The h Bar

1:25 AM

link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjst/e2018-800063-2

This paper is interesting to me not only because it derive an inverse correspondence to go from quantum operators to classical phase space distributions, but also the various change of variables used that made the integral to be separable. May study more on these rules to see what substitution can lead to separation given an integrand of n variables

Secret

2:40 AM

science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6437/260

This is an interesting paper for quantum computing, quantum engineering as well people like me who just love to learn a bit more about entanglement

By exploiting cross correlations in an ensemble of randomly chosen basis, this improved on a similar method reported in the past that can only handle a subclass of cluster states to arbitrary entangled states to calculate their renyl entropy

as well to follow the evolution of entanglement as the state evolves with time

ZeroTheHero

3:05 AM

This Innsbruck group is really good. Beyond the superstars like Zoller and Blatt they have a very strong lineup of mid-career researchers.

vzn

3:39 AM

in theory salon, 1 min ago, by vzn

China's quest for clean, limitless energy heats up / physorg

@EmilioPisanty very cool thx for sharing now if only someone would invent a game (or simulation) that showed how similar (non)relativistic effects are to fluid dynamics... specifically sound travel within...

@Secret interesting, what are c-functions and c-numbers? not great they start using the terms in the abstract without some quick defn.

dmckee

@SirCumference I'm strictly an amateur on astrophysics. Rob J. on the other hand is a bone fide subject matter expert on neutron stars.

vzn

4:02 AM

@knzhou re that was hoping you would clarify this but maybe youre busy. feel its the most openminded thing anyone other than me or secret has said in here on subj for years (after now several years of pursuing it with fervor) and there is lot quite to the contrary. anyway directly along those lines intended to ask/ want to know if youve seen this & what you think of it arxiv.org/abs/1603.07655 ... btw 2nd the urging expressed elsewhere to run for mod :)

Anonymous

4:55 AM

@Rishi As you have an open bounty, could you please check this bug during the grace period?

Anonymous

Note down few things: 1. whether you receive any inbox notification when the grace period starts, 2. whether it's reflected in the global inbox & 3. whether the global inbox notifications gets deleted at some point

user351417

5:10 AM

Sure.

Secret

5:23 AM

@vzn I am not sure, but based on the contents of the paper, it is basically the quantum analogue of some physical property to be integrated with probability density to obtain expectation values i.e. c-functions are quantum analogues of $f(e)$ in e.g. $\langle f(E)\rangle = \int f(e)P(e)de$

where $f(e)$ will be e.g. the energy of each particle at some level $e$, such as in the derivation of Planck's law

user351417

5:57 AM

If any moderators are around, we have a duplicate HNQ: physics.stackexchange.com/q/476687

Novalium Company

Can you wrap up your electronic projects in duck tape and then melt it with a lighter to make it waterproof?

Secret

6:44 AM

nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08951-2

Take a discrete time stochastic process, such as a perturbed coin, encode the head or tail outcome using the polarisation of a photon, and encode the time step and ancillary qubits that is used as a register with the unique arrival time of the photon. Thus for each time step, the photon becomes more entangled. Thus the photon is in a superposition hence contains the probability of all the future classical outcomes given an initial past state.

Two photons can then be used to simulate two perturbed coin process, and when the dynamics coincides, the interference will be 100% visible. In addition to simulate discrete time stochastic processes, the two photons are $2^M$ dimensional states thus the interference allow comparison of their overlap, which will be important in machine learning and image recognition

Secret

I wonder, if we can do better, by somehow encoding the process number into the state itself, so we get a superposition of $\Pi_1, \Pi_2$ thus one measurement then allows recovery of not just the statistics of the discrete time process, but also for different discrete time processes

Another possible extension is whether we can encode quantum stochastic process with simulators

It will be cool if there are 3 qubits that stores three runs of a double slit experiment with different setups, thus effectively storing 3 quantum experiments in a superposition, allowing it to be compared with other quantum experiment runs

For example, how many qubits do we need to encode a theoretical state that look something like this:

$$\lvert \mathbf{A}\rangle = \left\lvert \begin{pmatrix} a_0 & b_0 \\ c_0 & d_0\end{pmatrix}\begin{pmatrix} a_1 & b_1 \\ c_1 & d_1\end{pmatrix} \begin{pmatrix} a_2 & b_2 \\ c_2 & d_2\end{pmatrix}\right\rangle$$

i.e. its "observables" are quantum states themselves

I am guessing 12 but I felt it needs a lot more

Secret

7:41 AM

actually, that ket is not wild enough

I am thinking about some state where each of its "eigenvalues" are themselves quantum states (thus is a density matrix)

Slereah

8:14 AM

greetings

Captain Bohemian

9:10 AM

I think housing is the most meritorious support. No matter where you want to go, housing is the most costly expense. As long as you can get the housing support, you can virtually stay everywhere.

it's difficult to sleep well in a public or outdoor place.

user351417

9:33 AM

Can anyone else reproduce this bug? meta.stackexchange.com/q/327460

Secret

9:43 AM

The above "hyperquantum state" has the following property:

Measurement will project it to one of the many quantum states in its "spectrum" with probability determined by some analogous Born rule

There is a much stronger nonlocal correlation possible as one can envision two hyper quantum subsystems can be "entangled" and then upon measurement, project to some given pair of quantum states

The much richer algebraic structure that describe the states means there could be extra properties not possible for quantum states

Now, I don't know how much that will have to do with quantum nonequlibrium theories, because the probability density would obey some form of born rule

