The h Bar - 2016-07-28 (page 5 of 6)

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7:00 PM

it is also the one the physics community strongly think to be the one describing reality

I like how you guys just take my weird comments and move on nowadays, I feel so accepted :v

Renegade (Explicit)

in partiular, grandfather paradox cannot happen in type 1 because it is inconsistent

Not available in my country

Lemme VPN it

Recently in these 20 something years, some quantum mechanics experiments that aim to emulate time travel suggest time travel in our universe need to be self consistent

so basically for our universe only type 1 and type 4 are plausible (unless there's something we don't knwno abotu spacetime that allow its topology to be changed)

7:02 PM

@0celo7 Listening to it

@secret Assuming the universe's geometry was closed, would poincaré recurrence be an example of something similar to a CTC loop?

@BernardMeurer Sounds like a metaphor for nature taking revenge

@0celo7 Meh, I don't like this, Rap God is alright though

@ACuriousMind I'm a poet

@Obliv I think no, because (slereah or johnrennie will fill in the blanks for you)

@BernardMeurer I didn't say it was a good metaphor

7:04 PM

@ACuriousMind I'm a modernist

Bad is good

@slereah hey @secret said you'd fill the blanks in for me. What say you to "Assuming the universe's geometry was closed, would poincaré recurrence be an example of something similar to a CTC loop?"

@BernardMeurer That sounds more like you're a paradoxist

Also, sure you didn't mean post-modernist?

@ACuriousMind I hate modernism

Post-modernism is old

I'm neo-modernist

I currently lack the knowledge to said very detailed stuff about CTC without making rookie mistakes that I don't know

Well Poincaré recurrence and CTCs would appear similar, I suppose

Although our own universe does not suffer from Poincaré recurrence times, according to current theories

7:07 PM

Post-modernists are so out of their mind they couldn't even come up with a bloody name for god's sake

How else can CTCs exist, if not for eventually meeting the same initial conditions of the universe for the same evolution to occur (forming a "loop"). @Slereah @secret Unless, there is a loop later on in the evolution of the universe :o

"So, what's the name of this movement"; "ehm, ah, uhm, we're... ehm. Modernists"; "Wait, so you're the same as the guy's in the 20th century?"; "Nononono, we're, hmmmm, sigh, we're post-modernists you see?"

A CTC can be restricted to a compact region of spacetime

That's how it went

user image

JohnRennie (I don't want to tag you so frequently today with sub-important questions), you are right. Since part of the trajectory is spacelike, we cannot really say much about the physical meaning or about what it is like to ride along one of the observers

7:10 PM

Why do we have "easier" but not "difficulter"?

@peterh : Science is not a conspiracy. Everything we do is funded by the public and it is fully disclosed, usually years before it happens.

@CuriousOne Not everything done in Science is funded by the public

@BernardMeurer Else we would need to pronunce 4 syllables in one word, which is too hard, at least that's what my primary schoo teacher said

@Secret So because it would be difficulter?

META

0

Q: Should very small edits be accepted?

I sometimes see edits that do nothing except for correct the spelling of a single word, or wrap a number in LaTeX (e.g. 5 into $5$). Having an edit accepted on a post gives you a share of its reputation, so some users have accumulated hundreds of reputation points based on these tiny edits alone....

7:13 PM

@Bernard: I am not talking about private and industrial research. That is usually not even interested in explaining nature. It's interested in making money with it.

@BernardMeurer yeah, I remember she taught as a menomic on tenses (because south east asians don't do tenses) in that if a word has 3+ syllables, then its superlative and comparative is adding the word "most" and "more" before it

@CuriousOne But a lot of discoveries that do explain nature happen when one's trying to make money, doesn't it?

@Secret Are you a southeast asian?

Hong Kongers, Taiwanese and Chinese are southeast asians

@BernardMeurer [citation needed]

@ACuriousMind Question, not statement :)

@Secret You're a hong konger?

