I've noticed two things this year, arxiv has become the target for many teams in a rush to get priority and make an impact while some insight is still part of the zeitgeist and the twitterarti hasn't moved on. This is because people have got used to the idea of things going "viral" and getting citations and impact because of fame - not significance. None of this is peer reviewed, some of it is bullsh*t. There is no penalty for the bullshit, and folks know it.

The second is that I am getting lots of citations on work I did a long time ago. I think that some of this is genuinely because that work is now more relevant and people are trying to do the things that we did with (effectively) bits of stick and good hopes with their shiny supercomputers, but I am vain. In reality these papers are getting cited because the paper mill machines have figured out that they look more genuine by sticking them in as a slightly obscure but relevant reference.

Both of these things are part of the collapse of trust and communication in publishing. It's not just compsci - there were 28k publications in astronomy last year. My cousin is a cell biologist and when we had a few drinks she told me that her her peers flat out don't trust publications and keep a share a list of authors that are trustworthy - if you don't have the list and aren't on it, you probably don't know it exists. This is the only way that they can avoid losing months trying to use techniques that are just lies.

So we do need a way of capturing and reframing this knowledge and the current system of peer review isn't it. Maybe LLM's can help us, but we have to set them up to make the dominant strategy honesty and parsimony in sharing - so that the font of knowledge isn't a pool of crap.