Mainstream science criterion

[turin]

Can we remove the mainstream science criterion, or at least be much less strict about it. I have seen a few times now threads that I thought were interesting, but then disappointingly closed because they rubbed a mentor in a non-mainstream way. Is this forum to be restricted to mere factual reference?

 

[dx]

Can you link to a few of these closed threads? Just curious.

 

[turin]

I realize that these kinds of discussions are unpopular and frustrating, and that they have the potential to turn away some valuable people. But, there are others (myself included) who are disappointed. Here is the most recent one that I've seen, which prompted me to post here.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=350472

 

[DaveC426913]

This forum has a mandate to educate students with discussion about existing science theories. It cannot be all things to all people. There are plenty of fora out there that will welcome highly speculative threads.

 

[russ_watters]

I realize that these kinds of discussions are unpopular and frustrating, and that they have the potential to turn away some valuable people. But, there are others (myself included) who are disappointed. Here is the most recent one that I've seen, which prompted me to post here.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=350472

That thread was basically wrong-headed idle speculation and trolling. There isn't much to be gained from a discussion where the person driving the discussion is just pulling factually wrong claims out of the air and posting them without thought. From your first post:

Is this forum to be restricted to mere factual reference?

I'm not completely sure what you meant by that, but all discussions must, at least, be grounded in reality and logic. If you are asking that we allow pure, baseless idle speculation, sorry, but that isn't going to happen here.

 

[Shahin.Omar]

Ok, I came here to give a suggestion and found a thread that speaks about me, good to hear that.

Listen russ_watters you can abuse someone and make general comments about somebody without being specific about it, and then can be happy about it. But this is what the papal's do, they do not try to be specific and tell what exactly is wrong, they just brand a person heretic and excommunicate him.

Anyways, I think one additional purpose of such forum's is to make money or sell themselves. So what you can do, and do it very safely is start a new section by the name non-mainstream where those restrictions do not apply as much.

I suggest this because if you see the number of hits my thread got was really very high for those 3-4 days, it crossed over 1000 in just 4 days.

Think about it!

 

[Pengwuino]

Anyways, I think one additional purpose of such forum's is to make money or sell themselves. So what you can do, and do it very safely is start a new section by the name non-mainstream where those restrictions do not apply as much.

There is the independent research area which, if it still is around, gets (got) out of control with crackpottery.

 

[ZapperZ]

Ok, I came here to give a suggestion and found a thread that speaks about me, good to hear that.

Listen russ_watters you can abuse someone and make general comments about somebody without being specific about it, and then can be happy about it. But this is what the papal's do, they do not try to be specific and tell what exactly is wrong, they just brand a person heretic and excommunicate him.

Anyways, I think one additional purpose of such forum's is to make money or sell themselves. So what you can do, and do it very safely is start a new section by the name non-mainstream where those restrictions do not apply as much.

I suggest this because if you see the number of hits my thread got was really very high for those 3-4 days, it crossed over 1000 in just 4 days.

Think about it!

We HAD that, it was a disaster!

PF has had a "long" history in its evolution. Your suggestion isn't something we haven't tried before. Furthermore, there are so many other forums that cater to crackpottery ... er... non-mainstream posts. Knock yourself out there. Why pick the one few forums that simply don't welcome them? You did read the Rules when you signed up, so you should know fully well what you were getting yourself into, don't you?

This forum has a very high signal-to-noise ratio. It is the major selling point of this forum that made us popular in the first place.

Zz.

 

[arildno]

Ok, I came here to give a suggestion and found a thread that speaks about me, good to hear that.

Listen russ_watters you can abuse someone and make general comments about somebody without being specific about it, and then can be happy about it. But this is what the papal's do, they do not try to be specific and tell what exactly is wrong, they just brand a person heretic and excommunicate him.

First off:
Somehow, I think you could have done better with the mutual recriminations between the Shias and Sunnis in, for example, contemporary Yemen, rather than denounce how papal power was wielded centuries ago.

Secondly:
Your analogy is totally wrong, since PF and its staff has no means of coercion available OTHER THAN shutting an individual out of PF.
In contrast to what sort of powers the Pope possessed, and various religious communities still possess, along with most state authorities.