If such thing can exists, its computational power will scale massively: A superposition of a superposition of $2^N$ states, or a superposition of $2^N$ qubit basis states

Secret

10:12 AM

Suppose there are $m$ possible complex numbers, then we have a computational power of $(2m^2)^{NM}$ for M hyperqubits. Ok this is not a remarkable scaling

I originally thought such thing could have a scaling of at least $2^{N^{M}}$

ok sorry miscalculated, the scaling will be $m^{M(2^N+1)}2^M$ for M hyperqubit

which is slightly better than $2^{N^M}$ as $m > 2$

and one does not need to stop there. A k-hyperquantum state will end up with a tetrational scaling

Now it remains to see whether nature allows such things to exists. We knew that there are no evidence of PR boxes, and the constraints imposed by experiment on hypercomplex quantum theories are also very tight

Also the environment is so busy already in deccohering away quantum states to pointer states, so the prospect for any two quantum states to get together, and rotate in some higher dimensional hilbert space where they form a dense basis seems unlikely

In fact, the first thing two quantum superposition will do upon interaction is to superimpose or to rotate into an entangled state, thus we are not leaving the quantum Hilbert space into a hyperquantum one

Secret

10:48 AM

hmm... now that makes me wonder. All the classical stuff are pretty much decohered, thus why do protocols on creating superpositions still work. Is the decoherence process somehow locally reversed, thus allow the phase relationship between the eigenstates to be restablished by performing work, and in exchange, entropy increases elsewhere?

18

Q: Reversing gravitational decoherence

[Update: Thanks, everyone, for the wonderful replies! I learned something extremely interesting and relevant (namely, the basic way decoherence works in QFT), even though it wasn't what I thought I wanted to know when I asked the question. Partly inspired by wolfgang's answer below, I just aske...

ah ok, we introduced new phase relationships via the interaction of the particle and the device in question, so we are not regaining coherence, but imposing new coherence to it and that allows it to be in some superposition despite the source material should mean most of that phase relationship for some observables have already leaked away to the environment

thus entropy still increases as a whole

Abhas Kumar Sinha

11:06 AM

hello

How to make a quantum computer/

Is quantum teleportation is real/

Secret

all these are incredibly broad questions that can be searched in the PSE

Jim

11:55 AM

@AbhasKumarSinha hello

@AbhasKumarSinha add 1 part quantum, 6 parts computer, mix, bake, serve, and enjoy your quantum computer

2

@AbhasKumarSinha depends on how you define teleportation. In the way most people think of it, no it isn't real

@KyleKanos youtu.be/FSWD2k5oor4

Kyle Kanos

12:15 PM

@Jim hellllllllloooooooo

peterh

1:05 PM

@KyleKanos I think your computational-physics contributions are worthy content and there is nothing bad with them.

@KyleKanos I think your VtC customs are not enough inclusive, however the diamond causes mostly a strong improvement in this case :-) You will need to represent the community and you will have far lesser freedom, what you do. I think you will be nearly surely elected, and hopefully also tpg.

user351417

1:53 PM

Yeah, even I was confused about that computational-physics remark.

user351417

What do people think about this meta post?

user351417

221

Q: Embrace the non-Googlers

There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to "easy" questions that involve quickly answering by copy/pasting embarrassing links to lmgtfy.com (or similar responses in comments, which aren't downvotable) in an attempt to belittle the questions' authors. I think this comes from engagement in forums, w...

support faq etiquette google

user351417

The consensus does not seem similar to our prior research policy.

user351417

I myself think that it's completely inapplicable because physics SE probably isn't targeting the same site image which people who wrote on that thread wanted. But i'm interested in what other people think.

Abhas Kumar Sinha

3:03 PM

@bolbteppa Hello, I need help while solving the Problem of a simple pendulum, I want to create a function such that the velocity of the bob can be calculated as a function of time/angle/length of the pendulum, I tried writing Lagrange of that, but I don't know who to get it as a function of time,

Should I show my progress here? If you have any idea that it can be done just hint me, I'll do it myself

ugh, is that a bug/

PM 2Ring

@Rishi IMHO, the thing about most simple Google-able questions that we see on SE sites is not that they're too simple to answer, per se. Sure, sometimes they are simple, and the OP just needs the right keywords or jargon phrases to make their searches useful, as some of the answers to your linked meta question state.

JMac

@AbhasKumarSinha Why do you keep posting really long repeated letters like that?

PM 2Ring

But most of the time, they come from someone who doesn't have the necessary foundation knowledge to ask the right questions, or to be able to fully appreciate any answers we might write for them.

If you want to learn a subject you need to have a methodical, structured approach. You need to start with the basics, build upon and extend them. And sometimes you need to go back to the basics and upgrade them to a more sophisticated model.

SE sites simply do not have the structure to do that. They address one question at a time. Sure, questions can link to other questions and external sites, but that doesn't provide the kind of structure I'm talking about. SE questions are great at filling in the gaps in one's knowledge, and correcting misconceptions, but they can't teach you a subject from scratch.

Ajay Mishra

Hi.

Have anybody here calculated moment of inertia about something like crawler belt?

user351417

3:25 PM

@PM2Ring Hmm, I was thinking about the bulk of the questions which fall under the everyday-life tag. While several of those are asked by people who are actually studying physics (and some are presumably asked by more advanced users of the site who teach or do research), and there are some/several poorly-researched technical questions, the everyday-life ones asked by curious people who stumbled upon something surprising but didn't bother to think about it or try googling it are a huge proportion.

user351417

But yeah, learning physics (or almost anything) from scratch by using a Q&A site will certainly not work, and it'll also lead to questions which look poorly-researched to some of us.

