The h Bar

12:00 AM

@NeuroFuzzy That is spectacular

@Jimnosperm I'm still confused. Since we can transform away the gravitational field locally, how can energy be conserved locally or have any (local) meaning for that matter?

ACuriousMind

I lol'd (at the horse/cart)

Also, the "how can it have any meaning" weirdly lets me think of What is love? You people have broken me.

Jimnosperm

@0celo7 That's just it, without gravity, energy is conserved. Locally, it's time invariant. Noether's theorem means energy is conserved. Globally, gravity does some weird shit and now only the energy-momentum tensor is conserved

NeuroFuzzy

@ACuriousMind Hahahaha I'm imagining you in the middle of a lecture

"what is love?"

"baby don't hurt me"

great now I'm going to do it too...

0celo7

@NeuroFuzzy Went over my head :(

NeuroFuzzy

12:04 AM

@0celo7 the answer in the question used a horse/cart analogy

0celo7

I know

Still

:(

ACuriousMind

@NeuroFuzzy Very good :D

Jimnosperm

@0celo7 putting the cart before the horse is an idiom

he reversed it because the analogy in the answer is pretty backwards

it was funny

everybody laugh

0celo7

It's funny now that I know that idiom.

NeuroFuzzy

ohhhh

yeah that would make the joke difficult heh

0celo7

12:07 AM

Another example of @ACuriousMind's spectacular English.

@Jimnosperm What is this "energy" you speak of. Is there a simple expression for it?

Is it to be understood in the ADM framework?

Jimnosperm

@0celo7 it's the product of the mass times the area times the gravitational constant times the number of electrons times the temperature of the solid

mAGNeTs

0celo7

lol

ACuriousMind

It seems Jimmy360 has a habit of retelling already present answers/comments, @Jimnosperm.

Jimnosperm

@ACuriousMind I'm sensing a pattern

ACuriousMind

@Jimnosperm Well, I guess it's not really forbidden to just write what others have written and hope someone votes it up.

Jimnosperm

12:15 AM

No, but the polite thing to do is ask permission first

ACuriousMind

I'm not debating that

BTW, is the "dark energy = spacetime" question off-topic or not?

I noticed neither of the users commenting on it cast a close vote

Yet commenting "this is wrong" rather than answering "no, this is wrong" seems to indicate you think it's off-topic, no?

Jimnosperm

I want to say it's non-mainstream but I didn't vote because it's asking for the mainstream perspective or reasoning that we don't think it is

ACuriousMind

So, we do not close questions that ask us "Why does mainstream physics think that spheres are no cubes?"

Jimnosperm

Yeah, I don't know what to do with that

ACuriousMind

I agree it doesn't really fit the non-mainstream close reason, but I also don't think such questions add any value to the site

Is this... a case for meta?

Jimnosperm

12:21 AM

It's just so "Wow, that's an uninformed question" that I don't know how to approach it, but it's mostly valid as a question

You could ask what to do for not even wrong questions

It's clearly motivated by UPTs, but asked in a way that's not really a UPT. Plus it's not so much a lack of effort when it's clear the OP wouldn't know how to find the information anyway

it's not unclear, not too broad, not opinion-based, not off-topic

but it's "There's no way to answer this because the question is too unapproachable"

@ACuriousMind The sphere-cube example was perfect, btw

0celo7

@ACuriousMind AHA! I found the answer to my question in, surprisingly, Tong's string theory lecture notes. So if $H:=\{z\in\mathbb{C}\,|\,\Im z\ge0\}$, then the question "what part of $\mathbb{C}$ is $H/\mathrm{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})$" can be rephrased as "what is the set of $z \in H$ that can be mapped to all other $z\inH$ by modular transforms." Ingenious! The answer is of course $-\frac{1}{2}\le \Re z\le\frac{1}{2}$, $|z|\ge 1$ and $\Re z\sim -\Re z$.

Oh boy.

Why is MathJax so...bad?

That's supposed to be real and imag part.

ACuriousMind

Looking at that, I must admit I that I knew that. I just didn't remember it :P

0celo7

...

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 That weird R and I are the usual behaviour for \Re and \Im in LaTeX, I think.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Oh, not with my packages then.

It turns mine into operators with the correct spacing.

ACuriousMind

12:36 AM

Mh, lemme test it quickly, could be that it's also one of the amsmath packages doing this

0celo7

I was commenting on the weird spacing mostly.

