[aaronkaplan]

Your argument is that if a paper makes a valuable contribution then it should be accepted even if it's not well written. But the definition of "well written" is that it makes it easy for the reader to understand its value. If a paper is not well written, then reviewers won't understand its value and will reject it.

[seanmcdirmid]

Well written and rigor aren’t highly correlated. You can have poorly written papers that are very rigorous, and vic versa. Rigor is often another checkbox (does the paper have some quantitative comparisons), especially if the proper rigor is hard to define by the writer or the reader.

My advice to PhD students is to always just focus on subjects where the rigor is straightforward, since that makes writing papers that get in easier. But of course, that is a selfish personal optimization that isn’t really what’s good for society.

[nybsjytm]

Rigor here doesn't have to mean mathematical rigor, it includes qualitative rigor. It's unrigorous to include meaningless comparisons to prior work (which is a credible issue the reviewers raised in this case) and it's also poor writing.

[seanmcdirmid]

Qualitative rigor isn’t rigor at all, it’s the opposite. Still useful in a good narrative, sometimes it’s the best thing you have to work as evidence in your paper.

Prior work is a mess in any field. The PC will over emphasize the value of their own work, of course, just because of human ego. I’ve been on way too many papers where my coauthors defensively cite work based on who could review the paper. I’m not versed enough about this area to know if prior work was really an issue or not, but I used to do a lot of paper doctoring in fields that I wasn’t very familiar with.