SDFG

Why isn't MathJax working on my chat? I am on a desktop, Google Chrome.

user351417

One thing which stood out to me is this: the author of the meta question says that they'd like to see people get pointed to Stack Overflow when someone googles some foundation-related question like "what's a variable?" Those questions have been answered all over the internet, and the meta people argue that because of the way SO works, there's a chance that a higher-quality answer would end up being posted on SO. And that indicates that SO would accept such naive questions.

user351417

@SDFG Do you have ChatJax running?

user351417

Mathjax isn't actually supported by SE chat. You need a userscript.

SDFG

3:30 PM

@Rishi Sorry, I'm new, I don't know about that.

user351417

It's fine = )

SDFG

So how can I enable it?

user351417

I took a really long time to figure out how to get the userscripts up and running.

SDFG

Oh

user351417

I'll find you the link. One moment.

SDFG

3:31 PM

Oh wow. Thanks!

user351417

29

A: Any chance of MathJax in chat?

As a workaround while this request is pending, there exist several client-side workarounds that can be used to enable LaTeX rendering in chat, including: ChatJax, a set of bookmarklets by robjohn to enable dynamic MathJax support in chat. Commonly used in the Mathematics chat room. An altern...

user351417

There are a few suggestions in that answer. I use ChatJax, but you could try any of them.

SDFG

Okay, I'm trying the chrome extension..

user351417

@Rishi Anyways, I think that Physics SE has a kind of different situation: it looks like people are afraid that a flood of low-effort questions would drive away the expert users.

SDFG

Hey, BTW I just saw on your profile that you're a "12th grader from b'lore". Well, we have something in common. I'm a 12thie too!

user351417

3:34 PM

@PM2Ring Maybe I should bring this up during the election chat. It'll be interesting to see if anyone feels we should either change our policy on prior research, or if we could suggest that the post on the main meta isn't applicable to our site. Or maybe there's a way to argue that there's no contradiction between our policy and the aforementioned SO suggestion.

user351417

@SDFG Ooh that's cool! But interestingly, I removed the "12th grader from bangalore" bit yesterday: I decided to switch out of the pseudonym I'd been using on SE for about a year, and I cleared up my about-me at that time : P Where did you see that bit?

user351417

Oh never mind. It's still there in my about-me : P

PM 2Ring

@Rishi Ok. I guess everyday-life questions are a special category. It's reasonable to ask such questions without wanting to do a full physics course. So the core of the answers needs to be understandable by someone with just a basic junior high school science education. But of course they can also contain more advanced material for those who can assimilate it.

user351417

Yeah. And it won't go HNQ if people write only the advanced stuff, because apparently people don't vote on things they don't understand. I've always gotten the impression that some people might just be inclined to upvote if they see math, but apparently that doesn't happen. I can't remember what meta post dealt with that matter though.

user351417

However, it is fun to read answers like physics.stackexchange.com/q/428986.

user351417

3:44 PM

It has some stuff which should make plenty of sense for someone who hasn't studied any related physics, but it also has a more detailed investigation.

user351417

i don't think that one went HNQ though: it probably got a lot of votes due to the meta-effect.

PM 2Ring

In contrast, we get a zillion questions about black holes from people who barely understand Newtonian mechanics & gravity, with no knowledge of relativity, apart from a few random factoids. We can't give them a proper answer that they'll really understand, all we can do is give them another shiny factoid or 2 to add to their collection. But I guess we can write an answer that'll partly satisfy them, and focus the bulk if the answer towards readers who do have the necessary prerequisites.

FWIW, I'm certainly no expert on GR, but I understand the general principles. And I learned SR in high school, several decades ago.

user351417

@PM2Ring A lot of them also have desparately skewed misconceptions based on popularized catchphrases too, which presumably gets trying since one ends up needing to cover the same ground regarding that same misconception in a number of answers to different questions.

PM 2Ring

@Rishi A few years ago, SO tried to create a more structured body of programming knowledge with the Documentation project. It was an abysmal failure, and caused bad feelings and loss of expertise that SO still hasn't fully recovered from (IMHO).

user351417

@PM2Ring Our high-school stuff doesn't have SR : (

user351417

3:51 PM

@PM2Ring I should read about that. I was just starting to learn how to code at the time, so I remember seeing that on the community bulletin. I was teaching myself through the Python documentation's tutorial section so I thought that SO, which could give me my answers without making me go through the trouble of tying my own question, would be creating a replacement for that, and I was pretty pumped.

user351417

I don't think I was able to figure out about how SO Documentation worked though...

user351417

But why did that cause a loss of expertise?

PM 2Ring

@Rishi It wasn't a huge amount, just a bare introduction, but that's better than nothing. IIRC, someone was saying here a few weeks ago that there are some Indian senior high school physics courses without calculus. I find that almost incomprehensible.

user351417

@PM2Ring That was me saying that I don't have calculus in my high-school stuff : (

Semiclassical

i mean, there is algebra-level stuff you can do

there's just a lot of stuff you have to treat as "beyond the scope of this course to explain"

Emilio Pisanty

3:54 PM

yo @Semiclassical

what's the penalty for writing this?

i.e. for neglecting to emphasize that those are time-ordered exponentials

Semiclassical

oof

user351417

It's not the Indian syllabus though: it's the IB (International Baccalaureate) which is supposed to be super hard, so I don't fully understand what's going on. However, the Indian boards' physics looks quite good. It's certainly a lot more challenging than ours (they get more tricky problems) and it uses calculus.

