Al de Baran (@pyrogenesis)

"My least politically correct opinion is that gatekeepers are a good thing because hierarchies of quality are real." Tangential to the main points here, but if you think that gatekeepers' aims are primarily to preserve a hierarchy of quality, then you are very naive, indeed. Gatekeepers of poetry publications, for instance, are there mainly to ensure that their friends and colleagues fill all the publication spots and win all the prizes, and then to hope for quid pro quo. That scene is corrupt beyond measure (where is Edgar Allan Poe when we need him?). No matter how good your writing, if you are a poet today with no publication history, no MFA, no workshop experience, no academic "residency" affiliation, no prizes to your name, and, most of all, no reciprocal back-scratching friends in editorial positions, then good luck to you. I don't doubt that this applies mutatis mutandis to publication in other fields, as well.