Here is my suggestion: scale the “difficulty” to the same rate as the submissions. Instruct the reviewers like this: “this year we had 10x the average submissions of the last 5 years, so be 10x stricter than you would normally.”
Another idea: make it less about the written word and more about artifacts. Require more proof, more protocols, more spreadsheets, more code, etc.
And stop caring about the words so much, as they really don’t mean anything anymore. Larger papers should be punished instead of rewarded; the shorter the paper (in terms of words) the higher the chance to be published. Every word should be backed up by data, code, etc. Any paragraph that doesn’t pair with proof should mean rejection.
Another idea: make it less about the written word and more about artifacts. Require more proof, more protocols, more spreadsheets, more code, etc.
And stop caring about the words so much, as they really don’t mean anything anymore. Larger papers should be punished instead of rewarded; the shorter the paper (in terms of words) the higher the chance to be published. Every word should be backed up by data, code, etc. Any paragraph that doesn’t pair with proof should mean rejection.