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> I always assumed that this was a deliberate source of friction, slightly raising the bar of entry so as to discourage a certain sort of submission. There’s n

by sh34r 3y ago

> I always assumed that this was a deliberate source of friction, slightly raising the bar of entry so as to discourage a certain sort of submission. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s intentional gatekeeping. There’s a reason why many papers are being “published” on Arxiv and foregoing all this boxticking. The whole publishing process is fundamentally broken. Aaron Swartz (RIP) had the right idea all along. Get rid of the middlemen sucking up millions of dollars by paywalling government funded research. It’s been proven time and time again that a shocking number of studies can’t be reproduced and that the traditional peer review process just isn’t working. It’s a good old boys’ club putting a stamp of approval on their friends’ work and keeping the outsiders away. When it comes to Math though, I do have some sympathies. There are so many cranks that think they solved Collatz or a millennium problem and don’t even know what they don’t know. It must be exhausting to sift through all that noise in a volunteer, unpaid position. These shibboleths might be a necessary evil.

cratermoon 3y ago
> It’s a good old boys’ club putting a stamp of approval on their friends’ work and keeping the outsiders away. > Math though, I do have some sympathies. There are so many cranks Lots of other fields have their cranks, quacks, fringe theorists, and whackjobs. Why give math special treatment?
- sh34r 3y ago
  I think it’s an asymmetric problem across areas of study. Including within math — there aren’t many amateurs who are going to try their hand at algebraic geometry, but number theory tends to be like catnip, because many wicked problems are very simple to state. Math is not so different from computer science in that it seems relatively approachable to a layperson. But there are relatively few mathematicians out there. That same level of spam is being filtered by much fewer people. To me, it’s akin to why the Linux kernel devs operate the way they do. No GitHub issue page, no Slack, no Discord, banning topposting and web email providers. It’s all based on old school mailing lists, because there’s orders of magnitude more amateurs than kernel devs and they don’t have time for handholding the unwashed masses. Anyway, I think there’s some middle ground to be found between this extremely burdensome process to submit a paper for publishing, and making it as easy to publish as making a forum post…
  - memefrog 3y ago
    For what it's worth, as a curious computer science university student in 2013 I sent Linus Torvalds an email from my personal GMail account. He answered both my original question and a supplementary question, even though they were (in hindsight) quite stupid. Even the great and very busy Mr Torvalds has at least some time for handholding unwashed amateurs.

by sh34r 3y ago

cratermoon 3y ago

> It’s a good old boys’ club putting a stamp of approval on their friends’ work and keeping the outsiders away. > Math though, I do have some sympathies. There are so many cranks Lots of other fields have their cranks, quacks, fringe theorists, and whackjobs. Why give math special treatment?

sh34r 3y ago
I think it’s an asymmetric problem across areas of study. Including within math — there aren’t many amateurs who are going to try their hand at algebraic geometry, but number theory tends to be like catnip, because many wicked problems are very simple to state. Math is not so different from computer science in that it seems relatively approachable to a layperson. But there are relatively few mathematicians out there. That same level of spam is being filtered by much fewer people. To me, it’s akin to why the Linux kernel devs operate the way they do. No GitHub issue page, no Slack, no Discord, banning topposting and web email providers. It’s all based on old school mailing lists, because there’s orders of magnitude more amateurs than kernel devs and they don’t have time for handholding the unwashed masses. Anyway, I think there’s some middle ground to be found between this extremely burdensome process to submit a paper for publishing, and making it as easy to publish as making a forum post…
- memefrog 3y ago
  For what it's worth, as a curious computer science university student in 2013 I sent Linus Torvalds an email from my personal GMail account. He answered both my original question and a supplementary question, even though they were (in hindsight) quite stupid. Even the great and very busy Mr Torvalds has at least some time for handholding unwashed amateurs.