7:15 PM

yeah

but my nationality is australia

Are you currently in HK?

Industries don't really care about fundamental research

By its very nature it doesn't have predictible results

@BernardMeurer Then the answer is "I highly doubt that". I can't think of any fundamental discovery that happened in industrial research.

Well, at least recently

@ACuriousMind Fundamental, yeah, probably not

but the C60/C70 molecules were first observed in an industrial environment, and they got a nobel and are p. cool

I think they're cool at least

7:19 PM

@BernardMeurer The history on the Wikipedia page seems to disagree and say they were discovered by university researchers.

(If I understand correctly), since the spacetime manifold is a unchanging structure (although described as dynamic because of how it responds to the stress energy tensor), whatever CTC it has, must have already been laid in place in the future of the universe when it came to existence

That is, you cannot spontaneously have CTCs forming out of nowhere, else you are changing history

@secret Oh, hey if one can construct wormholes, mathematically, in our universe, what is stopping us from constructing worm-holes to other universes/world-lines assuming a mathematically consistent metric is used? I'm guessing some specific conditions must be in place?

@ACuriousMind The industry people didn't know what it was and just ignored it iirc

Well, problem 1

How do you construct a wormhole

Then years later it got actually discovered

7:20 PM

@BernardMeurer no I am not

It's even less trivial than it sounds

@BernardMeurer So the people trying to make money ignored the discovery because it didn't help them to make money? I'm not sure that supports your point :P

@Secret It's for an art project, I need newspapers from across the globe, thus the interest :)

@slereah A quick search led me to ellis' wormhole I'm not sure if it is possible, though.

I don't have much knowledge, if any, in topology&geometry yet.

That's just a solution, and a static one at that

7:22 PM

@ACuriousMind They didn't ignore the discovery, if I remember the story, it appeared in the form of an unexpected and unwanted pink smoke, which they didn't care to observe further

Constructing a wormhole where there was none before is no trivial matter

It is probably impossible

@ACuriousMind It doesn't really, I just feel like industry helps scientific development

all wormholes currently have issue in requiring an insane amount of negative energy to stablise them. Also many believed that if qunautm flucturations were taken account of, they will close quicker than you can transverse them

not because they're nice, but because they're interested

You can construct wormholes with arbitrarily little negative energy

7:23 PM

Is negative energy a thing?

Also wormholes don't collapse due to quantum fluctuations

You're thinking of CTCs

oops

@CuriousOne I didn't say that. But: If you have a new idea, would you publish it before you could produce experimental results from it?

These few months i am focusing too much on classical and quantum to think about the issues of transversible wormholes

I am guessing that that wormhole with arbitrary little negative energy is not a transversible one?

It can be traversible.

7:26 PM

@CuriousOne Would you disclose the details of your not yet published papers?

i'd be very interested in this discussion if there actually was a wormhole

if that's the case, what's stopping people to build them with current technology. Is it because it took a lot of energy to make them?

Well, as I said earlier

How do you make a wormhole

Negative energy isn't to make it, it's to stabilize it

@BalarkaSen That's what many physicists also say :P

First guess is that we need to concentrate a lot of energy momentum at some point in spacetime to distort it. But then I have no idea how to make it identified with some distinct point in spacetime

7:29 PM

That's the thing

You probably can't

Changing the topology of space is kind of problematic in GR

What was that one paper on mass changing the topology of spacetime called @slereah

it was the geometry of spacetime, actually, if that makes a difference.

@ACuriousMind I'd also be interested if some guy made a cool science fiction movie on them with all these hypothetical predictions.

I'm sure there have been people who have done this already :P @balarka

@BalarkaSen To me, science fiction is really not about the science

we have interstellar that make use of wormhole. However I don't remember what wormhole solution they are using

7:31 PM

@ACuriousMind Sure, sure, I am not identifying those two.

@BalarkaSen But if you want "accurate" science fiction, Greg Egan is probably the closest you'll get

@Secret Seen that.

