As someone who enthusiastically posted on Groklaw in the early days I can identify with your feelings.

Several times I voiced minor doubts about some viewpoint or introduced another aspect and was stunned by PJ's rapid and savage responses. As a research scientist (MD) and long-term open-source advocate I was somewhat unprepared for being called a gull and a troll and threatened with banning unless I toed the line.

Eventually of course I was and even now (though I stopped posting regularly years ago) any remarks that I make are expunged within hours or less.

As a factual record and investigative journalism Groklaw is superb and a brilliant example of the power of disparate people gathered together for a common purpose over the internet. As a document of opinion and argument it is fatally flawed by its doctrinaire censorship of even mildly dissenting voices.

A pity.

Suddenly deciding to turn Groklaw into a mausoleum seems very un-Pj-ish.

After all, there's still a long way to go in the saga and an awful lot of dirt
still to be uncovered.

I reckon someone put the frighteners on her - kidnapped her favourite cat or
threatened to shoot her granny if she didn't tone it down.

The shutoff was too brusque and the "return" too humble.

I smell a rat.

Mac

"Are they just a way to evaluate the productivity of professors?"

Depends how you define productivity. If it means the ability to publish then yes. If you mean the ability to produce useful and/or interesting work then no.

The vast majority of published articles are literature reviews, rehashes of previous papers, boring but easy research about things that are already well documented, or statistical juggling with dubious data from equally dubious research. Perhaps one in a thousand is both good, true, original and honest. The rest are just badly written dross.

Peer review counts for very little. A small inner circle publish (or at least have their name appended to) 90% of papers in any one discipline and they act as peer reviewers for themselves on a "You scratch my back I'll scratch yours" basis.

The "Publish or perish" mentality has completely debased and largely destroyed good science. Tenure depends on quantity of publications not quality and so vast reams of garbage are generated every month making it really difficult to find the needle in the haystack of irrelevant tripe.

The Cutter