41–50 of 300 posts
I might be missing something, but I still don't get the why. I don't see any "problem" that needs to be solved.
The article lists the reasons quite clearly.
The reason is because arxiv is growing significantly leading to 297,000 deficit in operating costs for 2025 alone. Corenell has helped with donation a long with other organizations that pay membership fees.
As a result, donors + leaders of arxiv think it's best to spin off to increase funding.
Maybe they should implement a graph based trust system: You need your favourite academic gatekeeper (= thesis advisor) to vouch for you in order to be allowed to upload. Then AI slop gets flagged and the shame spreads through the graph. And flaggings need to have evidence attached that can again be flagged.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an opinion, and you feeling no particular way about it is equally valid. But I did justify and maybe to reword slightly, surely if one of the main drivers is opening up research, the brand name should be something that's less obscure and more accessible / understandable as to what it is on first sight? Maybe arXiv evoking the word 'archive' with an ancient Greek twist does that for some, but it's clearly a bit c…
No, it's to be a pre-print server. If someone doesn't know what that means, then they shouldn't be using arXiv.
Using a brand as a filter where you have to already know what it means to get it is exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to achieve.
Consider the most exclusive (successful) brands that exist. Even there, where exclusivity is a brand goal, none of them have this property of being obscure on first contact.
Now the question is, will arxiv wage a decade long bloody war with Cornell, using heavy infantry (PhD students), archers (reviewers) and field artillery (AI slop papers), or will the independence be mostly peaceful? Only time can tell.
PhD students are levy infantry at best with Postdocs being the armoured levies.
Maybe they should implement a graph based trust system: You need your favourite academic gatekeeper (= thesis advisor) to vouch for you in order to be allowed to upload. Then AI slop gets flagged and the shame spreads through the graph. And flaggings need to have evidence attached that can again be flagged.
I've often thought that similar trust systems would work well in social media, web search, etc., but I've never seen it implemented in a meaningful way. I wonder what I'm missing.
Very unrelated to the article, but I think 'arXiv' as a brand is bad, and really detrimental to what the institution aims to accomplish. That is, it's not readily parseable, it really gives an insider term vibe - like this isn't for you if you don't already know what it means or how you should read or say it. It sort of reminds me of the overuse of latin and latinate terms generally in the old professions and, well,…
It's a classic story of someone having to pick a name quickly, which then gets established long before anyone who cares about branding is aware of its existence. The original service didn't even have a name, only a description, and it was amusingly hosted at xxx.lanl.gov. But LANL wasn't really interested in it, and the founder eventually left for Cornell. At that point, the service needed a domain name, but archive.…
I wonder if there are plans to licence the content for AI training
Maybe they should implement a graph based trust system: You need your favourite academic gatekeeper (= thesis advisor) to vouch for you in order to be allowed to upload. Then AI slop gets flagged and the shame spreads through the graph. And flaggings need to have evidence attached that can again be flagged.
It's probably not perfect but in practice, it seems to have been enough to get rid of the worst crackpotty spam.