Semiclassical

yeah, if you're going to have explicitly time-dependent Hamiltonian, you'd better write it as time-ordered

Emilio Pisanty

assuming that the rest of the paper is correctly done and that nothing actually depends on the distinction

Semiclassical

yeah. it isn't a great sign as far as how careful they are, though.

PM 2Ring

3:57 PM

@Rishi SO didn't figure out how SO Documentation worked. ;) It got very ugly on SO meta, and things were said that can't be unsaid. Some experts got into heated arguments saying it was a dumb idea that'd never work. Some were offended that their rep was being devalued because clueless newbies were able to accumulate 1k+ rep in a few days of Docs contributions.

Emilio Pisanty

@Semiclassical well, this is a classic 2004 paper by my advisor

Semiclassical

:|

Emilio Pisanty

so I'm wondering how obliged I am to bring it up

Semiclassical

yeah

user351417

@PM2Ring Ah ouch. What was the docs voting system like?

user351417

3:59 PM

No never mind. I should check that out while getting a picture of what docs was : P

Semiclassical

does their passing over the time-ordering have negative effects in the rest of the paper?

Emilio Pisanty

@Semiclassical no

but still

Semiclassical

hrm

PM 2Ring

Some of us initially had the idea that Docs would provide an extra level of structure to the existing SO knowledge base, with a few bits & pieces added to organize things, serve as topic introductions, etc. Instead, we got this whole new thing springing up out of nowhere, with only a minimal connection to the canonical SO questions, and most of the work was being done by low rep newbies, eager for the easy pickings.

That would've been tolerable if what they wrote was correct. But sadly, that wasn't the norm. The few experts involved spent a huge amount of energy trying to rectify the errors, when they could, but they had to fight the newbies & the software to do so.

user351417

Yikes. That sounds like a pretty huge mess. I guess I can imagine someone leaving after that.

enumaris

4:32 PM

@vzn watched it over the weekend :D

John Rennie

→ 1 message moved to Trash

Anonymous

5:18 PM

@PM2Ring I was almost certain that Docs wasn't a sustainable project when I first heard that there's no rep-restriction for contributing there. If it were a 15k or 20k privilege it would have worked just fine. :/

vzn

@enumaris so wheres all your buzzing excitement this year? still have it? just not in chat? hows the movie? whatd you think of the brie larson clip? looks like youre in high/ good company... was at a great/ fun scifi con this wknd & it was everywhere... raging costume contest/ party, VR panel :) AVENGERS: ENDGAME BROKE NEARLY EVERY BOX OFFICE RECORD wired.com/story/avengers-endgame-box-office-totals starfestdenver.com

enumaris

still uber hyped, just less time to chat here unfortunately

The movie was really good

a fitting conclusion to 22 Marvel movies

vzn

@enumaris anyone wearing costumes? spotted a captain america driving around on his motorcycle etc o_O so whos your favorite character?

enumaris

I don't think anyone wore a costume to my showing

Very hard to come up with a favorite character...they all had their moments

Thor and Hulk are always hilarious tho

Sir Cumference

Aw man, Kyle Kanos dropped the election

vzn

5:26 PM

personally am lately liking kirk douglas as mad scientist in ant man, + lego batman... really like the tony stark iron man character from day 1... guess everyone else does too based on his extraordinary rate... missed latest lego movie, did anyone see it? missing the Physics movie reviews...

enumaris

I was more on Cap's side on Civil War

but that doesn't mean I don't like Tony :D

vzn

@SirCumference whoa, solid + human candidate, urged him on, wonder what happened, maybe too many kids + "real" job :(

@enumaris whatd you think of the 3hrs length? really epic...

enumaris

totally worth it

I don't mind longer movies

Sir Cumference

@vzn Well if anyone can get in contact with him in the next two hours there's a chance

vzn

2019 Physics Moderator Election Chat

Open Discussion for physics.stackexchange.com/election/4

he stated he was ambivalent for understandable reasons

Anonymous

5:33 PM

@SirCumference Erm...I asked him here. :(

vzn

@enumaris anyway no shortage of comic movies coming up, what else are you looking fwd to this summer?

Sir Cumference

@Blue Wait a sec, is your name not blue anymore?

PM 2Ring

@Blue Yeah. Maybe the bar didn't need to be that high, eg at least a bronze badge in the language, and maybe also in the topic you're contributing to. And low rep people can suggest edits that need approval. But anyway, it's all academic now.

Anonymous

@SirCumference It's still Blue in chat. I changed to my real name only on the QCSE main site. :)

Sir Cumference

@Blue I mean the actual color blue lol

Anonymous

5:37 PM

@SirCumference Oh, yeah. My chat account is not parented to QCSE.

Anonymous

If I reparent it to QCSE it forces me to change my name in chat too...which is not so great because I love my pseudonym. :P

Sir Cumference

Welp you could regain your blue color by applying to this election :P

Anonymous

Not enough rep to nominate... :P

enumaris

@vzn John Wick 3

ACuriousMind

@Blue ...how do you access TL?

enumaris

5:40 PM

I still have to watch Shazam...and then obviously the next Spider man film

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind I don't.

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind "CM"?

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind Didn't know that, didn't intend to pester.

ACuriousMind

@Blue That's really not an option, people assume by default that mods are at least superpingable there.

