This, I think, is a major weakness of the typical conference publication process, which is one-pass reject or accept. Journals have a much more humane process.

This, I think, is a major weakness of the typical conference publication process, which is one-pass reject or accept. Journals have a much more humane process. Take the potential sentence from a reviewer: "This work has significant novelty, but is lacking a comparison against technique XYZ." For a Tier 1 conference submission, that's a rejection. For a journal, that's a revision request. Of course, in computer science, conferences are where the action is. But, there are attempts to split the difference. VLDB has moved to a more journal acceptance process (http://www.vldb.org/2015/submission-guidelines.html; http://www.vldb.org/2015/submission-guidelines.html; rolling deadline at the start of each month through the year, reviewers can request revisions), which myself and some co-authors are currently going through. It is much more reasonable.