
No Comments - savara
https://alxdavids.xyz/2017/10/09/no-comments/
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blt
The author's expanded definition of "weak accept" is perfect.

I'm in a different area of CS. I've had reviews where the reviewer clearly
skimmed over the math details. Still, the totally blank reviews in this
article would not be accepted by program chairs in my area. They would find a
new reviewer or ask the original reviewer to try again.

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bradleyjg
Peer reviewing is considered duty to the academy but isn't tracked,
publicized, or taken into account in e.g. lateral transfers, summer grants, or
other things professors might want, right?

Is it harder to get a paper published in a given journal if you've blown off
requests from them to peer review or done a crap job?

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blt
Suppose postdoc X submits a terrible review to a conference. Conference
committee member Y requested the review from X, and thus learns that X is a
bad reviewer. Later on, Y's colleague Z is considering hiring X for a faculty
position and asks Y about X. Y tells the story about the terrible review. X
doesn't get the job.

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jmgrosen
In my experience, reviews are typically anonymous.

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bo1024
In my experience with CS conferences, reviewers are rarely anonymous to anyone
involved except the authors.

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r00fus
This is great: "This is no ordinary adversary that you would expect to face in
an academic review. This person sits in the chaotic neutral section of the d&d
morality compass."

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jamesrcole
Though it's expecting the audience to know what that means. I would expect
that a greater number of them would understand it than in the general
population but I would think there'd be plenty who don't.

FWIW, I'm quite aware of what d&d is but I don't know what "chaotic neutral"
means.

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Mz
It is a two word summary of the following two paragraphs:

 _They join program committees for conferences, but they have a maniacal
distaste for the peer reviewing system. There have been too many missed
opportunities at the hands of ill-justified criticisms. They care so little
for the process that they will actively try to sabotage it. They roll a d6 for
each review and assign it the corresponding score. I was lucky this time, but
many others haven 't been.

Usually, they take great pleasure in writing an incomprehensible review with
no relation to the text they've read. But today is different, they only have
one review to write. They rolled an accept, now the dungeon master exposes
their bidding._

You would not ordinarily expect a chaotic neutral in academia. Academia is
very bureaucratic, which fits with a Lawful alignment. A chaotic neutral
character isn't even going to pretend to care about the rules. It makes you
wonder how the hell they have remained in the system this long when they are
so obviously phoning it in with no effort and no pretense at making at effort.
It is such an obvious _fuck you and your damn rules_ attitude, it is
incomprehensible how they have failed to get fired.

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sleepydog
I don't work in academia, but at my current workplace, we've removed the
"Neutral" rating in our interview feedback system. You're required to pick a
side, and you need to back up your position. If you really can't form a
recommendation, the candidate has to do another interview (I haven't
personally seen this happen).

That said, we also are able to set a maximum # of interviews per week that we
will accept, and our time is respected. Perhaps the same cannot be said for
peer review in academia.

It's one of the worst feelings for me when I give a talk or present a paper,
get to the Q&A portion, and I'm met with crickets.

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api_or_ipa
> It's one of the worst feelings for me when I give a talk or present a paper,
> get to the Q&A portion, and I'm met with crickets.

If you know anyone in the crowd, it's a good idea to 'seed' the crowd with
prepared questions or ask friends to kick off the q&a portion with a question
of their own. We do this when we have guest speakers and it greatly improves
the moral of the speakers and everyone goes home happier.

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xerophyte12932
I thought this was a standard. I have been seeing this in play since
highschool guest speaker sessions

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conbandit
Almost as bad as the responses one can expect from job applications.

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wakamoleguy
One can expect responses from job applications?

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KekDemaga
I had a software company put me into their newsletter list once.

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hartator
Classy.

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sulam
I have to say, life in academia does not sound appealing...