Interstellar is trash

Greg Egan is pretty good tho

Although it's pretty obvious the story is just a vehicle for the physics

The story is pretty boring

Yeah, that's the problem

Working on the physics all the time leaves little time to put an interesting story into it

I read the Clockwork spaceship, and, to be fair

I'd rather read it as a physics paper

He hints at some intriguing solutions

7:35 PM

I think mine might be heading towards Greg Egan style
http://secretuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Negative_mass

I focused way to much on making the maths conform to the ideas so that they are all logically and mathematically consistent enough that people can talk about them interacting with each other and make predictions

(NB that is just settings, I have no idea how to write the story yet)

Like when I first read it

I was like "Hey, what about the Cauchy problem!"

"It would not work with that signature!"

But he totally discusses that later

Is Clockwork the one in Euclidean space?

yes

Still have to read that

I only read the first one

I think there's two sequels

7:39 PM

@ACuriousMind Interesting. Never heard of him.

Also on top of the euclidian signature the characters are a species with a weird biology

Sort of shapeshifting critters

@peterh Everybody could always look up what I was researching and where the government grants came from. I never made any effort to conceal that. I don't know what your model of science is...

Guys, would you be interested in this one? I'm inclined to migrate it to Physics.SE .

0

Q: Does a "capacitor" for light exist?

If I have a light that is flickering at a frequency low enough to be perceived by the human eye, is there any type of material that exists that will smooth out the appearance of flickering? Similar to how a capacitor smooths the output of a rectifier?

capacitance light charge light-sensor

@NickAlexeev EEEEEHM

9

Q: Does a "capacitor" for light exist?

If I have a light that is flickering at a frequency low enough to be perceived by the human eye, is there any type of material that exists that will smooth out the appearance of flickering? Similar to how a capacitor smooths the output of a rectifier?

optics visible-light

damn crossposters :P

7:47 PM

I knew I had seen that somewhere!

For example
@BalarkaSen @Slereah @Obliv
https://community.eveonline.com/backstory/scientific-articles/interstellar-traveling/

Section: 3 - The principles of jump gate technology

After learning some GR, the technobabble is not completely nonsense except:

1. Can gravitational waves form standing waves that are strong enough and do the nodes of said standing waves induce huge tidal force at that region?

2. Higgs field cannot interact directly with gravity (according to the standard model) (thus no mass boson sphere)

Greg Egan has the same problem as the stories of Asimov in that everyone accepts very tenuous threads of logics as solid theories

@NickAlexeev Why did you migrate it? I just showed you we already have that question here!

@ACuriousMind So you guys (or Physics.SE mods) can merge them and keep the insights in one convenient place.

Of course the Higgs field interacts directly with gravity

It's just a scalar field

7:51 PM

but @peterh said it has zero energy density in the present day of the universe

@ACuriousMind Could you post a flag so that the Physics.SE mods merge them? (I haven't got an account on Physics.SE, so I can't flag here.)

11 hours ago, by peterh

@Secret Matt Strassler denies any direct relation which corresponds that its energy density is actually zero.

He lies

Higgs field isn't at $0$

Otherwise there would be no symmetry breaking

ah ok then

@NickAlexeev I've VTC'd as duplicate. @DavidZ @dmckee @Qmechanic do we merge such things here? Perhaps also have a look at this blatant plagiarism while you're at it.

7:54 PM

@Slereah Its energy density is zero, not the Higgs field. If you wish I can dig out the original article for you.

I would be curious to see

Although

How can you find out $0$?