$\sin z$

Jimnosperm

Yeah, I haven't installed MathJax with chat. So to me it's garbage TeX script

0celo7

See that spaces correctly.

ACuriousMind

Ah, yes, it's amsmath that does the \Re and \Im as fraktur R and I

Curse you, amsmath!

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Since you now magically have heard of this, can you explain why we take the fundamental domain to be the infinite strip and not the finite strip inside of the unit circle?

After all, they are modularly related.

ACuriousMind

12:39 AM

@0celo7 I don't think the finite strip inside the unit circle maps to all of $H$.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Why not? You can invert all of the points inside to the infinite strip and then translate them at will.

ACuriousMind

Oh

That...sounds reasonable

0celo7

If you can put all of the outside points on the inside, shouldn't you be able to do that in reverse?

ACuriousMind

Ah! But it is probably not a fundamental domain because it contains multiple points from some orbits

0celo7

Pls explain

Isn't the inverse function one to one?

ACuriousMind

12:42 AM

Look at the pretty image Wiki has

0celo7

At least for positive argument.

Yeah I have that image in Tong here.

ACuriousMind

When you invert the infinite strip, you don't get a strip inside the unit circle, you get that "hyperbolic triangle" inside the unit circle

And that's an ugly choice for a fundamental domain

0celo7

Oh...

Ok then.

@ACuriousMind Now if we use the triangle, how do we reach every point? It looks like we have to use more general SL trafos than just +1 and 1/.

I guess the beauty of the big strip is that we need only those two.

ACuriousMind

What do you mean with "more general SL trafos than +1 and -1"?

0celo7

@ACuriousMind From that big strip we can reach every $z\in H$ by simply $z\mapsto z+1$ or $z\mapsto -1/z$.

But inside of the crazy triangle we need different SL trafos to reach all of the points I think.

ACuriousMind

12:49 AM

But...doesn't the triangle map to the big strip by $z \mapsto -1/z$?

0celo7

Uh. No...if we flip the point, say, $.5+10,000i$

Crap I have to invert that.

Huh.

Welp now I'm confused again.

Ignorance was bliss.

ACuriousMind

:)

Now I really don't know much more about this, so I can't help.

0celo7

OH, we need multiple applications.

So like we invert, translate, invert, etc.

Well that proof is much more complicated.

@ACuriousMind Wanna help me with a proof?

I think this picture is key somehow.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Not right now, I'm about to go to sleep

0celo7

First, if $z$ is in any of the big strips, we can map it to the master big strip by adding or subtracting $1$.

If it is in any of the hyperbolic triangles, we can map it to the associated big strip and then translate it.

So we have to prove that the hyperbolic strip is the inverse of the big strip.

Screw proper terminology :P

user54412

1:18 AM

So, is "I have access to a resource, but I want a free version" a valid use of specific-reference?

user54412

0

Q: Translation of the Mechanique analytique

Is there an English translation of the Mechanique analytique by Lagrange that is free? I have tried searching up online, however I only get French originals. The English translations seem all to be pricy, while the French versions are free and are in pdf format. Is there an English translation in...

Kyle Kanos

Lol

I just made a comment about that post

Also, the desire to want someone to put the effort into (accurately) translating a 700+ page document and then charging you nothing for it is absolutely foreign to me. Why wouldn't you want to pay for their craftsmanship? — Kyle Kanos 33 secs ago

0celo7

@KyleKanos This isn't ethics class :P

Kyle Kanos

@0celo7 Ethics is everyday life though :|

0celo7

@KyleKanos I'm not saying that ethics are unnecessary, but no one responds to an ethical argument once they have decided they want something.

Kyle Kanos

1:35 AM

@0celo7 That's debatable. There are some people who do not realize the legality of the situation and cease their former illegal endeavors--speaking from experience here too ;)

0celo7

@KyleKanos Ah, but ethics != jurisprudence.

Kyle Kanos

@0celo7 But arguments from ethics is what brought it about

0celo7

@KyleKanos I see.

If you saw earlier, there is quite a large number of people who believe that knowledge should not have a price tag.

(In the paywall discussion.)

At least, the chat was split 50/50 which is certainly a representative sample.

Kyle Kanos

I think it depends on the circumstances

0celo7

cf. How to Lie with Statistics

Kyle Kanos

1:40 AM

Research publications ought to charge money for the publications

Same thing with books

But people should be free to put their works on webhosting services, such as arxiv

0celo7

Of course. People should be able to do whatever they want with their intellectual property.

