Withdraw from ACL ARR and resubmit to a workshop? [D]

Hey guys,

I received mediocre scores for my EMNLP paper during the May ACL ARR cycle: 2.5/3, 3/4, 2.5/4. The paper is in the Interpretability track. The reviewers had no larger issue with the methodology or the paper in general, but it seemed like they didn’t fully get the so what of my paper. I’ve tried to clarify everything in my rebuttal, but I don’t assume that the reviewers will engage in the discussion. With the current scores, I won’t make it to the conference and likely not even into findings. Hence, I was thinking of withdrawing the paper, if scores don’t improve, improve the presentation of my paper, and submit it to the BlackboxNLP workshop by the end of next week.

As I’m a first year PhD student, I’m not so familiar with ACL ARR, and how best to approach this. Hence, I wanted to ask you guys. Should I keep the paper in the cycle and hope for the best (or switch to the conference at a later stage) or should I withdraw it directly, adjust it slightly, and head directly to the workshop?