Isn't the energy density only defined up to renormalization

@Slereah I see its lagrangian: theory.sinp.msu.ru/comphep_old/tutorial/node106.html

So EVEOnline's technobable is basically saying the wormhole recipe is as follows:

1. Find binary systems because there are nodes in the standing waves of gravitational waves where the region of spacetime is subjected to high tidal forces

2. Use a boson condensate that interact with mass to focus gravitational radiation to the region

3. Pump energy in the form of electromagnetic waves into those nodes to cause a well to form

4. At some nearby node, repeat steps 1-2 to create another stressed region of spacetime

Maybe don't go to EVEOnline for physics

I know it is not physics, but I 'd like to know how exactly it falls apart

because it is the most convincing technbabble I have ever seen

8:00 PM

Oh, goddamn that user is another one of those plagiarizers

"The well should gravitate towards the other region"

It should not

There is no mechanism in GR for topology change

First other answer I look at, and its just copied without attribution from another site

The worst thing about these things is that one can't even go on a downvote spree because that's just serial voting and will get reversed.

Ah I see

@Slereah "Why the Higgs and Gravity are unrelated": profmattstrassler.com/2012/10/15/…

Well yes, that's kind of an obvious point

The Higgs field still contributes to the stress energy tensor, though

8:03 PM

@ACuriousMind There is a very significant difference between the MathSE and the Mathoverflow, and this results two well-going sites. This distinction doesn't exist in the case of the PSE.

@peterh I know. Why are you telling me this?

but wait a second, isn't a well formed by energy momentum distorting spacetime is basically act like a massive object, thus if you have two massive objects close to each other, then since GR need to reproduce newtonian gravity at the newtonian limit, then one massive object should causes the other one to orbit around it, no?

@ACuriousMind And it results that many on the site feels harassed, while a lot of big minds go away because of the lq of the site or are expelled by unneeded infights.

Not necessarily

But even then I don't see how that helps forming a wormhole

Well, I just added my first answer to a physics question. Can't wait for the downvotes :)

8:05 PM

@peterh Still not following you. What has that to do with me being angry at a user who posts answers that are just copy-pasted without attribution?

if they merge, then since they are distorted regions of spacetime, surely at the bottom of the wells they need to unravel and thus open into a tube like topology?

@ACuriousMind No, in this case I agree with you.

simialr to how two vortices in water can become connected when they met

Why would they merge

@ACuriousMind But in other, similar cases, I can't.

8:06 PM

something like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnbJEg9r1o8

Spacetime isn't water

@ACuriousMind The source of the problem is that the SE seems to completely ignore the whole problem. The only reason why the MO can exist that they have a contract with the SE Inc.

spacetime, being described by a rank 4 tensor, should be much more flexible than a fluid (described by only a rank 2 tensor) because of the many more ways to distort it?

what

@peterh I'm not sure what you're talking about. What "similar cases"?

8:07 PM

also you're confusing the geometry and the topology

@ACuriousMind Where you are admittedly the "bad guy"

there is no reason that a deformation in the geometry would lead to a change of topology

@ACuriousMind This behavior would be OK on a MO, but it isn't on the MathSE.

@peterh What?

@Secret : I'm sorry secret, but gravity just isn't like that. There are no wells or tubes. A gravitational field is modelled via the stress-energy tensor. Stress is directional pressure. A gravitational field is something like this picture, but pushing out instead of pressing in.

user image

8:09 PM

I'd say you've lost me, but I had no idea what you were talking about from the start

@DavidZ, at Emilio Pisanty's suggestion, I posted a feature request on the mother meta here...would you mind telling me what you think, as you had to go in our earlier conversation?

how exactly do the mouths of the einstein rosen wormhole connect. Do they already somehow have the tube like topology when the pair of mouths form?

Einstein Rosen is a static solution

@JohnDuffield That's a nice picture, do you have it in higher res?

They do not connect

They have always been

8:11 PM

@ACuriousMind "Alright, everyone, I'm the bad guy" meta.physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6754/…

ok, (blame pop sci magazines drawing misleading pictures)

If you want to look at a change of spatial topology, look at the pants spacetime

@ACuriousMind The problem, that the PSE seems incapable to clearly decide between a MO or MathSE-like direction, causes many harm.

o wait, nevermind

@peterh Well, I'm pretty certain that I don't want this to turn into math.SE. And there was the experiment with theoreticalphysics.SE and it failed. So this is the only site we get. (Apart from PhysicsOverflow, that is)

Still not exactly sure what your point is. You don't like that I downvote questions that are lazy, obvious homework, or just plainly make no sense?

