NeurIPS Reviewer Posts a Reject-Loop Post-Mortem: Adversarial Reviews, a Nonresponsive AC, and 1s on Every Subscore for Minor Issues
An experienced author on r/MachineLearning describes reviewing responsibly — including for papers they suspected were AI slop — then receiving two straight-up adversarial reviews on their own submission, including one reviewer who raised only minor issues yet gave a reject with a 1 on every subscore. The AC was nonresponsive until the final day and all but one reviewer never replied. The top comment (53 upvotes) frames it as a tragedy of the commons: everyone knows the flagship-conference review system is broken, but systemic incentives compel participation, and the OP's follow-up ties the collapse directly to how cheap slop-paper generation has become — reproducibility and responsible reviewing carry no incentive weight against submission volume.
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