[YouWhy]

While I'm not a mathematician, I think such an attitude on behalf of the journal does not encourage healthy community dynamics.

Instead of allowing the community to join forces by breaking up a larger problem into pieces, it encourages siloing and camper mentality.

[abetusk]

I agree. This is also a lack of effort on the journal's part to set expectations of what the reviewers should be looking for in an accepted paper.

In the journal's defense though, what most likely happened is that the reviewers were different between submissions and they didn't know about the context. Ultimately, I think, this type of rejection comes down to the mostly the reviewers discretion and it can lead to this type of situation.

I cut off the rest of the post but Tao finished it with this:

"""

... Being an editor myself, and having had to decline some decent submissions for a variety of reasons, I find it best not to take these sorts of rejections personally,

...

"""