Matthew Clapham
1 min readNov 5, 2024

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Not specifically 'this would be boostable with this change', no. Snappier title and sub aside, and other formatting stuff like alt text, I simply don't believe there is a clearly and consistently enough stated and applied principle that would justify suggesting changes, since either it may be wasted effort on everyone's part, or it may in fact make approval less likely, depending on the curator's subjective preferences.

They've set up a system similar to exam essay marking, but refuse to reason, debate or review their decisions, or provide benchmarking sessions. This lack undermines the reliability of and faith in the whole system in my view.

That said, last month despite the average now being around 40-50, I had a 70% success rate (admittedly from a total of just 10 nominations), so I think playing it by ear and trusting in the writer's initial judgement seems justified.

I've seen plenty of articles which I know - as a former exam marker - would objectively fall into the same band, receive different decisions. Which makes the whole thing a crapshoot, unfortunately.

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Matthew Clapham
Matthew Clapham

Written by Matthew Clapham

Professional translator by day. Writer of silly and serious stuff by night. Also by day, when I get fed up of tedious translations. Founder of Iberospherical.

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