@SirCumference Community Manager, i.e. an SE employee

Sir Cumference

@KyleKanos Hi

John Rennie

5:41 PM

I recall Kyle saying that he'd been banned for something a while back, though I forget the details. I guess that disqualified him.

vzn

@enumaris keanu in matrix one of top scifi movies of a generation :) alas nothing like it in years maybe ever :| like him in a lot of other movies too

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind I don't think it's compulsory for mods to use chat at all.

Kyle Kanos

Yes, I got suspended a week or two so for saying sh&t twice. CM hence removed me from consideration because it was recent.

enumaris

@vzn I actually like John Wick better, but that's probably just my taste

The action is more gritty

Kyle Kanos

Totally lame, to be honest.

ACuriousMind

5:42 PM

@Blue Well, you can explain that to Shog when he superpings your sites' mods and you don't get the notification. Just sayin' :P

Sir Cumference

@KyleKanos Aw :/

vzn

@JohnRennie was wondering if that policy also applied to chat suspensions

enumaris

When I was younger, I liked the more flowery action sequences, but as I got older, I prefer grittier

Sir Cumference

@KyleKanos Oh by the way are you a stellar astronomer by chance?

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind Eh, they can always superping me in a private room. I doubt it matters; lots of mods don't have TL access.

Kyle Kanos

5:43 PM

I should note that a) it was a 24 hour suspension (12 of which were overnight when I wasn't even available) and b) first suspension I'd ever gotten, network wide

JMac

@KyleKanos Yeah that seems weird as hell to me. Was the profanity directed at anyone?

vzn

@KyleKanos am feeling this is not a great outcome. think this is only more situation(s) that suggests the suspension policy on the site, incl SE wide, is sometimes heavyhanded (aka mod hammer) and even counterproductive... eg routinely invoked for minor infractions

Kyle Kanos

@SirCumference no, not really. I was a cruddy astrophysicist when I was in grad school and left academia 4 years ago

Anonymous

@KyleKanos Eeeh, maybe next time. :/

Anonymous

And yeah, you really do need to work what you say. :P

Anonymous

5:46 PM

But you'd make a good mod and it's unfortunate that we're out of one option.

Kyle Kanos

@JMac Someone said that someone might misread my post, so I said that if that hypothetical person reads my post (which explains how to read it) and comes to the wrong conclusion, then their reading comprehension is cruddy (except the vernacular used there)

ACuriousMind

@KyleKanos If you want to get into this, the use of "shit" alone was not the cause, but you using it to insult another user's reading comprehension. Maybe you didn't realize how your comments came across in the moment, but the CMs reviewed the suspension and agreed it was well within the bounds of what SE considers justified.

Seeing how you talk about it, I see that the problem is that you apparently used "you" to mean a generic "you", but it read differently to others.

Sir Cumference

"How dare you insult my reading comprehension" ~No one? :P

Kyle Kanos

@ACuriousMind go back and read the whole thread in context. I adamantly deny and refute the notion that I ever insulted that users reading abilities.

Sir Cumference

People can get a little too quickly offended here tbh

JMac

5:48 PM

Yeah I can see that causing a suspension. Suggesting that hypothetical a readers' comprehension is bad could be seen as insulting to hypothetical users, which still violates the spirit of the be nice policy afaik (though kinda at the far end of the spectrum)

vzn

agree that mods have to have the utmost civility possible, the situation described involved uncivil communication, and dont think it always works out that way... o_O

Kyle Kanos

If you take my comments out of context, I can maybe see the justification for a warning (don't recall ever getting any of those before), but in context? Really? Suspension without any interaction beforehand?

vzn

@KyleKanos think the mods here need to just delete comments more etc and not have hair trigger suspensions... esp for longtime users... its notable how this "policy", which is largely unspoken/ firmly off the table for discussion in the past, is now playing out as a big consequence in the election + maybe even future management (think you were clearly one of the strongest candidates so far)... the phrase dont burn your bridges comes to mind...

JMac

From the context you gave here, the issue I see is that a user who reads your post and doesn't understand it might feel insulted, because it then means that you're implying that their comprehension is shit. As a first time offence, I don't see why a deletion and message wouldn't work, let alone causing them to bar you from moderating though...

Did you try to fight the suspension or anything?

vzn

@JMac "fighting" suspensions is rather pointless and tends to lead to only longer suspensions. and there has been attempts to address the overall policy by multiple users in the past (cf chat history/ transcript, some removed) but then maybe the management takes that not as dissent or feedback but something like "civil disobedience" etc

Kyle Kanos

5:55 PM

As best as I can tell, there's literally nothing to fight. It's a statement saying I was suspended. There's a text box I can fill in with something, but it didn't look like it'd do anything besides emailing the mods

ACuriousMind

@vzn To be very clear: Not agreeing with one's suspension does not lead to longer suspensions. Stop making stuff up.

vzn

want to discuss this freely, am talking about my personal experiences that have documentable history in the transcript, but think it will lead to a suspension, so am leaving :(

JMac

@KyleKanos That's why I asked. I could maybe understand stopping you from being a mod if you caused a big stink about a 12 hour suspension; but if it just passed by and you used it like a warning, it seems like a bit of overkill to remove you from an election, when looked at in isolation

ACuriousMind

@JMac There is a general SE policy that users suspended within the last year cannot run

That is, in order for Kyle to be allowed to run, SE would have to have made an exception to this otherwise very strict policy

Anonymous

The SE UI sucks in this aspect. If users who were suspended in the past one year aren't allowed to participate in the election, then they shouldn't be allowed by the UI to write their nomination either. It's rather unfair to make them fill up the nomination, write the answers to a gigantic questionnaire and then (not even soon) tell them that they're not allowed. There's probably a Meta SE request about this somewhere...

