Dale,
A serious peer review process entails acceptance that what is being porposed for publication have enough merit to warrant it. many a fine research paper has been refused publication because the "peers" who "reviewed" it didn't feel that it deserved consideration or was blatantly incorrect. The more prestigious the publication more stringent the peer review process is.
As I said, I have no problem showing anything I write to others before hand for comments, but I feel strongly that a serious peer review process cannot work on GCA.com. For the record, before ran published my In My Opinion piece on Tilly I shared it with 5 or 6 others to get their opinion of it. You suggested that "what better place to find qualified people than some of those posting here on GCA?" You'd think that would be the case, but it really isn't.
One thing that my Tillinghast research has taught me is that the more you know about one architect the less you can know about others. It is a time problem. Very few golf historians or researchers can devote themselves full-time to the study of a single architect let alone several or more. So with limited amounts of time, those who've had the ability to concentrate on one particular architect, in my case Tilly, especially if they can spend more time than most, and in my case I spend most of my time on projects involving researching and writing on Tilly, where then can one find those others with a similar knowledge base that ideas, articles, theses or books be run past for advice and/or critique?
Having a passion for golf architecture and a better than average knowledge of the genre and the architects involved in it simply isn't enough to enable one to be able to perform proper serious peer review on it. Heck, after responding earlier in this thread to Dale and offering to look at anything he writes, I don't think he'll mind if I say that he emailed me and said that he is working on a piece about Macan.
I will love to look at it, but even with all of my research time, I freely admit that I can't possibly provide him with any sort of serious peer review of what he will produce as I know very little about him and his work. Can I and will I give him encouragement and maybe suggest a different way of phrasing something? Absolutely I will. Can I aid the quality of the knowledge, facts and conslusion that it will contain? Absolutely not.
That is why I don't think serious peer review will work on GCA and why having Ran as arbiter of what will or won't be published on here is both proper and reasonable. All "Peers" will have plent of opportunity to "Review" what is published in numerous threads...