2016 Physics Stack Exchange Election

John Rennie

11:19

Since Alfred doesn't seem wildly enthusiastic I guess this now comes down to deciding which of ACM, tgp or Jim we want to bin off. @Jim you seemed unsure at first. Are you still committed to doing the moderator's role?

Jim

12:31

@JohnRennie I will commit fully and do the best damn job I can at being a mod if that's what the community decides. I've never been one to desire authority, though. So if the community feels the other two will do a better job than me, I won't feel upset at not getting the position

@Alenanno Yes, acting like they rule everything is not desirable in a mod. I, on the other hand, do rule everything. So it should be fine coming from me

user116211

I want @Jim and @ACM to make Phys.SE great again!!

Jim

@MAFIA36790 Oi, secret ballot

John Rennie

13:36

@Jim Cool! I expected nothing less :-)

Jim

@JohnRennie thanks! It always brightens my day to hear that someone expects me to be the person I am and that I meet that expectation

It also always brightens my day to wear a particularly good pair of socks

John Rennie

This is now genuinely tough as I want all three of the people I mentioned to be a moderator. I don't suppose we could persuade the SE to let us have three more mods ... :-)

Alenanno

@Jim As an Italian I cannot forgive you pretending to be a true Roman Emperor. :P

ACuriousMind

@JohnRennie Do you realize that you will be voting for a 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice?

The voting system used is Meek STV

Jim

@Alenanno Who says I'm pretending?

Alenanno

13:49

@Jim Me, of course.

Jim

Plus, I'm a Roman Jimperor. The Jimpire was much better than the Empire

John Rennie

@ACuriousMind I want all three of you though!

Jim

@JohnRennie As a candidate, it would be unethical of me to suggest who to choose. But as a Jim, I'd say if I wasn't selected, I'd still be around doing what I normally do (hint hint)

ACuriousMind

@Jim Making bad puns and sticking things to magnets that don't belong there?

Okay, maybe some of your puns are good ;)

Jim

@ACuriousMind Maybe all my puns are good

HDE 226868

14:43

Physics mods: This question's about private information, so you don't have to answer it, but how severe was the increase in traffic/workload that you decided to ask for two more mods? I ask because we've been feeling a bit overwhelmed on Worldbuilding, as we've set new site-wide traffic records, and we recently started considering asking for a fifth mod. I was wondering if our increase is at all comparable to yours.

user128101

14:54

@barrycarter, have you dropped out of the race? why?

Jim

Ineligible nominations

Discussion about the removal of moderator nominations relevant...

user128101

@Jim, thanks Jim, isn't that a shame? I'm your greatest fan, but your (and ACM) election will not have much democratic sense

user128101

and how come SE messages are starred and users' can't?

user128101

John Duffield too?

tpg2114

@vzn Hey vzn! It's been awhile! We can certainly talk about doing the guest speaker thing, but I didn't think there would be much interest in having me do it since my focus is all computational/numerical fluids, and that's among the smallest set of users on the site :)

@JohnRennie I'm glad that you think we would all be well-suited for it! My feelings won't be hurt if I don't win, it's not going to send me into a tailspin or anything.

John Rennie

15:10

@tpg2114 I will be delighted with any combination of the three of you :-) Now that the nominations have been trimmed to discard the cruft I am looking forward to the election.

I should mention that I have no criticism of @AlfredCentauri, it's just that he seems a bit less committed and i suspect anyone prepared to stand as a moderator urgently needs to be committed :-)

barrycarter

@user104372 I think three candidates removed involuntarily and one withdrew voluntarily.

3

user128101

15:25

@barrycarter, who is the "cruft" that removed itself 'voluntarily?

tpg2114

I do hope there are more who do stand for it. More competition never hurts anybody

user128101

@tpg2114, yeah, at least save some faces!

user128101

else it looks like SU, instead of SE

user128101

@JohnDuffield, are you the cruft that trimmed itself voluntarily?

barrycarter

@user104372 Not sure. I just heard it in chat and I believe everything I hear in chat :)

John Rennie

15:29

@user104372 knzhou withdrew voluntarily.