We were saying that the paywalls were hurting those who are not affiliated with research universities.

Also, at least one of us was convinced that the large paywalls are just lining the publisher's pockets rather than helping the peer-review process.

Kyle Kanos

I'm pretty sure email still works

0celo7

E-mail?

@ACuriousMind I found a derivation in some kid's undergraduate research thesis. Page 8 if you're interested.

Alfred Centauri

@0celo7 the (sad) fact that a large number of people believe that the productive effort of another's mind should not have a price tag does not change the actual fact of reality that it does carry a price (in the broader, proper since of the word).

Kyle Kanos

Dear <Author Name>, I'm at <Small School> and don't have access to <Expensive Paper>. I've done noble work in the field, e.g. <This Paper> and would like to incorporate ideas from your <Expensive Paper>. Is there a pre-print copy available for you to distribute to me so that I might do so? Thanks, <Another Good Researcher>

0celo7

1:47 AM

@KyleKanos But what about people like me who are in high school and self-study? I don't have "small school", etc.

Kyle Kanos

The template is obviously not all-encompassing

The idea is there: ask the author for a pre-print

AFAIK, there are few journals in which authors are not actual owners of the content of the article

0celo7

@AlfredCentauri I never claimed thoughts change reality, just people's perceptions of it and their thoughts regarding right and wrong.

Kyle Kanos

The Astrophysical Journal even says, ...the AAS grants to you the non-exclusive right of republication, subject only to your giving appropriate credit to the journal in which your article is published. This non-exclusive right of republication includes your right to allow reproduction of parts of your article wherever you wish, and permits you to post the published (PDF) version of your article on your personal web site.

Alfred Centauri

@0celo7 my judgement is that you made an appeal to authority (of the 'people'). If that is not the case, please clarify your argument.

0celo7

@AlfredCentauri I simply said that @KyleKanos's argument is ineffective on many (most? not most? I don't have any statistics) people.

Alfred Centauri

1:55 AM

@0celo7 Thanks for the clarification and I pretty much agree with that.

Kyle Kanos

Yes, a cattle prod probably would be more effective than letters on a screen ;)

0celo7

@KyleKanos Yet equally (probably more) immoral than piracy.

Kyle Kanos

@0celo7 Eh, maybe. ECT is still used, despite it's possible unethicalness

0celo7

@KyleKanos Possible? I think that unless that person is threatening physical harm to you or your possessions, it is immoral.

@KyleKanos It should be noted that the book is old enough to be in public domain. I am unsure if such laws apply to translations, however.

Kyle Kanos

@0celo7 But if the person is a willing participant in the ECT due to valid psychological issues

I do believe a new translation would constitute a new copyrighted works

Even though it is a derivative works

But I'm not a copyright lawyer, so don't quote me on that

0celo7

2:05 AM

I thought perhaps someone translated it in, say, the 40s and died in the 70s. Is that public domain then?

Kyle Kanos

Wikipedia has the ultimate word In short: These [derived works] may give rise to new copyright on the new work, but not on the public domain original.

@0celo7 Still needs to be 95 years post copyright date

0celo7

95?

Wow I thought it was...much less than that.

Kyle Kanos

Actually, in looking at the Wiki article, there's mention of 70 years after authors death

But that's for works published between the 1970's and 2002

user54412

Anything younger than Mickey Mouse (1928) will never become public domain.

0celo7

@ChrisWhite Huh?

Who owns it?

Kyle Kanos

2:12 AM

I imagine it would be "The Estate" of the author

user54412

@0celo7 Well, obviously not Walt himself. But the Disney estate/company is infamous for ~~lobbying~~ bribing Congress every time that copyright is about to expire, making them extend copyright for another decade or two.

0celo7

Interesting.

What about works not published in the U.S.?

user54412

That's why copyright is obscenely long these days, long past where the creator actually derives value from it (unless you have some connection to your unborn great great grandchildren).

user54412

@0celo7 A question beyond my pay grade, seeing as I'm not paid even 1% the salary of a good international lawyer.

0celo7

haha

Kyle Kanos

3:13 AM

Are proofs on topic?

0

Q: Fourier Transform and Canonical Transform

According to a book I'm reading, Fourier transform is a canonical transform. Anyone can prove that?

hamiltonian-formalism fourier-transform

Stan Shunpike

3:35 AM

I don't think so @KyleKanos

I think it depends on how it is asked.

