Michelson-Morley Experiment metadiscussion

[pmb_phy]

You should also ask yourself "Now why did I agree to those Guidelines if I didn't want to follow follow them in the first place? After all, I knew what I was agreeing to and the criteria that they have imposed on anyone participating here. So why did I still continue to do what I know they don't allow?"

Zz.

Zapperz - I deleted my comments to you in this thread since I decided such comments should be sent by PM. In that PM I asked you a very simple question which you never answered. May I ask why you didn't answer it? Did you confuse my question with comments as to your regulating habits which I said (actually meant to say. That may not have been clear) that you can feel free to ignore that part of the message?

In any case I will repreat the question here just so that you don't get confused by the PM again.

I delted my comments to you regarding the new poster and about following guidelines. That seemed to me to be an inappropriate place to discuss the matter. But I'm curious as to what part of the guidelines that you believe the newbie is not following. I would appreciate it very much if you could quote a post number, the exact comment in that post and where in the guidelines is it prohibited?

I understand how easy you and others find it to ignore someone's questions when they want to discuss sommething with you in private, just as the present case. So I guess questions regarding your moderating habits will go in the approirate thread. This must be done since the forum offers no alternatice, because some moderators, such as yourself, don't believe that should answer a simple question. This seems obvious in you refusal/lack of a respondse in PM, which was my only alternative. I assume that you know that being a moderator comes with responsibilities. But since they are not listed for you then I see you find them easy to ignore. Just so that you understand that, the responsibilities are assumed to be understood by moderators and thus they don't need a list. Let me give you an example of an unwritten responsibility - When a poster sends you a PM wishing to know where some other person supposedly made a mistake, i.e. give the post number and quote the sentance, and you ignore it all together, then that is what is called abusing your position.

If anyone disagrees with me on that please speak up and PM me, or if you wish you can state it here but this would take the thread off on non-physics tangent, which I've been trying to avoid.

Pete

 

[berkeman]

Zapperz - I deleted my comments to you in this thread since I decided such comments should be sent by PM. In that PM I asked you a very simple question which you never answered. May I ask why you didn't answer it? Did you confuse my question with comments as to your regulating habits which I said (actually meant to say. That may not have been clear) that you can feel free to ignore that part of the message?

In any case I will repreat the question here just so that you don't get confused by the PM again.

<<snip>>

Pete, ZapperZ is on vacation without reliable Internet access. That is why you did not receive a response to your PM.

 

[pmb_phy]

Pete, ZapperZ is on vacation without reliable Internet access. That is why you did not receive a response to your PM.

Thank you for letting me know that.

ZapperZ - I appologize for making an incorrect assumption and then berating you for my own flawed asumption.

berkeman - Thank you for point this out so I could make a honest man of myself with an apology. I appreciate that very much. I was confused by his lack of response but then again, knowing Zappperz, I was not expacting one. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who sends a PM to justify his actions.

I just don't want this thread to be shut down because Zz believes that the OP is doing something wrong. We shouldn't be harsh to newbies here who don't explain themselves as we would like them to. Recall that he wrote

Despite I'm not graduated from college of physical science, but I'm super interested in physics. this summer I tried to study relativity theory by my self with some good references, I was very happy when I get to understand the concepts of relativity and I convinced my self that the ultimate relative speed between any two objects is (C) based on the results of Michelson- Morley's experiment.

His purpose in comming here was to get an answer

My question is that does anyone has a strong evidence rather than Michelson- Morley's experiment to show me that C is the ultimate relative speed between any two objects even if they approach opposite direction to each other with a velocity more than 200000km/s?

Seems to me that he did exactly what he should have. He came seeking the truth about the MMX experiment. He had a misunderstanding about the experiment itself that he was unware of. We shouldn't jump all over his case because of that. He was learning SR and he came to something he didn't understand so he came here to find experimental evidence of the invariance of the speed of light. We corrected his misunderstanding about the MMX experiment. But people didn't seem to let up on this point. It appears that they are too focused on his original post rather then his subsequent ones which were asked with a new understanding about the MMX experiment.

Let's chill out folks. We rally don't want to chastize a newbie when he comes here with a misunderstanding he was not aware of, right?

Pete

 

[pervect]

OK, this is where I moved the meta-discussion.

Here's my $.02. Reasonable people can differ on moderation issues. (So can unreasonable people, for that matter).

The motivations of the original poster aren't clear. Motivations are never clear, they are a matter of personal judgment, not a scientific fact.

You might note that I've taken the liberty of renaming the title to something slightly less objectionable. The original title was something like

The Michelson Morely experiment is wrong!

This negatively impacts my personal opinion of the motivation of the OP - whom I haven't seen around for a while. It's not a good title, in fact it's bad enough that I wound up changing it.

Fortunately, the thread has (mostly) stayed on-track, mostly, in spite of a poor title, so there hasn't been any reason to close it.

Reminders to people that we DO have guidelines here at PF are quite common, and because (in part due to technical issues) are in my opinion needed and useful. Aside from the issue of people clicking "I agree" without reading what they agree to, there are software issues where not everyone may have had to even click on the "I agree" button.

In the meantime, it's expedient to do a lot of reminding of new posters that we do have forum guidelines. When school starts, we typically see a lot of new posters.