ACuriousMind

17 hours ago, by knzhou

The average candidate quality went up, so I withdrew. I'll re-nominate if it goes down again.

user128101

@JohnRennie, what was wrong with "cruft" JohnDuffield?

user128101

@ACuriousMind, you asked me to be more specific, I obliged on META , I am waiting for your response

John Rennie

@user104372 Have you made any attempt to research the backgrounds of the candidates?

user128101

How could I ever?

John Rennie

15:33

@user104372 Google them for example? I mean, come on, let's take this seriously.

user128101

@JohnRennie, what background you are referring to? I read his questions, his answers, his bounties ,his reviews , his platform. Seems better pedigree than your protegeé's

John Rennie

You could have done this Google search

And perhaps you would still feel he is an ideal candidate to represent the physics community. Or perhaps not.

ACuriousMind

@user104372 If you refer to this comment, I'm not sure what kind of response you're looking for. Implying that I'm less intelligent than you or LubosMotl is not an argument, and that he answered your question with some generalities how a system with two components that both have spin would work doesn't mean it makes any more sense to ask whether an electron could have "two spins".

Also, what you were asked to be more specific about is what you fear would happen with me as a moderator, since you claimed it would be a "disaster". That you carry a grudge against me because I was one of five close voters who closed your question doesn't seem to me like a very objective argument.

user128101

@ACuriousMind, I overestimated your intelligence, then. You ought simply explain how that proposition can possibly be unclear

user128101

No drudge

John Rennie

15:40

> I overestimated your intelligence

Good to see rational argument prevail

ACuriousMind

@user104372 1. Please refrain from insulting me. 2. "Spin" is by definition a property an elementary particle has. Asking whether an electron has "two spins" is like asking whether it has "two masses". One could give an analogous answer to the one Lubos gave about systems consisting of two masses , but that doesn't make the question itself any more meaningful.

user128101

@ACuriousMind, @JohnRennie. If I were pissed I would have protested at Meta. That fact just shows your lack of rational judgement, your arrogance and conceit. Because you might have a right to a personal opinion that is a stupid or insane question, but not unclear

barrycarter

I think the concern here is that it's the "same 5 people" (or very small group of people) who close questions

HDE 226868

cough cough Mod in room cough cough

Cut the insults, please.

user128101

@ACuriousMind, you are confirming what I said, you think and you may think it is a stupid question,but no one can possibly say it is unclear, do you eventually get it?

user128101

15:45

And there are no insults, just rational logic deductions

user128101

and if Motl deigned to answer, that makes him less competent and intelligent than you are

John Rennie

you referred to:
> your arrogance and conceit
how is that a rational logical deduction?

ACuriousMind

@user104372 No, I don't get what you are on about. I think that "Can an electron have two spins?" is a meaningless question since the very definition of "spin" associates one spin to each elementary particle. That's why it's unclear.

barrycarter

@user104372 Are you running for moderator, BTW?

user128101

@JohnRennie, John, I hope you agree on the hidden premise that Prof Motl is worth a zillion of ACM (well, at least a couple) now if Motl understand a qtestion, does not criticize it, answers it, any student or schoolboy that closes that question after 2 days is obviously conceited and thinks he is smarter than Motl. Do you get it? Now do you think the question is unclear? Try to be unbiassed, or just stupid, likeme?

user128101

15:51

@barrycarter, no way, I 'll probably leave this site, I am too ignorant for it.

barrycarter

@user104372 I suggest you run on a "less aggressive moderation" platform. We could use people like you, in my opinion.

user128101

@ACuriousMind,you are repeatedly confirming my thesis: " "Can an electron have two spins?" is a meaningless ...", that is your personal opinion, maybe wrong, but you are definitely wrong do define it "unclear" Do you understand now why you would be a disaster as a mod?