2

ACuriousMind

5:59 PM

They declined to make such an exception.

@Blue Yes, I agree. I don't understand why such users are not blocked from nominating if they lack CM approval, either.

@KyleKanos @JMac Replying to the suspension message just notifies the mods. The only way to really "fight" a suspension is to use the Contact Us form. As far as I know SE takes such complaints actually seriously and investigates claims about frivolous suspensions

Kyle Kanos

@Blue actually, there is a pop up with a warning when you click on nominating. It says you can write to SE & have them reconsider the nomination in light of the suspension. I did so, but was denied

And that if you don't contact SE mods about it beforehand, your nomination would be deleted

JMac

@KyleKanos So it wasn't like they automatically denied you for trying to circumvent policies either... This just seems weirder and weirder to me.

Anonymous

@KyleKanos Ah, didn't know that. Interesting...but it'd be much better to simply block such users from nominating until they receive CM validation.

299792458

Can the number of moderator positions in the fray, be altered in light of a lesser number of candidates nominating themselves?

Anonymous

@299792458 Probably not...SE's usually quite rigid about these things...

Anonymous

6:06 PM

We've 3 candidates, so it seems the election will take its normal course.

JMac

@299792458 I don't know if they would even do that if they had 2 slots and 1 nomination. On Engineering SE there were 2 applicants and 2 positions, so after the nomination phase they were directly appointed

Kyle Kanos

To be honest, I somewhat figured that they'd remove me because of how recent it was. I also argued on the fact that, at the time of my submitting the email to them, there was only 1 credible candidate. Afterwards did I see that TPG threw his hat in the ring

JMac

@KyleKanos Yeah, and no offence but this would be a lot more troubling if tpg didn't put himself into the running. At least we're not high and dry with no good candidates and people scrambling last minute to put in grudging nominations

299792458

@JMac This is absurd. So, if either of tpg or chris have a change of heart within the next two hours, we will be handing over the mod position to a very inexperienced candidate with no moderation experience even as a user.

ACuriousMind

The very unfortunate timing is probably due to Kyle nominating on a weekend and the election closing on a Monday, i.e. this was the first regular working day SE had a change to look at the nomination/his request.

JMac

6:12 PM

@299792458 It would be pretty surprising to have either of them voluntarily remove themselves for the running. IDK if SE would be flexible in their election in that case, but I could see a lot of community response if their candidate removal on the last day led to that. Seems highly unlikely right now

Kyle Kanos

Probably also that @ACuriousMind. It was like 11a EST when I started it all

299792458

Can we all request @JohnRennie, @DanielSank, and/or @knzhou to please urgently reconsider not running?

3

John Rennie

@299792458 I would have nominated if I thought we were going to be embarrassed by a lack of candidates, but I think we have a couple of well qualified people standing.

I have to say I was disappointed when Kyle's nomination was cancelled.

5

Sir Cumference

@JohnRennie Two people. If one drops then the low rep guy gets it.

John Rennie

@SirCumference Why would they drop out now?

Sir Cumference

6:17 PM

Most people here have been humble about their moderating abilities but I think they'd be better candidates than him :P

JMac

I don't see why people are afraid that we're going to have someone drop out in the last hour. Two of the candidates are good candidates, they wouldn't do that to us without a very good reason

Sir Cumference

@JohnRennie Who knows. Maybe one decides he's too busy to commit to it. Either way it's be better if someone at least nominates themselves as a backup

tpg2114

@JMac That would be epic level trolling. Definitely not my style.

Sir Cumference

At least until the election phase

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference You can't nominate as a "backup". You might actually get elected!

Kyle Kanos

6:18 PM

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the argument "if one of them drops out..." Is a bit extreme and unlikely to happen.

Sir Cumference

@ACuriousMind Do you not see any problem with this election?

John Rennie

@SirCumference my concern is that people will look at my rep and assume that because I'm good at answering questions I'd be good at moderating. I don't think it follows.

tpg2114

@KyleKanos Sorry you were un-nominated. I would have liked to see you win.

5

Kyle Kanos

I am curious to see if that low-rep user garners any votes...

JMac

@tpg2114 The way I see it, if someone was really doing that as trolling... we were about to elect a troll into our mods anyways, so there are other concerns.

Sir Cumference

6:20 PM

@JohnRennie I'm just saying it might be worth nominating oneself, and if no one else seems to drop, one can give up before the election phase

Kyle Kanos

@tpg2114 yeah, I'd have liked to support the site in different manner, but c'est la vie.....at least you're guaranteed a spot now ;) :D

Sir Cumference

@KyleKanos No one's expecting him to, but the concern is him winning by default :P

ACuriousMind

@SirCumference I didn't say that, I guess this election taught me that I vastly overestimated the amount of users that would nominate. I wouldn't have agreed with a 2-slot election if I thought we'd only have 3 nominees.

tpg2114

@KyleKanos Don't jinx it, I may lose to random person.

Kyle Kanos

@tpg2114 that would be horrible.

tpg2114

6:21 PM

I'm pretty disappointed by the lack of nominations also. On the other hand, I feel like this showed up pretty out of the blue

JMac

@SirCumference The issue with that is people not nominating themselves are mostly doing it because they probably dont want to moderate. Putting themselves in the election with 2 other good candidates means they might win an election they don't want to win, and may not have had to win it anyways; instead pushing out someone who did want to run

tpg2114

I feel like last time, there was a lot more conversation/build up before it started

John Rennie

I do wonder if it says something about our community that so few people have nominated themselves. It seems a disappointing lack of commitment. I wonder if our core user base is getting dangerously small.

