@gzt RIGHT? I try to write equations so that it takes minimal work to translate them into english so this level of nitpick just drives me nuts.

@Maenad i mean if that's the stylebook for the journal, whatevs, it's an easy edit, but that's totally just a classic "reviewer #2 bullshit" thing

@gzt how did you guess this is reviewer 2? wait don't tell me.

@Maenad It's ALWAYS reviewer #2

@gzt I've been reviewer 2

@Maenad @gzt may i present to you, Parkinson's law, or bike shedding: http://bikeshed.com/

@kara_dreamer their main gripe is that they don't want me to use any language for negation - rather than "not B" they want me to be saying "the complement of B" 100% of the time.

@Maenad a certain saying about foolish consistency comes to mind

@Kuro yeah, but I've been that reviewer and I can't really stay mad - they basically volunteer their time to try and make a paper better.

@Maenad Yes, but it makes thing worse: they are not forced to do that, they volunteer.

I have been a reviewer too, I know that it takes an incredible amount of time to do a good job: you must read very carefully, you must also review the bibliography (because the paper doesn't match perfectly what you know about the domain), you must be constructive/non-judgmental, you must challenge your own views and support your review with the relevant references.

It's exhausting and I stopped to be a reviewer at some point. As a volunteer, if you don't have time/motivation to do a job properly, you have to let go ^^