John Rennie

Motl answered your question with:
>The real-world electron has one spin, i.e. the triplet/vector of observables S⃗ S→. A particle could have "two spins" but no elementary particle does, pretty much by definition.
So his answer was **no**.
He went on to use your question as an excuse to talk about interesting things to do with spin. I have written this sort of answer myself so I generally approve of that strategy if I feel the answer can be interesting to the wider community. However the fact remains that Motl's answer to your question is simply **no**.

user128101

@JohnRennie, so what John, where is your logic? In How many answer you reply NO? But you do not close them as unclear! That is wrong and deplorable on all respects

ACuriousMind

A meaningless question is unclear because it is not clear what a "correct" answer to it might be. That's how the unclear close reason is widely used; it's not only for gibberish where it's impossible to tell what the question is, but also for questions that lack details or proper definition of terms used to be answerable. I don't understand what your problem with that is.

user128101

15:59

@ACuriousMind,I already told you in another occasion that your tricks, verbal quibbles, fallacies and little games don't work with me! Cut that out!

ACuriousMind

What?

user128101

@ACuriousMind, that's enough, ping Motl and give him a piece of your mind!

ACuriousMind

I have no idea what you're talking about, and I never said that Lubos did anything wrong here.

John Duffield

16:13

@user104372 : you need to ignore the sort of people who will badmouth somebody, then try to present badmouthing as some kind of evidence. What matters is the quality of the physics, and the supporting references. Do not be distracted from that.

user128101

@JohnRennie Just to conclude our argument, John: I knew I would not get a proper answer, because my question was complete and the second part asked :"what would happen if...?". I knew nobody can answer that, because physicists know nothing of the first spin, in the first place. Anyway I throw the stone in the pond and ...see if there is any ripple. Closing a question on a lame pretext after it has proved itself clear enough it is a shame. I imagine you do not support me, and I regret it

John Duffield

@user104372 : the electron has two aspects to its spin in that a Dirac spinor is a bispinor: "In quantum field theory, the Dirac spinor is the bispinor in the plane-wave solution $\psi =\omega _{\vec {p}}\;e^{-ipx}\$". However this isn't the place to talk about it.

barrycarter

16:30

@user104372 May I suggest that you are focusing too much on the specific question and not enough on the larger issue here. Run for election to fix the larger issue.

Jim

17:01

I'm just back from lunch break and am having trouble following the course of this.... argument, I guess that's what I'd call it. Can one party from each side try to summarize their points?

ACuriousMind

17:22

@Jim Not sure I had a point. Yesterday @user104372 said in the other chat it would be a "disaster" if I was elected moderator. When asked to be more specific, they left the message that started this exchange. I was both trying to understand what their general problem was and to explain why I closed that specific question of theirs.

Jim

@ACuriousMind Sounds like I'd need to hear from @user104372 to get a broader picture. Because from my perspective, this was like walking into a bar fight.

I thought "this isn't even the main chat where at least we can have hbar fights"

David Z

18:20

@HDE226868 I dunno, we just felt like it might be useful to have more mods, and then we forgot about it, and then a few months later we came back to it and still thought it be useful to have more mods. There wasn't any quantitative analysis involved.

It's not so much about us not being able to handle the workload as it is about wanting to have coverage when a few of us are traveling or on low-duty for any reason.

HDE 226868

@DavidZ Ah, I see. I suppose that's our issue, too. And the fewer mods there are, the harder it is when someone's unavailable or only partially available.

peterh

21:54

@ACuriousMind Yes, it would be a disaster. Note, everything can be fixed. I don't believe in lifelong hates. I think, if you had worked some months like somebody wanting a better site and not a diamond, it would be believable, that you can change if you really want. But not this has happened, your "ignore culture" what has happened, with many days where you voted for close 20 times in short periods.

ACuriousMind

22:21

I'm not playing a game, and I'm not "harassing" anyone. Closing questions unfairly would certainly be very bad, but obviously I don't believe that I'm doing that. I'm voting to close questions because they aren't a good fit for the site - homework problems, poorly formulated questions where it's unclear what actual answer is being sought, questions more suited to a discussion forum, etc.

I don't close questions on my own, every closure requires the consent of five >3k users. That most questions I vote to close end up closed shows that my line of thought is in line with that of most other people making active use of their close and reopen votes.

If you dislike the way this community works, that is your prerogative, but please stop acting as if I'm somehow the singular source of the problems you perceive, and please stop those strange moralizing accusations implying I should seek penance for using my privileges the way they were intended to be used.

Ineligible nominations

Transcript for

2016 Physics Stack Exchange Election