Thus, a PROPER analogy would have been:
Can a private individual shut somebody else out from his own home merely on basis that the guest is voicing views the house owner doesn't like?

Of course the house owner can do so!

You are free to go wherever you like, but individual sites possesses the right to kick you out of their home turf.

 

[jtbell]

There is the independent research area which, if it still is around, gets (got) out of control with crackpottery.

The Independent Research forum still exists. Look under General Physics. It doesn't get much traffic because it's moderated, with specific requirements for the format and contents of initial posts.

About three years ago (I think), the IR forum replaced a forum called "Theory Development" which was unmoderated and overrun with crackpottery. This is what Zz was referring to with his "We HAD that" statement.

 

[turin]

Why did you need to shut down the forum if it was already sequestered? Was it simply consuming too much physical bandwidth or storage space, and so causing the rest of the forums to suffer? It seems like, without a designated area, the crackpots are infecting all areas.

 

[Evo]

Why did you need to shut down the forum if it was already sequestered? Was it simply consuming too much physical bandwidth or storage space, and so causing the rest of the forums to suffer?

This forum doesn't host discussions on crackpot ideas or conspiracy theories. There are many, many places on the internet that do if you enjoy that type of thing.

 

[turin]

This forum doesn't host discussions on crackpot ideas or conspiracy theories.

Actually, it does. Just not for very long.

 

[arildno]

Why did you need to shut down the forum if it was already sequestered? Was it simply consuming too much physical bandwidth or storage space, and so causing the rest of the forums to suffer? It seems like, without a designated area, the crackpots are infecting all areas.

Totally wrong!

By not giving them ANY platform, they wail and scream, and then..LEAVE. For good.

Did you ever think they kept themselves within the designated area?

 

[turin]

Totally wrong!

By not giving them ANY platform, they wail and scream, and then..LEAVE. For good.

Did you ever think they kept themselves within the designated area?

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Your response is totally inappropriate. What, exactly, is "totally wrong"? Asking a question?

I appologize (insincerely) for not knowing the answer to my own question before I asked it.

 

[arildno]

It was a response to the your last assertion:

It seems like, without a designated area, the crackpots are infecting all areas.

Having a designated crackpot area attracts them in large numbers, making crackpottery more visible, not only in the designated area, but in many other sub-forums as well.

By refusing their "right to have their own place at PF" dissuades many of them from even visiting (much less commenting), so that their "attack strength" becomes minimized.

 

[Moonbear]

Why did you need to shut down the forum if it was already sequestered? Was it simply consuming too much physical bandwidth or storage space, and so causing the rest of the forums to suffer? It seems like, without a designated area, the crackpots are infecting all areas.

So, in your first post you were complaining that the rules against crackpottery are overly strict and should be relaxed, and now here you're complaining that the crackpots are infesting all areas of the forum. Do you see the logical inconsistency in those two arguments?

 

[Astronuc]

Why did you need to shut down the forum if it was already sequestered? Was it simply consuming too much physical bandwidth or storage space, and so causing the rest of the forums to suffer? It seems like, without a designated area, the crackpots are infecting all areas.

Crackpots come here with an agenda. Also, it appears that most do not read the PF guidelines, or if they do, simply disregard them.

IR is set up for independent (non-mainstream) research. A big problem is that most submitters do not bother to follow the submission guidelines, assuming that they even bother to read them in the first place.

We get a lot of ill-informed people there, who feel they understand physics or the ultimate reality, when in fact they express a poor understanding of basics.

It is way too much effort to monitor each and every post for misinformation of crackpots, so if we find a post or thread, it is shutdown pretty quickly.

And we certainly do not need a crackpot forum at PF.

 

[Redbelly98]

We are not trying to make money at PF. We are trying to teach and discuss the current knowledge of science, math, and technology. That is what attracts most of our members here.

Allowing personal theories ends up, in many cases, consuming members' time with trying to teach basic stuff to somebody who does not wish to learn or understand it. (And learning the basics is necessary before developing a new theory.) Our general membership finds this extremely annoying, so we don't allow it.

 

[arildno]

Furthermore, keeping the house clean increases the chances that people we want to visit PF choose to do so.

For example, professional engineers and other scientists will often have low tolerance for "garbage", and will keep away from sites they see allow garbage proliferation.

