The DIP Process

[Manu]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 3:40 PM Joseph Rushton Wakeling via
Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d at puremagic.com> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 22:16:09 UTC, Manu wrote:
> > 3. My DIP was rejected
> >   a. This is fine, there are valid reasons for this
> >   b. The rejection text was *completely* unhelpful, and 75% of
> > it was
> > completely wrong
> >   c. Despite an incorrect assessment, it was made *very clear*
> > that I
> > should start again, submit a new one *on the back of the queue*
>
> This seems an important point: what are the avenues of appeal if
> the decision to reject a DIP is based on problematic reasoning?
>
> It seems very reasonable that rejected DIPs should have one (but
> only one!) automatic "right of appeal" via which the authors can
> respond to the rationale for the rejection, and if needed offer
> potential fixes, and get a reappraisal without having to go all
> the way back to the beginning of the process.  That should reduce
> the scope for rejections based on misunderstandings,
> miscommunications, or trivially fixed flaws, while not overly
> increasing the decision-makers' burden.
>
> This is much more likely to reduce wasted time or demotivation
> than early feedback, because most ideas only reveal their merit
> after thorough investigation -- but it is very frustrating and
> time consuming to have a well-worked-out idea knocked a long way
> back when the concerns may be simple to address.
>
> By the way, that's also something that exists in scientific
> publishing: if the referees have severely misunderstood or
> mis-assessed a piece of work, it's quite normal to request that
> the editor seek a fresh opinion.

Right, I mean, it's also offensive that W&A tried to pacify me by
saying "don't worry, 1018 had a lot of amendments too!", which is
insulting because *they were reviewing and iterating feedback*!
They were involved in that process along the way, to such a degree
that it didn't even need acceptance, it was pre-accepted!
Yet, I didn't even have a single opportunity to present how it was
misread, and then have it reconsidered on amendment of one word!

Anyway, follow-on conversation did eventually reveal action points,
but by that point, the process has already self-defeated and I'm
grumpy and disengaged at this point. The process was the problem here
for me, not the verdict.