  In this note, I quantitatively examine various trends in the lengths of
published papers in ACM CSCW from 2000-2018, focusing on several major
transitions in editorial and reviewing policy. The focus is on the rise and
fall of the 4-page note, which was introduced in 2004 as a separate submission
type to the 10-page double-column "full paper" format. From 2004-2012, 4-page
notes of 2,500 to 4,500 words consistently represented about 20-35\% of all
publications. In 2013, minimum and maximum page lengths were officially
removed, with no formal distinction made between full papers and notes. The
note soon completely disappeared as a distinct genre, which co-occurred with a
trend in steadily rising paper lengths. I discuss such findings both as they
directly relate to local concerns in CSCW and in the context of longstanding
theoretical discussions around genre theory and how socio-technical structures
and affordances impact participation in distributed, computer-mediated
organizations and user-generated content platforms. There are many possible
explanations for the decline of the note and the emergence of longer and longer
papers, which I identify for future work. I conclude by addressing the
implications of such findings for the CSCW community, particularly given how
genre norms impact what kinds of scholarship and scholars thrive in CSCW, as
well as whether new top-down rules or bottom-up guidelines ought to be
developed around paper lengths and different kinds of contributions.
