How is this different from flat earth / creationist papers citing other flat earth / creationist papers ?

But then, assuming we are fine with this state of things with LLMs :

why would it be upon them to submit in English, when instead reviewers and readers can themselves use a LLM translator to read the paper ?

this would be a good development. seems very far off.

How is it far off if it's already used like this, just on the side of submitters ?

And then, Einstein was a « citizen scientist », wasn't he ?

So exposing corruption of Western governments is not worthwhile because it 'helps' Russia? Aha, got it.

I am increasingly wondering what there remains of the supposed superiority of the Western system if we're willing to compromise on everything to suit our political ends.

The point was supposed to be that the truth is worth having out there for the purpose of having an informed public, no matter how it was (potentially) obtained.

In the end, we may end up with everything we fear about China but worse infrastructure and still somehow think we're better.

No, exposing Western corruption is all well and good, but the problem is that at some point Assange seems to have decided "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which was a very bad idea when applied to Putin's Russia.

> Assange seems to have decided "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", which was a very bad idea when applied to Putin's Russia

What if he simply decided that the information he obtained is worth having out there no matter the source? It seems to me that you're simply upset that he dared to do so and are trying very hard to come up with a rationalization for why he's a Bad Guy(tm) for daring to turn the tables. It's a transparent and rather lackluster attempt to shift the conversation from what to who.

No, I'm upset that he took money from the Kremlin and hosted a show on Russia Today. (At least it was before 2014 I guess...)

One can only hope that you're at least as upset at the double tapping criminals he exposed.

It's likely to be an age thing too. Were you in hacker-related spaces when the Snowden scandal happened ?

(I expect a much higher than average share of people in academia also part of these spaces.)

But what's the point ?

To end up with yet another shitty (because running inside a browser, in particular its interface) web app ?

Why not focus efforts into making a proper program (you know, with IBM menu bars and keyboard shortcuts), but with collaborative tools too ?

You are right in pointing out that the Web browser isn't the most suitable UI paradigm for highly interactive applications like a scientific typesetting system/text editor.

I have occasionally lost a paragraph just by accidental marking a few lines and pressing [Backspace].

But at the moment, there is no better option than Overleaf, and while I encourage you to write what you propose if you can, Overleaf will be the bar that any such system needs to be compared against.

OP is talking about developing an alternative to Overleaf. But they are still trying to do it inside a browser !

The takedown is (also ? first and foremost ??)'against' Patreon, a USA company.

So is HTML and XML and bbcode...

The question is more why Markdown is slowly but surely outcompeting them.

That's what churches are (also) for. (A synonym of 'church' is 'gathering'.)

IMHO online 'friendships' are dangerous in this context : they would fill part of the need for socialization, thus making you more complacent in not trying to seek out 'real' friendships.

Not to mention the time sink and addiction issues with some of the MMOs.