3

Sir Cumference

@JMac It sometimes seems less of "don't want to" and more of "I don't think I'd be a good mod", to which there's not many people to compare with right now

ACuriousMind

@tpg2114 Manish stepping down wasn't a hit? How did you feel it was telegraphed better last time?

tpg2114

6:23 PM

@ACuriousMind Well, since he hadn't been very active for awhile, I figured the team would just shrink by one. I definitely didn't expect it to expand

Kyle Kanos

@JohnRennie I'd raised concern about the lack of reviewers in the queues; probably a related issue here :/

Anonymous

@JohnRennie Re: "I wonder if our core user base is getting dangerously small."...I had the exactly same concern. Honestly speaking, it is. It's no longer the 2012-2015 golden period of PSE, after the low quality flood started. We really need a stricter quality threshold for Q&As on the site. I personally don't find myself interested in browsing the Questions page on this site anymore.

Kyle Kanos

Uh, forgot the "raised the point in my nomination questionnaire"

ACuriousMind

@JohnRennie We have a lot of active users, but very few who review.

John Rennie

@Blue I'm not sure it's a quality issue. My guess is that people now see the site as something to dip in and out of when necessary rather that a resource they want to support.

ACuriousMind

6:26 PM

I think one reason is that many want to view the site as relaxing and enjoyable - and the kind of janitorial work that is reviewing and moderating isn't necessarily that

JMac

@SirCumference I think there are a lot of users who don't want to change how they fundamentally participate in the site. When you become a mod you're not just committing to help moderate the site; you become someone who essentially represents the site. That changes the nature of how you use the site quite a bit, and has significant limitations

tpg2114

I agree with @JohnRennie -- once things tend to get big and have lots of active members, people tend to feel less responsibility to do the dirty work because they feel somebody else will surely do it. And then nobody ends up doing it

299792458

@JohnRennie I'll tell you my personal perspective. I'm fairly low rep, but I've been contributing to moderation as a user, with reasonably good statistics. In fact, I have 16/20 on the non-rep aspect of "candidate score", which is better than Chris (no disrespect intended). But I don't think I command enough respect within the community to be looked up to as a moderator, even though I think can make a reasonably good behind the scenes janitor.

tpg2114

@299792458 I'm pretty sure in 2016 I ran on the "I'm a behind the scenes janitor type" platform.

ACuriousMind

@tpg2114 Well, if all mods were "fully active" and the site wasn't growing, it wouldn't be necessary. But traffic is continually increasing, and most of the time at least one mod (not counting Manish) is temporarily inactive.

Anonymous

6:28 PM

@JohnRennie I believe that's a direct effect of the lack in quality regulation. QMechanic's comment here sums it perfectly:

Anonymous

I agree with multiple comments above and below by, in particular, nibot and Marek. TP.SE should be a separate site. Professional physicists shouldn't spend time looking for serious, well-posed, well-documented, research-related questions and answers by sifting through an endless stream of pop-sci and undergraduate well-known textbook material. Instead of just killing the TP.SE proposal, given the bad traffic numbers, wouldn't it be possible to, say, delay launch, and sent out e-mails to people who originally signed up for the TP.SE proposal to reconfirm their commitment to ensure momentum? — Qmechanic ♦ Jul 20 '11 at 12:00

299792458

@tpg2114 Like I'd responded in that comment, you only lost because the other options were ACM and rob. You had one of my votes.

tpg2114

@ACuriousMind Sure -- but that's all opaque to users. We don't know who is/is not active when, or what the trends are. So from the outside, I just expected no election or maybe status-quo.

ACuriousMind

@299792458 I looked at the results yesterday, and actually Alfred would have come second place if only first choices had counted.

Followed by tpg, then rob

John Rennie

@Blue I'm not so sure. I just don't think the theoretical physics community see something like the SE as useful to them. Why they don't, while the mathematicians do, I don't know.

Anonymous

6:31 PM

Say...I'm browsing the main page...and this is what a random question and answer pair looks like:

Anonymous

0

Q: I want to know how to solve the following question from ground frame

Particle slides down a smooth inclined plane of elevation theta, fixed in an elevator going up with an acceleration a. The base of the incline has a length L. Find the time taken by the particle to reach the bottom (solve from the inertial frame)? I know how to solve the question from the frame ...

newtonian-mechanics reference-frames

knzhou

@299792458 There's no need for me to run, we have two good candidates right now.

JMac

@299792458 I don't know if being a visible participation member is a big deal. Even Chris doesn't stand out to me(though the generic name is a possible cause of that). His reviews, meta participation, and desire to run speak for him more than anything recognizable about him as an individual user.

Sir Cumference

@knzhou "Right now"

Not necessarily later, if one of them drops it

Anonymous

@Blue Yeah, no. I'm not coming back after I see that (if I were an outsider). :P

ACuriousMind

6:33 PM

@Blue There's always been questions like that. Questions were never closed for being "too low quality" alone, this does not explain any change compared to e.g. 2016

Anonymous

I'll occasionally browse through the HNQ and highly voted stuff...but nah...there's just too much mess all around.