Like, on MO I've seen questions like that and it's okay, but in general I feel for something that can be found in a book, it's usually better to ask for a resource. But that's just my opinion. Maybe @DavidZ has w thought about this

In contrast to MO, I have seen people just post hw questions on math SE and ask for proofs.and then I think its off topic. In this particular case, I feel it sounds like that.

NeuroFuzzy

I mean, it's bad for lack of effort for starts

Lol, physics.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/77926

adding quotes... changing the sentence slightly... adding "of course"

should also preface each sentence with "it is obvious that"

Stan Shunpike

4:12 AM

@KyleKanos did u agree/disagree with what I said? What say you?

Physics Meta

5:22 AM

0

Q: The policy of downvoting

I posted these question as an answer and probably is better to ask a new question: Could you explain what is the sense of giving a post (question/answer) more than a couple of negative votes, if the purpose is only to alert the reader that that post is not particularly useful, or is incorrect? W...

discussion

David Z

5:50 AM

@StanShunpike my thought: it's never better to ask for a resource, unless you literally have no question other than what the good resources on a subject are. (That's what resource-recommendations are for.

David Z

6:02 AM

@ChrisWhite good topic for a meta question; apparently we don't have one yet

(I lean toward no... helping someone find a resource that isn't online or is very difficult to find online is one thing, but finding a free version of something the OP already knows how to obtain by paying is a different matter)

Kyle Kanos

12:55 PM

@StanShunpike Sorry, I stepped away from the computer for the night shortly after posting that. I think that proofs should probably be off topic because it's basically a "do this work for me" problem.

Jimnosperm also had a Bite-Sized answer about proofs as well that is fairly upvoted (+18/-6) that says as much (with a comment about how it ought to be a case-by-case basis):

12

A: Bite-sizing homework

Questions that can be summarized as "Please explicitly derive this equation/law for me" are OFF topic.

Alfred Centauri

1:20 PM

@PhysicsMeta I had started to write a recommendation to avoid answering this question since, on my view, there was no value to be gained engaging the OP or the group on standby ready to twist your words around in the comments. And that, if you must engage, go all in. I see that @Kyle Kanos did just that!

Kyle Kanos

Yeah

I saw the warning signs

But I still felt compelled to write something

I'll likely not respond to any comments that seem like they're twisting my words

Alfred Centauri

1:35 PM

@KyleKanos You words are quite clear; I don't think any clarification will be required. I suspect this group of users are merchants of guilt - they've had their aim on Floris of late.

Jimnosperm

@KyleKanos The obvious response to point 3 is that you get 3 badges for votes up to 100. Past 100, you could still ask what the point is, but people may argue it's to give rep to the poster

Kyle Kanos

Apparently trolls started already:

Your comments used to be more balanced and moderate last year. You are completely missing the point since there is a huge different between a question and an answer. An answer must be correct, and if it's wrong can misinform readers, a question mustn't and can't. A question can be badly formulated and you improve it, it can be too simple and you give a simple explanation, can be founded on misconceptions and you put the student on the right track. You misread the intentions of OP who has already shown in other posts to be serious, and if it were a criticism... have you become allergic to it? — GreenRay 2 mins ago

Alfred Centauri

@KyleKanos And, right on cue, there's GreenRay with a transparent attempt to get you to accept an unearned guilt.

Kyle Kanos

Do I invoke anything about differentiating answers and questions in my post?

Jimnosperm

@AlfredCentauri No guilt. I haven't read the post and I know he's wrong

Alfred Centauri

1:41 PM

Dang, I have to take the truck to the shop for new brakes. I'll be back in a little while. Have fun!

Jimnosperm

@KyleKanos No, you treat questions and answers the same. I think that's what he has a problem with

ACuriousMind

Oh, right when I thought "Hmmm, PSE is a bit slow today" - bam, "We're offline for maintenance".

Jimnosperm

Took the words out of my fingers

Kyle Kanos

@Jimnosperm Ah, I see now

0celo7

@ACuriousMind If we have a function that is holomorphic in a chart $(U,\phi)$ and we have another chart $(U',\phi')$, it should be holomorphic in that chart too, right, i.e. obey Cauchy-Riemann in those coordinates too?

