@aaai.org Since we will be receiving hundreds of reviews, please make the "subject" header line of each separate review message EXACTLY "Paper xxx - Reviewer yyy" This special address should be used ONLY for sending in your reviews. Any other messages should be send to the usual address of gecco@aaai.org Please note the two key numerical rating questions (numbers 14 and 11) that will be used to create the basic numerical ranking for the papers. Question 14 calls for a relative ranking and question 11 calls for an absolute judgement. You should judge the paper on its merits, not on formatting or length issues. Such issues will be addressed, when necessary, by the proceedings editor and conference chairs. For question number 14, you have a fixed budget of 125 points for 5 papers. This question calls on you, the reviewer, to make a hard choice among your papers using a LIMITED BUDGET of points. You are asked to allocate ALL 125 points among your papers. You can give between 0 to 50 points to any one paper. A bigger number is better. The sum of your allocations, over all papers, must be 125. (In the event that you are actually reviewing 4 papers, the total should be 100; it should be 150 for 6 papers; etc.). Question number 11 asks you for your absolute judgement of the paper (e.g., definitely accept, probably accept as paper, etc. ). Please be sure to fill in the SUMMARY line (question 17) on the form. Please replace the #'s on this summary line with your reviewer number, the paper number, the letter (A - G) from question 11, and the number from question 14. For example, this is what appears on the form: ***SUMMARY LINE*** Reviewer ### Paper ### Q-11 # Q-14 ## If you are reviewer 11 and the paper is number 22 and you give it a "definitely accept" or "A" on question 11 and assign it 40 points on question 14, the summary line would read ***SUMMARY LINE*** Reviewer 11 Paper 22 Q-11 A Q-14 40 The final rating of each paper will reflect the collective opinion of a relatively large number of different reviewers. AAAI is physically sending out the papers to reviewers and will be receiving the reviews from the reviewers by e-mail. AAAI will remove the reviewer's name (unless the reviewer has exercised the individual option of signing his review) before forwarding the electronic paper review forms to the authors. Approximately 49 percent of submitted papers will be accepted as full papers. Up to 80 percent of submitted papers will be accepted as posters. The authors of accepted papers will be given about 4 weeks after notification to revise their papers and convert them to camera-ready format. The deadline for the final camera-ready papers will be very FIRM. For additional information, go directly to www.isgec.org/GECCO-2002/XXXXX Thanks again for your hard work. Erick Cantu-Paz