8:15 PM

@ACuriousMind, I recall that earlier while DavidZ and I were conversing you didn't like the idea of another queue (the one I suggested was for all comment flags). What is the problem with this? It seems that there are people who do work through these queues, and it would take some of the load off moderators.

@slereah
Ok, what is the proposed mechanism provided that allows the tubes of the pants to split or fuse at some time coordinate? or is it "born that way" because GR have no mechanism for spatial topology change?

@ACuriousMind You, on my opinion, with your mind, waste your time as you are close&destructing otherways not so bad posts only because they don't look professional. And, I wouldn't disagree a MO-like direction, what I disagree is the current status quo: theretically there is no skill limit, i.e. any trivial/naive question can be posted, but practically there is.

No mechanism, the spacetime is kind of artificially constructed that way

I see

@BernardMeurer : Not personally. It's by Christopher Vitale of the Pratt Institute. Ethan Siegel used it on his blog here. That version is 800 x 768.

8:18 PM

What's going on today, everyone is complaining

@heather We have currently barely enough people reviewing to clear the close queue in a reasonable time. I certainly don't have the energy to sift through another queue where I'm confronted with the worst posts the site has to offer.

@peterh My criterion for posts is not that they "look professional", it's that they make sense and show some research effort.

@ACuriousMind I think you are in a crusade for a MO-like direction of the site.

@JohnDuffield Nice, thanks! I found a large one here

@ACuriousMind, but wouldn't this literally just be copy and paste into the answer box? Then the system does the rest of the work.

[Warning, heavy speculation, PS it's 6:19 here, I am going to sleep, talk soon]
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/05/05/does-spacetime-emerge-from-quantum-information/

If Caroll is right and that spacetime is from entanglement, that might provide us a mechanism to change the topology (by changing the configuration of the entangled system that give rise to some topology of the spacetime)

Otherwise we are likely not having any wormholes

8:19 PM

Reviews should give rep

@Secret SO YOU ARE IN AUSTRALIA

@ACuriousMind No. Even your edit review stat is probably unique in the SE. You simply reject an edit fixing the latex markup, because you don't admit this change as an improvement.

@ACuriousMind The mobs are coming for you lol

@BernardMeurer smh.com.au newspaper example

otherwise sleep guys

@BernardMeurer : he is. And so is my uncle Bernard. Noted re the big picture.

@peterh I think MO/math.SE is a false dichotomy (this site can allow questions of all level without becoming the swamp of boring and trivial questions that is math.SE), and if you think I'm on a "crusade" then I don't think continuing this conversation has a point.

@heather Doing a close review is also just clicking a few buttons, no? Also, if you're still thinking about posting the comments as community wiki answers, I had another objection to that

8:22 PM

@Bernard No, I wouldn't do this on this way. I am only curious, why he does this and try to find a support for a MO-MathSE like split.

6 hours ago, by ACuriousMind

@heather If we do that, the users who maliciously post those answers in comments to evade the reputation and face loss that would occur when their answer is downvoted have successfully evaded those losses. We should never post wrong answers as community wiki, imo.

@ACuriousMind, yes, that makes sense...what was your other objection?

@Secret : he isn't. A single photon has a non-zero inertial mass, which is the same as its active gravitational mass. So it has a gravitational field. And it isn't entangled with anything.

@peterh I was just saying because today everyone is giving ACM trouble :P

6 hours ago, by ACuriousMind

In particular because community wikis are supposed to be collaborative resources, not collections of useless and wrong stuff.

8:23 PM

@ACuriousMind You're unethical and you're just trying to hurt my feelings

@ACuriousMind, okay, well as I said earlier, is there a way to transfer an answer to a particular user's account?