Kyle Kanos

1:44 PM

Funny thought: It'd be great if we downvoted gwen's post to -5 and upvoted my answer to +20

(or -17 and +28, just like the question)

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Yes, holomorphy is not dependent on the chosen chart, it is a property of the function, not of the chart.

Jimnosperm

@KyleKanos Mining for gold, are we?

ACuriousMind

@KyleKanos I haven't had a chance to read the meta post yet, but I bet it would be delicious irony.

Kyle Kanos

@Jimnosperm Incidentally, I suppose. The irony was more of what I was getting at

Jimnosperm

The irony or the aurumy?

Kyle Kanos

1:48 PM

Er...what's aurumy?

ACuriousMind

::groan:: Worst. Pun. Ever.

Jimnosperm

At least someone got it

Alfred Centauri

@KyleKanos by the way, I'm not quite certain, but I suspect that these folks are connected in some way with bobie: physics.stackexchange.com/users/56578/bobie

Jimnosperm

bobie is my biggest fan

ACuriousMind

@KyleKanos aurum is the Latin word for gold.

Kyle Kanos

1:50 PM

Got it

That was bad

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Ok, then I must just suck at the chain rule. Let $w^\mu=u^\mu+\mathrm{i}v^\mu$ be a function. Let $z^\mu$ and $z'^\mu$ be coordinates of the two aforementioned charts.

Suppose Cauchy-Riemann holds on $(U,\phi)$. Then on $(U',\phi')$ $$\frac{\partial u^\nu}{\partial x'^\lambda}=\frac{\partial u^\nu}{\partial x^\mu}\frac{\partial x^\mu}{\partial x'^\lambda}+\frac{\partial u^\nu}{\partial y^\mu}\frac{\partial y^\mu}{\partial x'^\lambda}=\frac{\partial v^\nu}{\partial y^\mu}\frac{\partial x^\mu}{\partial x'^\lambda}-\frac{\partial v^\nu}{\partial x^\mu}\frac{\partial y^\mu}{\partial x'^\lambda}\ne\frac{\partial v^\nu}{\partial y'^\lambda}$$

Kyle Kanos

Bobie did like me for a while, but then I started telling him/her they were wrong about things and he/she stopped liking me

Jimnosperm

I had to work to convince him not to serial upvote all of my posts

Kyle Kanos

So bobie is a guy?

Jimnosperm

That's my assumption. Rule 16

Let's play Real or Fake. The house gives a 12% chance of the following profile being the real person. What's your guess?

Kip Thorne

9 1

black-holes quantum-gravity singularities uncertainty-principle

0celo7

1:56 PM

I wonder if @ACuriousMind knows who Kip Thorne is...

Jimnosperm

yes he does

ACuriousMind

The dude from Interstellar, I think, but I hadn't heard of him before

0celo7

haha

@ACuriousMind What's wrong with my chain rule?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 I'm not seeing the error

But it is very definitely the case that holomorphy doesn't depend on the chart.

Kyle Kanos

@Jimnosperm Given his single answer, I'm going with FAAAAAKe

0celo7

1:58 PM

@ACuriousMind Perhaps I have made a discovery.

Those complex geometers have been wrong this whole time.

ACuriousMind

Ahhh

Jimnosperm

@KyleKanos Agreed, I can't imagine the real Kip Thorne taking the time to create a profile just to say "nobody knows" on a question like that

0celo7

Is there a process for flagging account names?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Aren't the charts themselves (as $z'(z)$) holomorphic functions? I guess you have to use the C-R equations for them to get that holomorphy is chart-independent

@0celo7 Nah, just flag a post of theirs with a custom flag

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Genius.

Yup, works 100%.

Kyle Kanos

2:02 PM

Okay...coolest thing ever:

sourceforge.net/projects/plotdigitizer/?source=typ_redirect

Plot Digitizer

You can import figures and it can figure out the data

Jimnosperm

Why do people upvote answers that are clearly just minorly related opinions of a layman?

0

A: How much of the universes mass is bound up in photons traveling between stars?

I too do was wondering about the physics of stored photon energy as they wing there way around the visible universe in the last 13.x million light years. First is seems to me that photons of what ever part of the electromagnetic spectrum are dark until observed and for a good proportion of there ...

