I am disappointed by much of what I have recently read about journal writing. I want to provide different ideas. 1. The people I hang out with, small and large, write for journals because they have something to say. Sure, they'd like jobs, tenure, etc, but that is a secondary consideration. And the raises post-tenure are small enough that major publication is a bummer on a cost-benefit basis. We write because we want to. 2. As an inter-/trans- kind of guy, I depend on journal referees to keep out the crap. Of which there is a huge amount as anyone who referees knows. My problem is finding the time to actually read what has been well refereed. The last thing I want to do is to have poor papers pour at me. 3. This, btw, is my big beef at AoIR conferences -- not enough refereeing. It's not nice to waste people's time with poorly researched and poorly written papers. 4. I am involved with Wikipedia, and it works pretty well (altho unlikely Phoebe Ayers, I observe more vandalism and 3RR cases -- see current Wikipedia Signpost for Vandalism stats -- I guard the gates of Barbara Streisand, Anna Nicole Smith and Sandra Oh daily -- as well as the articles on Social Network stuff. But this would not be a good model for refereeing. Remember, that most comments in blogs, etc are junk. Who'd want to waste their time sifting through, when there is good research to be done -- and written up. Having said this, I am off on a trip to May 10, and may not get a chance to respond. And YMMV, Barry Wellman _____________________________________________________________________ Barry Wellman S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php _____________________________________________________________________