I also used to submit to *ACL conferences exclusively, and was even a SAC, but got out of the academic game altogether. I'm still conducting research, but as an

I also used to submit to *ACL conferences exclusively, and was even a SAC, but got out of the academic game altogether. I'm still conducting research, but as an independent researcher for my own startup. The system seems to be more and more bananas over time and no one is willing to just force a change. It's really a tragedy of the commons. That said, why don't conferences work like journals: if you're rejected you cannot resubmit. Find a new conference. That gets rid of the queuing problem. Yes, you'll have some amazing papers that will not be accepted by a top conference. So what, it happens to everyone. Plenty of influential papers were not published in a top conference in ML/AI/NLP.