The path this researcher is weighing, workshop versus conference, risk versus delay, is one many in our field face, and the data here speaks clearly: commit to ACL SRW or an ICML workshop without hesitation. The ARR scores (3, 2.5, 2.5, 2, with a meta of 2.5) are honest signals, not condemnation. A 2.5 meta is a firm maybe, not a no, but the reviewer who gave the 2 made four factual errors because they relied on an LLM. That is not a valid critique of your work; it is a flaw in the review process. You should not let an unreliable reviewer drive your timeline.
The temptation to wait for AACL in August is understandable. Conferences carry more weight, and the ARR guidelines do allow an older review cycle to be reused for a later venue. But consider the practical cost: four months of nervous waiting, during which your topic continues to move fast. You already noted the work risks becoming outdated. Delaying publication by another half-year only deepens that risk. Workshops, meanwhile, offer a concrete, near-term path. They are not a consolation prize. They are a venue for focused discussion, feedback, and publication within weeks, not months. Your professor's caution about workshop publication is worth hearing, but it must be balanced against the reality that a paper in a workshop is still a paper, peer-reviewed, citable, and shareable.
You have already identified the actionable fixes: revise writing and presentation quality, add two more ablation studies. That is a focused, achievable plan. Address the concerns the 2.5 reviewers raised about incremental novelty by clearly framing your contribution within the fast-moving space. Do not chase the "up-to-date" baseline treadmill; that is a trap that keeps good work unpublished. The reviewers who gave 2.5 were not hostile, they saw incremental work, which is honest. Your job is to sharpen the story so the increment feels necessary, not small.
Commit to a workshop now. Get the revisions done on a clear, short timeline. Publish, get feedback, and move on to the next project. The field is moving too fast to wait for a conference cycle that may still yield the same meta score. Your work has value, but only if it reaches readers while it is still relevant.