Conference reviews contains the whole range of ratings We have received reviews for a paper we submitted to a top tier CS related conference, which holds a rebuttal phase. The ratings we got are:


strong accept (expert)
weak accept (knowledgeable)
weak reject (expert)
strong reject (knowledgeable)


which covers the whole spectrum of ratings for this conference. There aren't any major technical comments, and reviews are mainly about the reviewer's taste of the model.

Does it happen often? Is there a way to present this scattering as a possible strength of the paper (being controversial)? Should we address this fact in the rebuttal process? Any tips for the rebuttal concerning this issue?
This happened to me twice. I think the rebuttal is only necessary for the rejections (1 + 2), or the weak accept? the strong accept requires no rebuttal. It's hard when there's no extensive comments. But when I did my rebuttal, I just targeted my response by reviewers (as in, I wrote separate rebuttals for each, and labeled them as such). If there's not enough comments to go on, can you write to the conference organizer asking them to solicit a bit more info? once I received a blank comment page, but as it turns out the reviewer made a PDF of his/her comments and it failed to attach. Not saying this is your case, but it doesn't hurt to ask.