[seqfan] Re: Ombudsman needed for OEIS?

[Douglas McNeil]

> And when we think it's a duplicate, the first editor who first suggests it's
> a duplicate doesn't delete it. Nor even the second editor who looks at it
> and confirms it's a duplicate.

Occasionally the agreement of two editors has sufficed to remove a
dupe, when it's clear, and in a few cases -- when the submitter
himself agreed it's a dupe -- I've done so on my own authority.
Usually it takes three (or one+NJAS) to remove a sequence on grounds
other than duplication, which in practice is often one associate
editor and two E-i-Cs.  (Note that the deleted sequences page doesn't
always list every editor who participated in a discussion and agreed
with the decision to remove, so just counting names underestimates the
consensus.  Check the history to be sure.)

This seems a good balance.  In most cases, though not all, duplication
is relatively easy to detect and agree on, and beyond certain sanity
checks adding more editors is overkill.  However, in the squishier
cases you want more input.  In fact, I find I often discount the views
of certain editors-- not because I think they're wrong, but because
their views on sequence merits are too close to my own!


Doug

-- 
Department of Earth Sciences
University of Hong Kong