JMac

@SirCumference Why do you keep pushing the narrative of someone dropping the nomination within the hour? tpg already said he staying in, and we have no reason to assume Chris or New Alexandria are going to drop out within that time

knzhou

@SirCumference There are lots more reasons I would be a terrible mod. I hate enforcing rules. I personally see a lot of value in many closed questions and probably vote to leave open at a far greater rate than anybody in this chat.

Sir Cumference

@JMac Not in the next hour. But in the primary phase

knzhou

And I don't think we'll see any drops.

The candidates are actually serious right now.

JMac

6:34 PM

@SirCumference How often to SE elections drop someone in the primary phase?

tpg2114

@Blue Even in that "golden age" period, I promise you could find a chat sequence that went exactly like this one. People complained about the on-going flood of low quality homework questions and had examples on hand. And argued it was way better "current time - X years ago"

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind The change is in the low quality traffic...lots more newbies pouring in these days. Back then not many high school students thought of PSE as a place to get their questions answered.

Sir Cumference

@JMac Not sure. Just saying if it happens once in this election, you'll know the results

knzhou

@Blue Just wondering, does the "golden age" happen to coincide exactly with when you started using Phys.SE?

299792458

@JMac Ideally they are complementary aspects. But there is a definite correlation with reputation if you look at SE elections in general. I don't know if it is good or bad, but many voters do vote by reputation.

knzhou

6:35 PM

Because to me, the golden age was 2016-2017 when I just started. I think it's a common bias.

ACuriousMind

@Blue I have been closing low-effort homework questions by the dozen ever since I crossed 3k rep in mid-2014

I can't count the times I ran out of close votes

Kyle Kanos

This ×100

ACuriousMind

This flood has always been there, and it will always be there

Anonymous

If you want to check the data, here are some scripts: physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5102

Anonymous

@knzhou I guess....I first came to know about PSE in late 2014.

JMac

6:37 PM

I need to get better at doing the close vote queues. I find it's the most boring of the queues, and most of my VTCs come from browsing

ACuriousMind

@Blue Complaning the site declined after the golden age lasting until 2015, then linking a post complaining about the decline from 2013 is...probably not the image you were going for there ;)

tpg2114

And in 2013 they were lamenting the loss of serious users and questions... I think it's always a trend that will be there.

I haven't looked at the numbers, but I suspect the "flood" has grown in proportion with the rest of the site. Probably not getting demonstrably worse

Kyle Kanos

There's always PO if you feel quality is too low ;)

tpg2114

@KyleKanos You had to go there...

Kyle Kanos

Of course. Someone had to....

299792458

6:39 PM

Hahaha ...

JMac

@tpg2114 I'm pretty sure that's just how (online) communities work. On discord for a dying FPS i played, you see posts every day from people saying "of man remember the golden years of [insert year they played the most]" followed by everyone else explaining all the issues with that era, then saying why their earlier era was better.

299792458

No, please don't star that. Someone will see that out of context, and ...

ACuriousMind

@tpg2114 I think the problem is the subjective impression of quality doesn't really work with proportions. The site is continually growing, so (completely madeup numbers follow) where once upon a time you saw 5 terrible questions a day, you now see 20, even though the proportion of terrible questions has stayed the same.

Semiclassical

@JMac speaking as someone who has been through that: those voices aren’t always wrong...

JMac

@299792458 If they know what PO means they either get the joke, or it's too late for their souls

Kyle Kanos

6:41 PM

I second @299792458's remark, please don't star that

299792458

@JMac Right.

ACuriousMind

But 20 terrible questions a day feels much worse than 5, no matter the proportion

tpg2114

@ACuriousMind 100% agree. Particularly when the front page is the same length as it was before, so it's more noticeable.

JMac

@Semiclassical I'm not saying the voices are always wrong. I'll still adamantly stick to my guns that the game was best in it's original years. My point is that the "glory days" are basically always going to be when someone joined a community; unless the community had very noticeable improvements after they join (which sadly also seems rare, especially with the cynical nature of online communities)

Semiclassical

No disagreement there.

rob

6:44 PM

@JMac "cynical" or "cyclical"?

JMac

@rob I meant cynical there. Basically anything you change will be the worst decision ever.

ACuriousMind

As seen with every site-wide change SE makes

Anonymous

@ACuriousMind Well, maybe it's just a subjective bias as knzhou says. When I first joined there were users like Farcher, Floris, dmckee and John Rennie writing excellent answers even to basic questions...so I got attracted to that. And then there were QMechanics' rigorous answers. I mainly came here for the huge number of active professional physicists and with a hope that they'd answer my sweet high school physics questions (which used to be truly terrible now that I look back).

299792458

@Blue So, did you turn Blue because they closed them instead?

:P

:: hides ::

Anonymous

@299792458 Sorta... ;)

JMac

6:52 PM

Did you guys know "a lazer is a type of negatively charged light"?

That was part of a run-on sentence in an answer I just read

ACuriousMind

@Blue 3 of these 5 users are still very active answerers, and e.g. Farcher only joined the site in 2016. There'll always be fluctuations in who the profilic answerers are, and those you just named are far from the only ones that continue to be active.

299792458

@ACuriousMind Right. Similarly, there was a period in 2014 when a user named "alemi" (of coin-sound fame) was ruling the roost. But people have a real life too ...

Not to imply that the active users don't :P

ACuriousMind

Ah, yes, the coin answer :) That was great. And we still have "great answers to everyday questions" to this day - I submit physics.stackexchange.com/a/473105/50583 as a recent example of it, as evidenced by the hail of bounties raining down on it

2019 Physics Moderator Election Chat

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