Pierre points to the proceedings of the first of the Valencia International Meetings on Bayesian Statistics [31MB PDF!] in 1979.

Browsing through, I am surprised that they look very much like a blog, with good papers and a lot of good commentary and discussion, something that we have discussed before. Then it took an airplane flight to the beautiful Mediterranean beaches, but today, thanks to the internet, we can stay in our offices and chat online. Hmm.

Perhaps that flight was what motivated people to show up and contribute something interesting. But receiving commentary, especially commentary from good researchers is also something. Peer review with anonymous reviews that nobody looks at is such a waste of human effort. Make commentaries, not reviews! Pick good papers! Pick good authors! Pick trusted commentators! Pick good rankers! Pick good editors (who list papers on a topic or who invite authors to write on a topic)! Pick interesting topics! The monolithic nightmare of conferences, tomes and publishers should go away.

For some inspiration, look at websites such as Reddit or Yelp!. Reddit shows how good stuff can rise higher (but it fails because people ranking are not trusted). Yelp shows how one can pick and reward good reviewers (but fails because it’s hard to find good stuff).

Glossary: clog = conference log.