Written: Feb. 9, 2025
I believe that by and large the arxiv moderators do a good job in maintaining this very important venue for scientific research that makes the submission to peer-reviewed journals irrelevant, and a mere meaningless formality for practical reasons like promotion and tenure.
Unfortunately, from time to time their moderators mess up. My great hero Jesús Guillera, a 21st-century incarnation of Ramanujan, who already has forty excellent articles in the arxiv, shocked me when he told me that his recent arxiv submission, that in my opinion is a true masterpiece, after being "on hold" for one week, was rejected because "it does not contain sufficient original or substantive scholarly research".
Shame on you, anonymous moderator. This paper is very interesting! If you don't find it interesting, then I feel sorry for you.
In some sense, arxiv moderators are like nightclub bouncers, who use "profiling" to screen people out. Moderators (and journal editors who "desk reject" submissions without review) use something just as bad as racism, sexism, etc., it is keywordism.
But even from their perspective, I am still very puzzled how this gem could have been rejected.
So in the future, try to avoid such poor judgement!
Added March 4, 2025: Luckily, the arxiv moderators (after putting it "on hold" for a week) agreed to post an expanded version