This is an opinion piece, but its tone undercuts its credibility and it meanders somewhat. My favorite part is the detailed excerpt from and delineation of the similarities to Orwell, which I think is quite well done, and for me is the core of the piece. Roland, we've repeatedly asked you to review based on the merits of the piece, not on what you perceive as a conflict of interest. While the author's self-rating might have been high (4.9), he did disclose as was required. As he was a first-time submitter, I'd ask you again to be civil. With the current platform, the author has to file a score to submit his piece and is allowed to do so, as long as he discloses his authorship. In the next version of the site to be launched in the fall, authors will be able to submit without rating. I was an author, before I was a staff member and I, too, found the need to add a recommendation score a problem, even when not submitting, but merely wanting to reply to comments. As the author wrote, "I'm the author of the piece, and am submitting for review. As this was the first time submitting an article here, I wasn't aware of exactly how things worked. The instructions told me to rate this article. Only after rating it did I get a message that you can't rate your own article. I couldn't find a way to remove the review. I was uncomfortable having to post a review on my own article and didn't want to. Just confusion." As a result, since there are now other reviews sufficient for the piece to be rated, I'm hiding his review, per his request."