@peterh I'm well aware that I'm probably a more critical edit reviewer than most. I don't consider enclosing something like mM/r^2 in LaTex brackets as a worthwhile edit, no. If the equation had been difficult to read before, I approve edits adding LaTeX.

OK chaps, I have to go. Chapter 4 is calling me.

@ACuriousMind, also, I think most comment-answers are not in any way malicious (basically all of the ones I've seen are correct answers by people who didn't have the time to put them in the answer box).

@heather I don't think so. And in any case, I think it would not be good to force authorship of answers onto users. Posting an answer - for which you can earn rep as well as lose rep - should remain fully under the control of the users

8:26 PM

@ACuriousMind, they posted it as a comment...they put it out there, just in the wrong spot.

So, we should put it in the right spot.

@heather Oh, I agree, most are not malicious. But, for instance, I sometimes post such comments precisely because I don't want to gain 1130 rep for a one-liner again.

That's just ridiculous, and I feel it devalues my reputation altogether.

@ACuriousMind This problem can't be solved on a way that you try to exterminate everybody below phd level. Actually, this behavior from your side and from others, leaded only to the reduction of the HQ population until now.

So I would be absolutely furious if you turned a comment of mine into an answer against my will

@ACuriousMind Noted

$$\text{NO MORE EXAMS THIS YEAR}$$

8:28 PM

Which is why I suggested nuking answers in comments altogether as soon as they are flagged. I'm fine with my comment begin deleted - that's what happens to comments usually after some time anyway - but I'm not fine with it being turned into an answer that belongs to me.

pfft

@ACuriousMind, geesh. Still, I think that while that amount of rep was ridiculous and I can sympathize, I think that the logic involved here should be as follows: 1. It's against the purpose of SE to post an answer (no matter how small) as a comment. 2. Answers that are posted as comments should be moved to an answer, therefore, because they were put out there.

Otherwise, we are back to community meta again

@heather Meh, I disagree. I don't think it should be forbidden to give e.g. partial answers in the comments.

@peterh I don't try to "exterminate everybody below PhD level". This conversation is over, I don't talk to people who think they know my motivations better than myself.

3

@heather hey :) nice to see you in the chat and again, thank you a lot for your support concerning my question about Lie derivatives :)

8:30 PM

So many people I haven't seen here!

@ACuriousMind My goal with this conversation is to know your motivations, because I wouldn't close out supporting your goal.

@Danu Maybe read up on the meta thread first ;)

Are you guys all new? Or am I old?

@Danu, I am saying this because of this meta post

@Danu both

8:31 PM

@Danu wanna hug? :)

0

Q: Add "is your question on-topic" page for new users?

I was looking around on the mother meta, and I saw this interesting post. The second answer mentions this page on stack overflow for new users, where they must check the box at the bottom to confirm before asking their question. I know that there have been a lot of discussions on this meta about ...

discussion feature-request homework

@ACuriousMind The mathoverflow works well, and there are even big names on that site. While the MathSE works also very well, being one of the best going sites of the SE network.

@Sanya, no problem, I wish it had gotten an answer

@Sanya Ehh?

@Danu Please hug me

8:32 PM

Okay, I'm somewhat new to chat, why did that meta question pop up...??

@Danu Yes, they are all new

"Physics Meta" posts all new questions on meta @heather

Automatically

Today there has been a stream of new peeps

@heather I'm doubting there is one to be honest ... at least not a strict proof of the sort I'm looking for, I've spent about half a year reading on this and similar topics

@Danu, ah, thanks

8:32 PM

Because people in this chat are the ones that care about Physics Meta

@Danu ;P

@Sanya, I'll take your word for it =)

@peterh But the Math. SE is shit ;)

@Danu I like Math.SE they answer all my dumb questions

and I can't understand a word of what they say in MO

MSE is just flooded with shit

because of the lack of standards

8:34 PM

They need their own ACM

@heather I agree with 1. if we're bieng strict about policy (which we should be in this discussion), but I don't agree with 2.. If someone else thinks the comment makes an answer, they're free to post it as an answer, but I don't think we should make it policy that all such comments must be turned into answers.