Kyle Kanos

@Jimnosperm: Grand idea: email the real Kip Thorne and let him know someone's stolen his identity online and is making the real him look bad

Danu

Hmmm... should this be closed or not? I personally feel like it shouldn't but can't really put my finger on a the reason why

ACuriousMind

@Jimnosperm ...because they find them useful, I guess? :D

Jimnosperm

@KyleKanos I'd imagine he gets hundreds to thousands of emails per day (mostly useless physics theories). I'm not going to add to that pile

Kyle Kanos

2:09 PM

Quick Q: the tag excerpts are the ones that tell us when to use tag X, right?

ACuriousMind

@Danu Hm...they're asking why a specific step in some derivation holds. I don't find the question interesting, but I don't think it's really off-topic. If any, it could be off-topic as HW-like.

Danu

@ACuriousMind Yeah, that's the reason I'd find best suited.

ACuriousMind

@KyleKanos What the tag is about and where to use it, ideally.

Danu

Oh well, apparently my comment answered the question anyways. I think we can go ahead and VTC :P

ACuriousMind

lol

Okay, either you VTC, or you make it an answer

Jimnosperm

2:12 PM

@ACuriousMind A fine strategy for approaching every question :P

ACuriousMind

What's up with my whipped cream? <---really? Are we doing clickbait titles now, too?

0celo7

@ACuriousMind My string question has 40 views in almost a month.

I bet that coffee question gets more in a day.

Jimnosperm

@ACuriousMind I really want to find a reason to close that. We aren't a "Why is my hair frizzy today?" site

Primarily opinion based?

ACuriousMind

@Jimnosperm I feel the same urge. One could say that finding reason for one particular behaviour in one particular instance is primarily opinion-based unless the question demonstrates that this is a reproducibly occuring phenomenon.

Jimnosperm

My reasoning is that this could be due to any number of mechanisms, so the answer will be more based on opinion than verifiable and reproducible fact

ACuriousMind

2:19 PM

@0celo7 I mean to put out more bounties after I've reached 20k. A bit of patience ;)

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Lol, I wasn't begging by any means.

ACuriousMind

I was actually planning that even before you mentioned it again

0celo7

It's probably not even important, I haven't seen it even mentioned anywhere else.

ACuriousMind

Now the surprise is ruined :(

0celo7

Aww

Jimnosperm

2:23 PM

why can I not improve tag wiki edits? That seems silly

ACuriousMind

@Jimnosperm Because you do not have enough rep to do unreviewed tag edits

I think thats 20k privilege

Jimnosperm

@ACuriousMind Right, my mistake. I always forget about that

@KyleKanos That was a good reason to reject it. I approved it because it's still better than nothing

Kyle Kanos

IMO, dude can read the rejection reason and resubmit

Jimnosperm

Yeah, there's no harm in that

dmckee

@Jimnosperm We have at least one user who believes that down-voting new users is mean and unfriendly and has proudly proclaimed that he votes such posts up regardless to "counteract".

Jimnosperm

2:39 PM

@dmckee The upvote was there with no accompanying downvotes. But I suppose that could have been the case. That user has definitely missed the point of SE

Jiminion

2:55 PM

@dmckee Ha. I think that was me.

@dmckee To be fair, only in some cases....

ACuriousMind

@Jiminion No, I know who dmckee means and it is not you.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Trivial exercise is trivial or am I missing something?

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Since I don't really know complex geometry, I can't tell you if there isn't a subtlety hiding here

dmckee

Yes, please don't feel I'm down (heh!) on upvoting posts that you think were undeservedly downvoted. I'd just like to think you bring an honest evaluation to each vote. That's the point of the voting system: to collect honest evaluations.

Jiminion

I don't like it when very new people (1 rep) are downvoted with no reasons provided.

I think that is confusing to them. New people are annoying (sometimes) but we have to be a little patient with them.

dmckee

3:10 PM

@Jiminion I'm with you on reasons being important.

Sean

Hey question for a mod (or someone more familiar with the inner workings of the site than I)

Jimnosperm

has our meta been taken over by disgruntled users? Why does every "you're being mean to me" comment get lots of votes?

@Sean Ask away

ACuriousMind

2 days ago, by Alfred Centauri

@DavidZ @ACuriousMind, @JohnRennie, the OP and a couple of users in the comments are up to no good, IMHO. I get the impression, from some recent meta comments, that there is a small group looking to take offense from any comment or answer by some of the regulars and then to use "the formula". Note the large number of upvotes some of these comments get.

Jimnosperm

what's "the formula"?

Sean

1

A: Why does the light instantly disappear when we switch off the source?

