Re: [Bug-gnupedia]Broad Technical Issues

[Christoph Steinbeck]

Dries van Oosten wrote:

> I agree totally. Peer review is a must. If there is no peer review, you
> also end up with a new world wide web (to use your phrase). You have to
> have some idea of how much value you have to attach to an article.
> What you don't want is that articles can be rejected on the basis of the
> opinions of a few reviewers. If you submit an article to Phys Rev A, it
> can be denied for publication by ONE peer reviewer and this guy might be
> your direct competitor, trying to frustrate your work.

Right, but if the community is small enough, which is a tendency all
over science due to heavy specialization everywhere, you'll get to
review his article next month, and he knows that. So he'll better be
fair. 

> So we don't want that. Your alternative is great. Ask a few suspected
> experts from the encyclopedia contributors and ask them to give their
> opinion. If everyone thinks it sucks, but it should still be published,
> albeit with some bad credentials. One of the problems with peer review is
> that if you have a small amount of people willing to peer review, they
> tend to get a lot of work. And when a peer reviewer always responds fast,
> he'll get more work the next time. Avoiding these kind of logistic problem
> can become a big issue if this thing really gets of the ground.

I agree. It would be good to have the review process as open as possible
- something like a glass house for "articles to be published", where
whoever wants can review them. Each article carries with it the (links
to its) reviews and ratings. No rating should be accepted without a
brief justification for it. If an article only has one bad rating and
you wonder if you can nevertheless trust it, you can still read the
justification and decide whether to agree or not. 

Christoph Steinbeck