@Danu Yes, but it is tolerable to me. And the current physSE isn't much better, despite the significant level of bullying.

Who will downvote people into oblivion

@peterh PSE is best SE

@peterh I disagree

@ACuriousMind, the problem with nuking all of them is perfectly good answers that could've helped people are deleted!

And it seems there isn't going to be down votes on comments anytime soon (according to dmckee) so...

8:36 PM

@Bernard Unfortunately, good old names here expelled from the site had probably a different opinion, if they would ever visit this chat.

if an answer is short enough for a comment, the question was probably not fit for SE in the first place

@BernardMeurer Which is why I said it's a false dichotomy. One doesn't need to go MO style to not become math.SE. I'd say physics.SE has actually managed to tread that middle ground somewhat well so far, besides the constant meta debates and some bad bouts of drama

@peterh Who are you talking about, exactly?

@Danu Not "who", "what".

@ACuriousMind I totally agree with you, I do think PSE is best SE

8:37 PM

@Sanya, not necessarily...see ACuriousMind's one-line wonder =)

@peterh No, you're alluding to "good old names". Give me some examples!

Code Review is nice too, but it's a very different concept

@heather Well, but look at it like this: Who's going to flag a helpful comment-answer as not constructive?

@Sanya, also, I have seen good, succinct answers that fit into comments.

I'm saying delete them if they're flagged, not "go around and flag all those pseudo-answers"

8:39 PM

@heather that example is SO well known that even my retarded physics teacher in high school who was unable to do any calculation knew it ... I don't think you'll have a hard time finding that with a bit of research

@ACuriousMind, that's why I was suggesting a "answer-comment" flag

@Danu I don't think you would really need a detailed description from me about the infights of the past.

No, I do, really. Could you tell me some names?

It's like with jokes in comments - strictly speaking, they shouldn't be there, but usually they are benign and funny so no one flags them and no one deletes them

...because I don't think anyone "significant" left during my time on PSE

8:40 PM

@ACuriousMind, the other thing is then if you only delete the ones that are flagged, some slip through the cracks, etc. Which I guess you could say is true of mine, but I think it's a tad less arbitrary.

Kyle Kanos, maybe, but that was completely unrelated to this discussion

@Danu How dare you insult KyleKanos like that! :D

(I'm still hoping he'll return :D)

RIP Kyle

@ACuriousMind Too slow

8:40 PM

He was very nice

@Danu Yeah, damn it

@Danu No, because I don't think that I want to talk about the insignificant details of induvidual cases.

@Sanya, there are others, I was giving that example because it was easily linkable.

@peterh Okay, then I'll assume you don't actually have any examples, hence your point is... not a point.

Also, nice question here (+1!)

@heather and I was being sarcastic ;) still, most good answers will take a bit of space if the question does not seriously lack research effort or thinking

8:42 PM

4-color theorem is nice.

@heather Well, what does "slip through the cracks" mean here? I mean, if no one flags them because they are constructive, then they haven't "slipped through the cracks", they're just not deletion-worthy

@Danu No. Instead of raising old conflicts, I want to talk about the possibility of a MathSE-MO like split.

But the 2-color theorem is even more nice.

@peterh Meh, I don't see the need. Besides, it has been tried, and it failed.

The initial problem was how to get rid of incorrect comment answers. Those will be flagged and deleted. Since determining correctness is not currently a moderator's (or a review queue's job) I suggested that we just delete all comment-answers that are flagged.

