I think Nike Dattani's edit makes it to broad and unclear. There are countlessly many ways closed carbon structrues can fix together. That requires far more research to answer. I think it's better to narrow it down to a specific problem just about buckinsterfullerene. It's my job, not the job of the researchers to figure out what my question is and how to use its answer. I rolled it back. The titled was changed to "How ductile are fullerenes?"

Welcome to the site! Are you interested in determining computationally how ductile buckminsterfullerene is or are you looking for an existing experimental/computational reference? If it's the latter, the question may be a better fit on Chem SE. This site is really geared towards answering modeling methods questions rather than questions about the physical/chemical properties of a given substance.

@Tyberius I'm hoping to get an answer from a person who is an expert at using quantum mechanics to predict physical properties of materials. I guess it will suffice for somebody to do a ductility test on buckminsterfullerene and report their observation in an answer to this question as long as the answer is written in a way that's easy enough for me to follow. I hardly know anything about quantum mechanics or material science. It would be great if we could change the system and get a lot of quantum mechanics experts answering questions on Physics, Chemistry, and Matter Modelling Stack

Exchange. Chemistry Stack Exchange will use people who specialize in using quantum mechanics to predict chemistry and Matter Modelling Stack Exchange will use people who specialize in using quantum mechanics to predict physical properties of materials and maybe also come up with materials satisfying the desired properties somebody asks about.

That seems like a fairly big project, the sort of thing that would require a research paper to look at rather than just a forum question. Basically, I think this is too big an ask to fit well on the site. If you can rephrase the question as more of "how can I model the ductility of buckminsterfullerene quantum mechanically", some one may be able to give you the resources to get you started. If you are essentially looking for a collaborator for a project, I don't think that's a good fit for a question here, however you could ask around in char or the site Facebook group.

Thank you for joining out site, and welcome! We hope to see much more of you here. "It's my job, not the job of the researchers to figure out what my question is and how to use its answer" -> As the person who created this site proposal and the only person that spent 9 months nearly full-time, working on meeting the requirements to have this site approved, and has put in the largest number of hours on the site since it went live, it matters to me that every user's questions (such as this one) get the best attention possible, so that good answers come fast. I'm the only one that upvoted [cot'd]

this question, & if you stick around you'll see that I spend huge numbers of hours trying to help people's questions get answered, in whatever way possible (re-tagging, changing titles, even editing the whole question sometimes). Most people here won't fight to get your question answered the way that I do. It might be your job to figure out what the initial question is, but it's the community's job to help you get it answered. In my experience, people don't use the word buckministerfullerene, they call it C60 or buckyballs.I thought "fullerenes" would make it more catchy. The Q's body is clear

@NikeDattani I see that you want to improve the site. One problem I struggle with is questions getting closed or deleted. When they won't answer my question because it's too unclear, I don't get the experience of seeing which ways of asking questions get me which answers. The best way to learn how to ask a question that will get me a good answer is through self driven motivation by seeing which ways of asking questions get me which answers. It may be worth making this site in such a way that

everyone has only 1 point the moment they join the community and every 30 days, they gain a point until it goes up to a maximum of 5 and every time they ask a question, they lose a point. They can ask any type of question at all including a very unclear broad question. Then people will have more time to spend on each question and devote more attention to each question. Also, that will force people to take time to ponder questions on their own. It's like what high school did of making people turn

@Timothy I'm not going to say that your idea of changing the point system and how the site works is bad, but Stack Exchange is a 12-year old community that has more than 13 million users (there's more than 13 million on StackOverflow alone, and many on other sites too). The SE company is reluctant to make even the smallest changes, such as allowing us to change the size of the question we have on our tour page, or allowing moderators to cast regular close votes (right now only non-moderators

can cast regular close votes). If you have suggestions for how to change the site, you can post them on Meta Stack Exchange. The users of Matter Modeling SE do not have any power or say over how the company operates and how the site looks and works.

Maybe the best way for you to learn how to ask questions is from self-driven motivation, but we also don't want questions lying around the site for too long without getting answered, because then our unanswered queue gets long, and when new users come and want to earn some reputation in order to comment or upvote, they look at the unanswered questions list and see a list that might be full of too many unanswerable questions, and it might drive them away. So the site also can't be considered a

sandbox where new users can freely experiment without ever having their questions edited. The high-rep users of the site that have the power to edit, have earned the right to edit posts if it's for the greater good of the community, even if it takes a little bit away from a new user's opportunity to experiment with how different types of questions attract good answers.

Maybe we could create a whole other competing website functioning like Stack Exchange that does things that way. Then different ways of doing things will be tried out. It may end up working really well. I guess some people will suit using one and some people will suit using the other. I might ask another question here soon. I have it in my mind. It's too tempting because the choice is there. However, if the choice weren't there, I could manage with it.

If a high-rep user is caught doing too many "un-necessary" edits, they can also be flagged by their peers and eventually they may be disciplined for over-doing it.

@Timothy There's competing Q/A sites out there, have you ever looked at PhysicsOverflow? It is not part of the StackExchange network. It's not easy to compete with Stack Exchange though, since there's 13 million users on this network, and there's 12 years of web development. The StackExchnage web security team has made our password's save from hackers (we'd need to hire top-experts in web security to ensure our user's are protected, if we made our own site). and the development team is

constantly keeping the code up to date for the newest browsers, operating systems, and HTML versions. PhysicsOverflow is messed up in the smartphone version, so for it to work properly you need to use the desktop version. StackExchange has enough millions of dollars that they've hired enough engineers to keep the code up to date. Your idea of starting a competing system is not a bad one, but it will not be easy.

@NikeDattani Why not just deduct a small bit of reputation each time they do that. Then when there go below the reputation that gives them those priviledges, they won't have them anymore. That will physically limit the ration of the rate of bad contributions to the rate of good contributions.

@Timothy We do not have access to the StackExchange HTML code. We cannot make those changes. To make those changes, you have to suggest them on Meta Stack Exchange (another website, you can easily find) and the suggestion has to be approved, then someone from the development team implements it.

@NikeDattani After you told me about Physics Overflow, I looked it up and found that the Physics Overflow website didn't have a tour and worried that it cast too much burden of responsibility on the users especially newbies like me who don't have that research experience. I also saw that there was a question about it at physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6196/… on the Physics Meta website so I asked one on the Physics Meta

website as well at physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12995/… then it got closed. Do you know why it got closed?

@Timothy I'm not active enough on Physics.SE to know why it was closed, but I suspect that they do not entertain questions about Physics Overflow other than that first one that you saw. To ask how PhysicsOverflow works, you might have to ask on PhysicsOverflow (if they have a meta.... I think they do).