"You are standing outside and shouting, and complaining that no one will let you in."

The metaphor may resemble something I said but it obscures the point. "Shouting and complaining" is just an unsympathetic way to characterize what I take to be the subject matter of this forum, a critique (or metacritique) of the professional management of the peer review process, particularly as applied by philosophy journals. Then why participate in the forum, Gary? Are you standing inside the forum shouting because others who have not matched your illustrious (apparently infallible, as you profess) publishing endeavors find something fundamentally wrong with the peer review process? I mean, sorry, but this seems to be a legitimate subject of professional debate, and the response "oh, stop complaining and get with the program" is sort of out of bounds, I think.

On the one hand you suggest that you yourself find something deeply flawed about the peer review system, since you state (albeit with a somewhat jaded attitude) that you no longer seek to participate in it, that the quality of the reviewers' commentaries is often poor (this is not a recent phenomenon, as you suggest!) and that you would like to see an alternative system. On the other hand you have the zeal of a regular Don Quixote in pursuing those who are actively engaging in this metacritique. Your own criticisms of the journal system are apparently of far too refined a character to be aired in detail in this forum, but those who do wish to air something you chide as if they are infants crying about a candy cane that is too high on the tree for them to reach. Methinks you have completely missed the point, and denigrated the message by reducing it to a personal protest about rejection letters or the like. I know that my own comments went far wider and deeper than this and included numerous documented examples of what I called a modern form of scholasticism. But I don't think anyone else here is merely airing gripes about the difficulty of getting things accepted. With far more papers reaching every major journal than they could ever realistically publish, that alone would mean that publishing is going to be difficult. It is the reasons for rejection that are at issue. You are of course free to believe that there is some objective standard of quality being enforced by peer-reviewed publications, and that this explains why some articles are accepted and others not. It appears that others do not buy this explanation. I have already given the reasons why I don't.

"Silly.  Childish.  Fruitless. And a denial of the situation.  But often a good excuse for not succeeding."

Disingenuous. Ad hominem. Narrowminded. And it is clear from this who is measuring success by major journal publication. I've given more than 30 conference papers, taught 10 different courses in 20 semesters, published a few things, built a web site where I can self-publish anything I want, written several philosophy blogs, and obtained the respect of some philosophers who I myself respect in turn. I have also been treated to some near-idiotic responses to some of my papers, by the putative experts who review things for journals; though more often the result has been little or no comment at all. I don't need endorsements from these very same people to consider my work in philosophy a success, thanks. But that does not absolve them from the responsibility to conduct themselves in a reasonable manner, nor us from the responsibility of taking them to task when they don't.

I suggest you reorient your thinking about this discussion. Whether there are people here who are doing nothing but whimpering about failed publication efforts I cannot say. But the substance of the discussion has not been that, but the pressure to conform to certain presuppositions and modes of presentation in philosophical writing. And these, moreover, are not the assumptions of logical thinking, historical accuracy, relevance, etc., which are universally presupposed in any intellectual endeavor, but of conformance to received ideas of content and structure, annointed sources of authority, what questions may or may not be debated, what arguments must be paid hommage, and a lot of more subtle notions that are shown in what is printed even if they are not said in any guideline. I find it hard to believe that you can't understand this. How different it is from whatever infantile complaints you are arguing against.