I've been avoiding jumping into this thread, to let people closer to the issue have the first say but it seems to me that there are a couple of things that bear saying:
* We're a cross-discipline group, academia and Wikipedia
* While the portion of the review in question may not have been an appropriate academic criticism, it was certainly an appropriate Wikipedia criticism (and a criticism I agree with).
* It's up to those who write it to collectively to decide what the newsletter to be. Deference to the standards of academia will benefit the careers of those in academia. Deference to the standards of Wikipedia will increase the chances of some of this research actually leading to better outcomes in live wiki. Maybe a better articulation of this to reviewers and reviewed might help, as might two-part reviews addressing the concerns of each audience separately.
* I can't believe that there's a shortage of people to write reviews. I can believe that there's a shortage of people motivated to write reviews. Maybe we could look at a DYK-like quid pro quo system? Note that this could be done independently from the editing of the newsletter, all it would take is a quorum of (potential) editors to set up a wiki page to coordinate and set standards.
cheers stuart