 

[turin]

To moonbear,
My statement that you quoted was not a complaint, it was an attempt at empathy. I do not understand the criteria for "crackpot", "troll", etc., so I suppose that I misused the terminology. I do not complain here about other people's non-mainstream viewpoints, and I maintain my complaint regarding the intolerance of non-mainstream viewpoints, sans contradiction.

To penguino, jtbell, astronuc,
I will take a peek at the IR forum. Thanks.

To all (esp. moderators),
I resign this discussion, reiterating my feedback one last time (in this thread) as a request rather than a complaint: a request to allow non-mainstream viewpoints. Thank you for your consideration.

 

[DaveC426913]

To all (esp. moderators),
I resign this discussion, reiterating my feedback one last time (in this thread) as a request rather than a complaint: a request to allow non-mainstream viewpoints. Thank you for your consideration.

I just do not understand why. It is directly contradictory to PF's goal. You are asking for PF to change its identity from that of a premiere source of reliable, established science on the web to ... something else.

Will you now go to the "First Christian's Forum" and ask them to create a subforum for Jewish issues?

 

[Moonbear]

To all (esp. moderators),
I resign this discussion, reiterating my feedback one last time (in this thread) as a request rather than a complaint: a request to allow non-mainstream viewpoints. Thank you for your consideration.

What people have been attempting to explain is that we have already tried that approach on this forum, and it was a miserable failure. People are not refuting your suggestion out of an unwillingness to consider new things, but because it is an old, tested approach, and we know what the results were and don't wish to repeat them.

 

[George Jones]

To all (esp. moderators),
I resign this discussion, reiterating my feedback one last time (in this thread) as a request rather than a complaint: a request to allow non-mainstream viewpoints. Thank you for your consideration.

How much time have you spent on sci.physics?

 

[Born2bwire]

Man, I would not want to encourage anymore crackpots coming here. They are bad enough as it is given the discouragement the forum projects toward them. Even in the short time I have been here I have grown tired of them quickly because, as stated previously, it is usually a problem of their personality than their ideas. Most are unwilling to concede to learning basic knowledge or promote a proper debate. It is all a waste of time.

Hell, I'm even getting people PMing me crackpot nonsense now.

 

[Integral]

What people have been attempting to explain is that we have already tried that approach on this forum, and it was a miserable failure. People are not refuting your suggestion out of an unwillingness to consider new things, but because it is an old, tested approach, and we know what the results were and don't wish to repeat them.

I wouldn't call it a failure, we had a lot of fun in the old "Theory Development" forum, and it helped grow the forums. Unfortunately, we all became tired of it for the exact reasons stated by B2b in a previous post. It was simply an unending repetitive discussion with a procession of crackpots one after the other. The more convoluted the language the bigger the cracks in the pot.

In those days we did not have nearly as large a active member base, so sometimes any discussion was better then none. But now there are a large number of highly qualified members who contribute on a regular basis and our membership is growing steadily. We can now be a little more picky about the discussions we permit and the members who post in them. Why would we want to open the floodgates to nutcases who do not know the basics but claim to hold the true knowledge?

 

[Evo]

Hell, I'm even getting people PMing me crackpot nonsense now.

Please forward any unwanted PM's to a mentor. If they are contacting you, they are probably bothering other members as well.

 

[FredGarvin]

I think the rise in Google and other search engines' effectiveness is another reason for us to be even more vigilant in stopping the "non-mainstream" posts. It seems now a days you can't post anything that is mainstream without seeing a zero post count new person show up and give their 2 cents worth.

 

[jim mcnamara]

....

Hell, I'm even getting people PMing me crackpot nonsense now.

I got a bad one today from a poster with 0 posts, plugging a blog.

In all honesty, for me, it is really hard to tell uneducated/miseducated from propagandist.
Considering the effort I have to put into researching some topics to give decent answers, I don't bother with 80% of the posts I could answer.

 

[Evo]

I got a bad one today from a poster with 0 posts, plugging a blog.

In all honesty, for me, it is really hard to tell uneducated/miseducated from propagandist.
Considering the effort I have to put into researching some topics to give decent answers, I don't bother with 80% of the posts I could answer.

Forward the PM to me, or at least the member name. They usually harrass a large number of members.