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It seems like the academic publishing model would be useful here (and in fact that might be what they are doing with alums reading applications.) Each paper get

by azarias 15y ago

It seems like the academic publishing model would be useful here (and in fact that might be what they are doing with alums reading applications.) Each paper gets a few reviewers, which quickly determines the definite accepts and rejects, and the whole committee need only discuss the ones in the middle. The way partners and alums are structured in YC, it would probably be ideal to weigh reviews accordingly. There will definitely be some noise, but one would hope things will shake out as they should most of the time. At least that's what I am hoping.

dude_abides 15y ago
The academic research community has certainly solved this problem to a large extent, eg. reviewing and program committee meetings at elite conferences such as SigComm and SOSP, or to demonstrate scalability, conferences such as Infocom which get thousands of submissions and still maintain high quality in their accepted papers. One big difference is in the incentives for a PC member at a top conference vs for a YC partner. The former needs to maintain his and the conference's status/reputation by ensuring the papers are of top quality. He doesn't care that much if some great paper is left out. Whereas in the case of a YC partner, the biggest concern is to ensure not missing out on spotting the next Facebook. This is why in the former case, past reputation and being part of the clique is very important, and in the latter case (YC) it is not so.
eli_gottlieb 15y ago
Ugh, completely disagreed. Do we really want startup funding run by Statler and Waldorf? Academic reviewers tend to be looking for ways to reject your paper, not even trying to give an honest evaluation.
- azarias 15y ago
  A surprising amount of peer review is actually done by lowly graduate students who are assigned papers by advisors. I really try to give an honest evaluation :) [and my experience is most people generally do]. However, like it was mentioned above, the penalty for rejecting a good paper is really low.
  - eli_gottlieb 15y ago
    Yeah, true. The whole incentive and informational system for academic reviewing is pretty broken.

by azarias 15y ago

dude_abides 15y ago

The academic research community has certainly solved this problem to a large extent, eg. reviewing and program committee meetings at elite conferences such as SigComm and SOSP, or to demonstrate scalability, conferences such as Infocom which get thousands of submissions and still maintain high quality in their accepted papers. One big difference is in the incentives for a PC member at a top conference vs for a YC partner. The former needs to maintain his and the conference's status/reputation by ensuring the papers are of top quality. He doesn't care that much if some great paper is left out. Whereas in the case of a YC partner, the biggest concern is to ensure not missing out on spotting the next Facebook. This is why in the former case, past reputation and being part of the clique is very important, and in the latter case (YC) it is not so.

eli_gottlieb 15y ago

Ugh, completely disagreed. Do we really want startup funding run by Statler and Waldorf? Academic reviewers tend to be looking for ways to reject your paper, not even trying to give an honest evaluation.

azarias 15y ago
A surprising amount of peer review is actually done by lowly graduate students who are assigned papers by advisors. I really try to give an honest evaluation :) [and my experience is most people generally do]. However, like it was mentioned above, the penalty for rejecting a good paper is really low.
- eli_gottlieb 15y ago
  Yeah, true. The whole incentive and informational system for academic reviewing is pretty broken.