Physicsforums.com: Speculative Posts & Academic Integrity

[Galahad]

I just have a quick question on the site guidelines:

Overly Speculative Posts:
Physicsforums.com strives to maintain high standards of academic integrity. There are many open questions in physics, and we welcome discussion on those subjects provided the discussion remains intellectually sound. Posts or threads of a speculative nature that lack substantial support or well-considered argumentation will be deleted. Posts deleted under this rule will be accompanied by a private message from a Staff member, with an invitation to resubmit the post in accordance with our Independent Research Guidelines. Poorly formulated personal theories and unfounded challenges of mainstream science will not be tolerated anywhere on the site.

Just out of curiousity, what is the purpose of this policy? It just seems like this might prohibit or limit the free exchange of ideas.

 

[russ_watters]

It is a matter of time and quality - quality of the forums and time the moderators have to spend sifting through and responding to crackpottery. We decided after several years of existence that it was not worth our time and the typical low-quality of such posts was bringing down the overall quality of the forum.

This is not public property, and we certainly can limit the exchange of ideas to those we consider to be up to the standards of the forum.

 

[ZapperZ]

I just have a quick question on the site guidelines:



Just out of curiousity, what is the purpose of this policy? It just seems like this might prohibit or limit the free exchange of ideas.

You are also not the first person to ask this. If you care to do a search in this section of PF, you'd see that the issue has been discussed to death.

1. We used to not have such policy. And it was choking us. This current policy has been in placed for about... oh, what, a year or two? And it is working out very well.

2. There is an extreme shortage of forums that strictly enforce such policy. In other words, you have an overwhelming choice of forums JUST for free-form, speculative, free-for-all, talk-anything-you-like medium. We just want to be different. You have more than ample avenue to pursue if you want that kind. If you want our kind, how many do you think there are? So let us be different and fill a niche that isn't filled very much out there in internet-land. Based on our sucess so far, it is obvious that there IS a need for such a format.

3. I've never seen "free exhance of ideas" in an open forum actually amounts to anything useful. Have you? Have you seen such activity resulting in a physics paper in a peer-reviewed physics journal?

Zz.