Chapter 200. Review
The second floor of the Mage Tower was the paper submission area for mages. After the Northern Society fully integrated the Mana Communication System, every mage had to submit their paper here first so the system could scan and upload it.
Carrying her handwritten draft, Fulan walked up to the submission window and handed it over.
“There is only one author on this paper, correct?”
After glancing at it, the staff mber inside curiously pointed at the na written on it and asked the question.
“Yes, just one,” Fulan confird.
In other places, it was perfectly common for a mage to submit a paper under a single na. But in the Northern Society, that was sowhat unusual.
That was because, after being absorbed into the Northern Society, its residents would receive dedicated instruction from specific mages.
When a newly advanced mage completed a research result, most of the ti it was done under the guidance of another ntor.
So that mage’s paper would usually include their ntor’s na as well, sotis first, sotis second, depending on the circumstances.
Moreover, the Northern Society was currently very enthusiastic about exchanges between different schools, believing that such collaboration could uncover new things.
As a result, papers were often submitted under several nas together.
So a paper completed by a single author like this was sowhat rare, though not unheard of. The staff mber rely gave her a reminder and nothing more.
“All right. Fill out this form, then co back here in three days to check the result.”
As for why the Mana Communication System existed, yet the review process was not simply placed onto it as well, that was due to the system’s limitations.
Unlike the rapidly developing internet from Fulan’s previous life, the Mana Communication System here had been invented for less than thirty years, even at the most generous estimate.
Although it was highly convenient, many functions required by large societies still could not be added to it.
For example, the function of reviewing temporary drafts was very difficult to implent on it.
According to its creator, because mana was constantly being transmitted through the air at all tis, reviewed draft materials might directly appear on the normal system.
In other words, papers still awaiting review might show up on the system where mages browsed papers before they had actually been approved.
Of course, the creator had proposed another solution as well: use two separate systems, with one dedicated solely to review.
And in order to prevent mana from crossing between them, the two systems had to be at least ten kiloters apart to ensure stable operation.
Whether the creator truly could not solve the problem, or simply wanted to sell two systems at once, no one was willing to accept that deal. Even now, not a single society was willing to buy two full systems.
Part of that also lay in the defects of the Mana Communication System itself. Tests had shown that there was a limit to how many words could be uploaded into the system each day. Once that limit was exceeded, it would damage the mana itself.
For so large societies, that was completely unacceptable. They had to upload a great number of papers every day. If they had to queue up every single ti, how could that possibly work?
That was also why the Mana Communication System had still not been widely rolled out. This ti, however, the flaw truly did seem to be with the Mana Communication System itself.
The Northern Society’s scale was still manageable. The number of papers uploaded each day was just within the limit. But with large numbers of mages now pouring into the Northern Society, perhaps one day this system would no longer be enough.
The staff mber set down the papers Fulan had brought in the pending review area, worriedly thinking about that possibility.
---
Alaric was one of the Northern Society’s reviewers. He had already worked in this reviewing position for ten years.
Overall, it was still quite an easy post, because the Northern Society did not have many mages, and the number of papers submitted each year was limited.
Moreover, when he reviewed papers, his focus was never primarily on the content itself. He was only doing a simple screening.
The true gatekeeping of content was the job of those mages responsible for launching the featured sections.
In his view, as long as a paper t the following three points, it could pass review.
First, the entire paper had to contain content related to spells, and it could not rely be so overly outdated spell theory.
Second, its content could not be too similar to work that had already been published.
Third, the paper as a whole could not have problems with its presentation.
Those three points were already very clear and straightforward. One could even say the threshold was a little low.
If an ordinary mage wanted to squeeze a paper into the system, there was really no problem doing so, but it would be aningless.
First of all, once your paper was published, other people actually had to read it for you to gain Points. At any other ti, simply publishing a paper by itself served no purpose.
The first two points were old and familiar requirents. If a mage wanted their paper to be seen by others, those two points were absolutely necessary.
The real issue lay in the third point. Although papers here did not have all sorts of formatting requirents like in Fulan’s previous life, there was still one basic requirent: clearly explain your result.
For example, clickbait was unacceptable. Titles that had no connection, or only a weak connection, to the body of the paper were not allowed. Likewise, if the main text rambled on at length about things unrelated to the actual subject, that too would fail review.
After the paper that had shocked the Alliance was published, papers suffering from the third type of problem had clearly beco more common, and all of them ca from those mages who had recently arrived at the Northern Society.
Alaric stared lifelessly at the eleven papers piled up before him.
“I cleared this place out last night, so how are there already eleven now?”
In other words, all of these had been submitted here in a single night.
“Why are those mages submitting papers in the middle of the night? Don’t they sleep?” he grumbled a few tis. The submission window ran on three shifts, so papers could be handed in at any ti.
“Let’s begin.”
...
By the ti the morning had passed, Alaric’s mood had gradually turned irritable. He cursed under his breath and muttered,
“Those mages from the Alliance are a bunch of damn idiots. How do they even dare submit garbage like this?”
After spending the whole morning reading trash, Alaric still had to do his job and write comnts for every piece of trash, then attach the comnts to the papers and send them back.
“Another paper just ca in.”
Alaric reached out and took the newly delivered paper, hoping this would be one he would not have to label as garbage.
“‘A Mathematical Analysis of Fireball’...” The mont Alaric saw the title, the stench of garbage rushed straight into his head.
From the title alone, he already had a bad feeling. What era was this, and soone was still researching Fireball?
As one of the oldest spells in existence, Fireball’s spell structure had long since been optimized as far as it could possibly go. This was obviously another piece of “trash.”
But as a reviewer, he could not simply reject a paper the mont he saw its title. That would violate procedure.
So he could only resign himself to looking further down the page, hoping it was a paper with the wrong title.
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