The problem with this question (although your question is still a natural one for those thinking about light to ask) is that it mixes the ideal and the real. You describe an ideal situation with your mirrors, but then ask for what would happen in real life. No actual mirror has reflection coeffic...

ACuriousMind

3:22 PM

@Jimnosperm Scream "you're being mean to me" essentially, although it also involves twisting the words to imply the regulars are being hypocrites/dishonest

(I think, you'll have to ask Alfred what exactly he meant by it)

Sean

Evidently I made this community wiki by accident. Any way to undo it to get the rep I'm missing out on?

nope

Ah crap

lol

I thought community wiki only kicked in if you edited too many times

Jimnosperm

3:24 PM

Well, mods can do it when necessary

46

A: Is there a way to remove community wiki status?

Yes—community moderators, at their discretion, can now remove community wiki status from particular posts. This also inoculates those specific posts from ever being auto-converted to community wiki again, so they can be edited indefinitely with no forced wiki. In general, we feel the current au...

Sean

@ACuriousMind are you laughing at me? Haha

ACuriousMind

@Sean Yes, I was laughing at you inadvertently making your answer totally selfless ;)

Sean

Let's be honest, I'm not that altruistic haha

0celo7

4:34 PM

eyyy I got a string theory tag answer

2500 rep lets go

I can "create tag synonyms now"

Jimnosperm

Soon you'll be able to review the close queue and help lighten the load

0celo7

@Jimnosperm I don't post enough.

I was really motivated to get to 2000 and that went really quick, but 3000 is just...meh.

I hate writing what I think are good, correct answers, and never hearing from OP again.

Jimnosperm

You've been here 6 months. Give it time

0celo7

Sofia got her 3000 rep in much less time, and personally I think she had no clue what she was talking about half the time. (Not that I'm much different, but I usually know when I don't know what I'm talking about.)

Jimnosperm

Next month is my 2 year anniversary and I'm not even over 15k yet. I have only about 220 answer. You can tell I'm lax about answering too

Wow, someone flagged your comment

0celo7

4:42 PM

Oh no!

I'm gonna cry.

J. Musser

@0celo7 marked invalid xD

Jimnosperm

It was rejected as invalid, but they could have just said that it wasn't a cool thing to say and ask you to remove it before flagging

Anyway, I was saying that as long as you're active, the rep will come. Don't bother rushing. Heck ACuriousMind hasn't been here a year yet and he has 380 answers with almost 20k rep. I don't mind because he is more passionate than me about answering things

I just wait until I see one I really want to tackle. Not just any that I can tackle.

J. Musser

@0celo7 my 2 cents: The OP is only one of the hundreds (often thousands) of people who will be helped by a good answer. I seriously don't feel too bad about one user (even the op) not reading the answer. I mean, if I'm out an accept, no big deal really... The goal is to help others, and even if the OP leaves, your goal is reached when you post a good answer.

8

Jimnosperm

@J.Musser I'm not sure why but part of me very much loves your profile pic. I can't explain it, it just makes me happy

J. Musser

@Jimnosperm Spring!

0celo7

4:50 PM

Both tree lovers I guess.

Jimnosperm

My name is Jimnosperm. I am a tree

J. Musser

@Jimnosperm You are a is Jimnosperm, my tree is a gymnosperm, you're twins!

0celo7

@Jimnosperm As someone who is self taught and has no formal education (yet) I tend to be very careful about what I answer. I only answer if I really want to and have solid sources for my answer, which I don't always have. I'm not at the point where I trust my physics gut.

Jimnosperm

@J.Musser that's the pun

J. Musser

@Jimnosperm yeah, I know... kinda obvious xD

Jimnosperm

4:51 PM

@0celo7 That's what you should do

@J.Musser It was chosen by the Physics.SE community. Also as a physics joke, it's a tree-level approximation and Gymnosperms have light cones (physics humour is lame, I know)

J. Musser

@Jimnosperm lol

I'm no good at Physics.

Jimnosperm

Speaking of which, @all next month is going to be a repeat if you don't vote up a new name

14

Q: A Jim for all seasons

So there has been a recent influx of new Jims (meaning maybe 2 in a while). Now, we all know that I am the one true Jim, lord of all other Jims, but nonetheless it gets confusing when someone pings Jim and Jim gets pinged as well. But that's just extra fluff. As supreme leader of the kingdom of ...

discussion

J. Musser

@Jimn you have quite a respectable reputation already.

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