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Comment by kenko | Hacker News Reader

How so? The one time I was a referee I got the paper by downloading a PDF and sent in my comments by entering them into a form. That technology is newer than snail mail.

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There are lots of things you might consider, that would be impossible with snail mail. For example, the reviewers might be able to send regular emails with questions to the authors, or the authors might be able to constantly update the paper in response to initial reviewer comments, there could be an anonymous "chat room" of some kind, etc. Not sure if any of these are good ideas, but I think it is a fair point that most journals simply use the internet as a "faster snail mail".

That said, I review for conferences that are taking advantage of the internet, with author response to reviewer comments, discussions among the reviewers, etc.

Regular emails with questions would certainly be possible with snail mail. But the fundamental problem with all of those suggestions is that only reviewers who really wanted to take a lot of time and care with reviewing would take advantage of them, and since there number of reviewers like that is vanishingly small, it wouldn't be worth the effort to establish the necessary systems.

I totally agree-- the problem with reviews isn't technological. Reviewers fundamentally need better incentives to do a good job, which I'm not sure how to do.

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