How should people identify themselves when giving feeback/review to EarthArXiv preprints?

A powerful argument can be equally made anonymously or in the open - if it's a fair point to it out, one points it out either way.

Unfair arguments can only be made anonymously - doing it with your name attached to it makes it easier for third parties to understand potential biases.

I consider research blockage anything that delays the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Bad comments on a preprint would probably influence the peer-reviewed process, and as said above, I think bad comments are much easier to do in the hidden.

P.S. My pseudonymous is just my "internet name", btw - kinda like a street name, but less cool XD
David Fernández-Blanco -- orcid.org/0000-0002-5326-9164

Dear Victor & David,

Sure we all know how it works. So, the owners, administrators, moderators and plain readers (such as myself), know what an anonymous comment can imply.

If we disallow EarthArxiv the biases and the favoritism that really & truly exist in arxiv (believe me it is so), then we are doing very well indeed.

If EarthArxiv derails into all the things you talked about, then I am out. I will protest but if bullshitted, it's bye bye.

I am running a business. Any misbehaving senior can get the ass kicked if and when necessary.

Simple as that.

Start the thing up and let's get rolling.

Great discussion! I presented EarthArXiv & preprint servers in general yesterday at our research group to researchers from UG students up to emeritus profs, it was very well received across the board, and we had a great discussion which for a large part focused on this anonymity issue. I think both sides of the argument are valid, and there were differing views pretty much in line with the discussion we are having on here as well.

I think a lot of how people feel about this is centred around personality and confidence. I personally support the anonymity of reviewers, because I feel that it protects and encourages people with less confidence or a lower standing in terms of where they are in their career. In my opinion, part of this issue has to do with gender, as I see a lot of men getting out there and voicing their opinions very loudly, while less women feel confident enough to do it. I certainly would be less encouraged to point out, even politely, what the flaws in a methodology are, particularly to senior profs, or friends, who I know will take criticism personally.

So, in an ideal world, peer review should be double open, but in this less than ideal system, I think we should consider how we can encourage equality rather than squashing the quiet people.

I guess everyone has a different film playing in their head when they think of anonymous comments.

Maybe more importantly, I am not sure we need to have this debate on anonymity. My impression from the previous thread on whether we want to have comments in the first place was that people mostly thought we should concentrate on our core competence, hosting preprints, and do the reviewing/commenting elsewhere.

Shall we make a poll on the question whether we want to have comments on EarthArxiv?

I made a poll on the question whether we want to have comments. https://www.loomio.org/p/7m2KbkCB/comments-below-eartharxiv-manuscripts