The only possible counter-argument I see is that some trolls go around and flag all the helpful comment-answers :P

8:44 PM

@ACuriousMind I still don't understand why we can't simply flag them as being unconstructive, though :<

@ACuriousMind, what I mean is that whether a comment-answer appears bad or not depends on the user who flags. Everyone (okay, mostly everyone) can agree on whether or not an comment is an answer or not. Not everyone can agree on whether or not said comment-answer is bad, especially w/o downvotes. That's why you put it into answers, where the voting system takes over.

@Sanya Well, that's essentially what I want - flag them as not constructive, then delete them. But @heather wants to preserve the helpful ones, and so doesn't want the flag to lead to deletion

@Danu Because they committed some mistake. The MO people didn't commit it. ACuriousMind and many others seem to me as if they would follow a crusade into a MO-like direction. I would be glad to support them, but only on clear rules.

I think you have huge misconceptions about the intentions of the users here.

@ACuriousMind, basically, yeah. Why have comments that could've been helpful deleted?

8:46 PM

@Danu This is why I asked them.

@heather Because your suggestion offers the crackpots a way to get their views into answers without having to stand for them.

@ACuriousMind I don't need to delete all of them, flagging still has a review queue, doesn't it? But I'm just stating that the review should be able to decide whether this is halfway constructive or not and act accordingly, nah?

@Sanya Comment flags don't have a review queue, it's just a mod looking at them and deciding whether to delete or not.

@Sanya, but that is arbitrary, depending on whether one person thinks they are good or not.

@Danu Unfortunately, it seems it wasn't well received.

8:48 PM

And whether review queue should decide on correctness is another ongoing discussion, too, cf. this meta thread

@ACuriousMind, very few people are trolling. The main point is to show that the answer is wrong! A secondary problem is the user.

Though I'd agree that is a problem.

@ACuriousMind I'm aware of the second issue, but being constructive or not is not about being correct ...

@heather but as comments don't have any "protection" status, I'm quite fine with it being just up to one person - which I would not like for answers, which have a higher status

@heather Hm, I'd rather say the main point is to get people to stop thinking they can post answers in comments and expect they will stay.

@Sanya, we are discussing comment-answers! If an answer is posted as a comment, it should be treated as an answer.

@ACuriousMind, and this also does that by moving them to an answer.

@ACuriousMind If you would make your deeds more openly, on more clear rules, you would find much more support.

8:52 PM

@heather No. They can just keep posting the comment-answers in the knowledge that someone else will bother turning that into an answer

It does nothing to curb the behaviour

@heather if something is posted as a comment, I'm not prepared to recognise it as an answer which is worthy of being protected from one-person decisions, sorry - if they wanted it to be an answer which they worked hard on, they should just post it as an answer

@Sanya, what about helpful comment-answers?

@ACuriousMind, that is an interesting thing to think about...my initial response would be, if the answer ends up downvoted, maybe you could route some sort of negative feedback to the user...I'll have to think about it.

Is there any way to transfer rep loss? I know that you said earlier you didn't know how to post an answer under a specific username...

@heather they are collateral damage (if someone finds them unconstructive or flag-worthy and then a mod finds them delete-worthy, the damage is probably not that great in any case), but I'm quite fine with that - I want good answers and not helpful comments if I'm stumbling upon a thread

@ACuriousMind bash.org/?835030

I thought you'd like this, not sure why

@Sanya, is that collateral damage worth it? I don't think so...I've seen some helpful comment-answers I definitely wouldn't want deleted.

8:57 PM

@heather Then we're back to my objection that we shouldn't force reputation changes on users for posting a comment which is reputation-neutral by design.

@BernardMeurer I exhaled air at a higher than average rate through my nose.

@ACuriousMind I feel special

@ACuriousMind, It would just be for negative feedback, I suppose. I'm afraid I have to go. Thank you for discussing this...you have made me think about my idea.

@heather but we're still talking about the fact that at least two people, one of them being a (hopefully) trustworthy mod, need to take offense first - not about some automatic deletion process for all comment-answers

see you around heather :)

@heather Okay, goodbye

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