I've temporarily deleted my answer here to stop a comment war: physics.stackexchange.com/a/146022/9887 Would a moderator be so kind as to move the entire comment thread to chat? I'll undelete my answer once that's done. Is there a way to disable comments on individual answers?
@AlfredCentauri there is, we can lock an answer, although that also prevents voting on it or editing it and is used only in very rare cases. In any case the problem here is not just the fact that comments are allowed, it's the specific comments that certain people choose to make
Why are questions like "Why does objects with zero acceleraton move?" downvoted?
To me it seems like a person genuinely wanting to understand a physical concept and coming here for help. It just bothers me that apparently people have decided not to help those people.
I've seen remarks on meta l...
I'm really not sure why there is so much bile* in the current rejection reason:
No improvement whatsoever
The edit fails to make the post even a little bit easier to read, easier to find, more accurate or more accessible. Changes are either completely superfluous or actively harm readabi...
My proposal:
Does not improve the post
This edit does not make the post easier to read, easier to find, more accurate or more accessible. Changes are either superfluous or actively harm readability.
I know in QM, the density of states in function E, is given by sum of delta functions (E-En). Which means that if we know the energy eigenvalues of a system then we can immediately write down its density of states. My question is: is the inverse as easy? i.e. if we know the expression of density of states of a system, can we easily obtain the energy eigenvalues of that system? (is it just given by the derivative of density of states with respect to E?)
We'll be changing "fails" to "does not" - I agree that was unnecessarily harsh. "Whatsoever", "even a little bit", and "completely" are intentional though: if you're rejecting edits that make posts a little bit easier to read, find, accurate or accessible (and hence are not completely superfluous) then you should probably ask yourself why - and then not use this rejection reason. — Shog9 ♦35 mins ago
@ACuriousMind simple: the fact that it's even an issue demonstrates the need for those intensifiers.
Keep in mind, too, that on a smaller site one needs to weigh the value of the edit versus the annoyance of its bumping the post up the front page. It is then somewhat a subjective judgement, and it can mean rightful rejection as 'too minor' of edits which do contain some marginal improvement, and which it is harsh (and harmful to the editor) to aggressively class as 'no improvement whatsoever'. — episanty56 mins ago
That's exactly the sort of squishy criteria I'm trying to discourage.
If you honestly believe the edit is worthless, then reject it!
If you honestly believe it's helpful then approve it!
But don't try to layer on all of these additional complications - editing is hard enough already. Folks can read the exact same text and come away with very different interpretations. There's no avoiding that - but you can avoid adding a crapload of obscure rules that no one is ever going to learn, understand, or apply consistently.
@Shog9 I still think that even if I deem an edit not useful, there's no need to be so intensely antagonizing in the rejection message about it. I just don't see what it adds.
Because the purpose of that reason isn't to be a catch-all for edits that someone things "not useful"
Again, that leads us straight into a territory where folks are making decisions based on their personal preferences. "I don't much care if folks capitalize proper nouns or the beginnings of sentences - therefore, this edit is Not Useful"
The purpose of that reason is to lay out, as clearly and emphatically as possible, some closely-related reasons for why an edit might be rejected.
This is why we ditched "too minor" - one person's too minor is fixing only spelling without touching grammar while another's is anything that touches a post they can already understand. There was no agreed-upon criteria for evaluation.
Nominally, minor edits were ok - up to a point, when they suddenly became not ok. But no one agreed on where that point lay.
So, now I'm asking folks to decide if the edit improves the post or not. That's still subjective - editing is always subjective. But it avoids layering on that extra test "ok, this is helpful - but is it helpful enough?"
Either it's helpful or it ain't. If it's helpful, mark it so. If it isn't, call a spade a spade - and do so emphatically, because someone has just wasted at least two people's time for no good reason.
All valid points, yet, to me, this still sounds like masking mere rudeness as objectivity. Removing the "words for emphasis" would still leave the objective intent of the message fully intact. It doesn't become more subjective just because you don't stress the complete superfluousness thrice.
@Shog9 I see. So the message is worded with the idea that reviewers will hesitate more to reject "unworthy" edits that are not harmful if the message is worded that strongly, and so is rather about the psychological effect on the reviewer than about conveying useful information to the editor in a nice way?
I discovered this site by happy accident while browsing Twitter and saw a question shared by the StackExchange account.
Perhaps you should reach out a bit more and get some people from other communities? The easiest way is to post community ads, for example on this thread on Physics (There are s...
@Shog9 I find this policy curious, especially considering the fact that a reviewer usually never gets to see the rejection message. Why try to send a message to them through a channel where you know they can't (typically) receive it?
Anyways, my point (or what remains of it) was that it may be better to address reviewers, telling them to carefully consider their review decisions, in a different way
...but perhaps it's hard to come up with an alternative.
@Danu Perhaps. But this was already a large change - I'd like to see how it plays out first.
There's another piece to this which I haven't seen folks mention much but which probably has as much of an effect on the discussion as anything: editors get notified when their edits are rejected now.
Not 100% of the time, but if you're new or a lot of your edits are rejected, you'll be prompted to find out why.
I think it's a good thing too. But that's why I was so gung-ho about switching up the rejection reasons: the old ones were effectively too broad to mean anything. So folks were using, for example, Vandalism and Too Minor for the same sorts of edits.
I'm hoping to get rid of the "too minor" edit rejection reason, in favor of a more direct way of indicating edits that fail to significantly improve a post. We're also fixing to warn editors when their edits are rejected. Between the two of these changes, I'm thinking the other rejection reasons ...
Anyhow, I think one can make a point by comparing the tone of this specific rejection message with the other ones. This one really sounds more harsh than the other ones, IMO.
Yeah - well, I'm convinced that switching out "fail" makes sense; that's just my personal style creeping through, it doesn't do anything to emphasize the meaning.
@KyleKanos It's nice that we've gone from a site which was known for abrasive members (not that we don't still have some) to one which actively contributed in making the entire network a bit nicer :)
I am named as an author on a couple of papers with 500+ citations according to inSpire, but that's down to joining really good collaborations, not because I'm so sure fire wonderful or anything.
@dmckee I always found this... I know it's ridiculous, but... kinda lame; Every experimentalist with their name on a paper of a big collaboration (several hundreds of authors, sometimes) gets crazy citation stats.
Essentially every field in physics is a hard slog. If you are in it for the fame or the groupies you've got a surprise coming. But if you just can't stop yourself you can be happy without all that.
Why are questions like "Why does objects with zero acceleraton move?" downvoted?
To me it seems like a person genuinely wanting to understand a physical concept and coming here for help. It just bothers me that apparently people have decided not to help those people.
I've seen remarks on meta l...
I'm really not sure why there is so much bile* in the current rejection reason:
No improvement whatsoever
The edit fails to make the post even a little bit easier to read, easier to find, more accurate or more accessible. Changes are either completely superfluous or actively harm readabi...
