[seqfan] Re: The size of the "awaiting rewiew" queue

peter.luschny peter.luschny at googlemail.com
Wed Mar 23 17:56:56 CET 2011


> I would like to think most people here understand the concept of judicious
> self-restraint, and that there's no one here who would only understand a
> hard set limit.

I think it is useful to make a difference in these two cases:

(1) Updates to comments, references, links and code snippets.
(2) New sequences.

(1) In this case there can indeed accumulate a larger number of
updates within a short period of time. I experienced this
when I had a certain subject under consideration.
After I made an observation which I think has the value to be
communicated I often immediately see 5 or more other places in
OEIS which directly or indirectly are affected by a such an update.

Thus in this case I think there should be no restrictions
on the number of updates. This database lives from a constant
stream of small updates and small additions.

The editing process for these cases might be simplified and
accelerated if associated editors are introduced which have
the competence to check special tasks and the right to approve
them immediately.

For instance checking references or links is something
which does not require a special background knowledge.
Similarly some editors might just check contributions to
programs of a special computer language and approve them
immediately.

(2) To contribute a new sequence is a very different sort
of contribution in my experience. This is normally a comparativly
rare occurrence and much more time consuming.

I believe that a restriction of the number of contributions
of new sequences within a certain time window does makes sens.

Say, for instance, 4 per day. This allows almost 1500 per year!
(Be warned, I just looked up my records and saw that in the
last six years I contributed 32 new sequences per year on average;
thus I would not be affected much by this rule :)

Such a limit would have two benefits: It would stop some bulk
submissions which cause much work but sometimes only little value.

And it would be a fair rule applicable to all users (not editors)
which could be easily controlled by the software: Just restrict
the allocation to a maximum of 4 new sequence numbers per day and user.

Peter



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