Randomised Requests: Tick All Proposals You Agree With

[FZ+]

Tick all the proposals you agree with.

 

[Shadow]

I think the political suby should be a forum and I thought stats page was nice too.

 

[hypnagogue]

Yes to everything but politics. Down with politics!

 

[quantumdude]

Atoms most definitely should not be combined with Classical Physics. If anything, it should be combined with Quantum Physics. But I vote for keeping it separate.

As for Engineering, you'd have to be more specific. I think it's OK as is, myself.

 

[FZ+]

Well, I'm just looking through to see which ones haven't been touched for a long while. The trouble with atoms etc is rather that it overlaps with two of them. People who want to talk about electrodynamics, energy levels and so on would more likely go to quantum where they get more attention, and people who want to talk about the rutheford experiment, chemical properties would go other places. If you look around, it's not like no one is interested in atoms and molecules - just that other forums have rendered it redundant.

Engineering is similar. The forums in it have the lowest post density (posts per forums) in PF... The factor again is that the forums provided overlap greatly, and usually the field is ambiguous so people just post in general instead. I understand the idea of making things easy to search, but in my opinion things are too specialised down there. For example, someone who wants to talk about the design of bridges would end up torn between Engineering design, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, material engineering and just General Physics. The point is that these categorisation are good for University courses where you want a good deal of core learning, but don't work so well for a forum.

 

[quantumdude]

Originally posted by FZ+
Well, I'm just looking through to see which ones haven't been touched for a long while.

It really hasn't been a long while yet. People are still getting used to the new format, I think. I also think that some people don't post in some forums just because they don't know what should go in there. I am working on some threads to fix that, so people have some examples.

The trouble with atoms etc is rather that it overlaps with two of them. People who want to talk about electrodynamics, energy levels and so on would more likely go to quantum where they get more attention, and people who want to talk about the rutheford experiment, chemical properties would go other places.

But even so, atoms should not go under classical physics.

For example, someone who wants to talk about the design of bridges would end up torn between Engineering design, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, material engineering and just General Physics.

That's a pretty clear cut case of Civil Engineering.

The point is that these categorisation are good for University courses where you want a good deal of core learning, but don't work so well for a forum.

I think it's still too early to tell. Most of the members of PF are still in high school, and they just don't know where to put some topics. But this format change is just one half of a 2-pronged initiative to upgrade the quality of the site. The other half is recruiting more professionals here. And when they get here, they will know what to do with the new format.

 

[Zargawee]

Make politics a forum in its own right

Question : How Can I Object on that ?

 

[Mentat]

I think the Skepticism forum should be renamed, but I won't take to strong a position on it, since I never post there anyway.