You know, the logo on the tabs. It starts to shimmer and look a bit more green for tabs on the main page when left too long. Is this an intentional design change? Or am I just sleep-deprived?
@Dilaton The first one could be rather broad. (Just an idea, not sure of this). Generally speaking, one doesn't need expertise in a domain to judge this. Thing is, you can have an interesting question ("How does string theory work") and have it too broad. If you don't want it closed (I'm not closing it), try to provide an answer to demonstrate that the q is reasonably answerable.
@Dilaton I wouldn't have voted to close those and I doubt very many others would have either. I don't think the close would be acted on. I'm sure CrazyBuddy has his reasons but one close vote doesn't automatically get something closed.
@ϚѓăʑɏβµԂԃϔ Do you have any reason for voting to close physics.stackexchange.com/q/64944/2751? If so, provide it in a comment (and let me know here). If not, next time, use "skip" instead :) "Close" and "Do Not Close" both leave footprints (Close, well, closes it and DNC helps remove it from the queue prematurely), Skip just skips it
Not saying that you need to skip all posts that you don't know much about; there are always obvious closes. And as a non-mod you need not be too sure of your close vote as it's only 1/5th of a close. But if it turns up in the queue (meaning that others have VTCd or FTCd), and you have no clue if it should be closed, then just skip.
otherwise that poor OP would have had his reps set to 94-100=1
@BrandonEnright yep
@BrandonEnright I had to undelete the post, then unlock it, and then watch the magical "clear spam/offensive flags" option appear (didn't even know it existed till recently)
@Dilaton Stop harassing people about their close votes. There's a reason it takes 5 non-moderator votes to close a question.
For clarity, "I think this question should not be closed because <reason>" is not harassment. If you want to express your disagreement with a close vote, that's how you do it.
@ManishEarth @Dilaton: Don't start a fight with me with your uncertain knowledge in what really happened. There's a small issue in all review queues which happens to "me" 2 or 3 times and everytime I forget this thing. It happens only when my broadband slows down sometimes.
I don't know whether you people will understand this...
Say I click on the "VTC" button and the dots begin to move near the button indicating that my VTC is registered. I think due to my connection, it loads for a while. I click on it again. It's still loading. I click it several times and once it loads completely, everything in the queue gets close-voted..! That happened yesterday.
You guys don't notice this, because you don't look into other questions. You can see a lot of questions where my vote stands single (and finally they get erased due to inactivity)
This issue not only happens to VTC, but to flags too, when 4 or 5 popups show that "You've already flagged this question for mod attention"
Well that's even better however I think you and anybody else should be able to flag things for closure and the discussion to stick strictly to whether something should be closed or not and why.
@Dilaton: I don't want to fight with anyone around here (neither do I want to point out someone with so much negativity by looking at some issue thinking I'm smart without looking into the issue deeply..!
@ManishEarth @Dilaton: If you're expecting some sentence like this, then I'll just spit it out..!
"I'm not smart like you guys..!" Is that enough..?
@Dilaton: And here after, don't think that I'm interested in close-voting stuff. I only VTC & flag bad homeworks, ranting questions, personal theories, spams, etc.
Don't let personal attacks like that get to you. Just because he wants to be malicious doesn't mean anyone else will respect him for saying things like that. Even if he thinks that you don't understand the physics doesn't mean anyone else either thinks that or thinks that was your motivation for a close vote (whether or not the close vote was intentional)
Why do these people think that I'm some mod having special powers..? Only a mod's VTC is threshold..! My close votes stay for a while and then they get erased and I can no longer close vote on that question..!
Also, to a question to be closed, one needs 5 members..!
If there aren't anyone left, then it's not a problem..!
@BrandonEnright Thanks. You should also have a look at this comment:
This is a perfectly good interesting theoretical physics question, it should not be closed as for example CrazyBudy says here. Darn, how I'd like to have 3000rep in order to be able to mitigate such bad and terribly wrong closevotes ...! — Dilaton10 hours ago
@ϚѓăʑɏβµԂԃϔ David addressed that. You should flag his comment and move on. If Dilaton continues to call you out I'm sure David or others will take appropriate action.
@Dilaton: One more thing Dilaton. I always skip these TP questions and probably the tags QFT, ST, QG questions unless they really are a spam or some own theory. My lack of knowledge in these fields doesn't mean that I'm blind and unable to read English..!
Again, don't start a fight with me like you previously did with 3 or more members around..!
@ϚѓăʑɏβµԂԃϔ No, I certainly wasn't expecting that. I was just saying that you shouldn't blindly vote. I wasn't saying that you do blindly vote, I was just saying that "if you do, then don't do it". As a moderator on Chem (which I'm a complete novice at), I know perfectly well that one doesn't need domain knowledge in most cases.
It's OK to vote to close when you feel a question ought to be closed, even when you're not sure. As a 1/5th close vote, it's OK if you're not sure because you don't know enough :) Just that in cases where it's not immediately obvious why a post should be closed; then try to give a comment. And if you don't use it already, make good use of the skip button whenever you have no clue what to do with a post. Looks like you do use it though (unfortunately we can't see skips)
I completely understand the broadband thing, once I accidentally deleted a post (instead of reopening) and my connection dropped before I could fix it :P
Yeah, Dilaton's message was sort of out of line. I think David addressed that well.
I suddenly can't get any browsers to Facebook. It says I might need to configure my network to Facebook. I asked a friend to go to my Facebook from their PC and they had no problem. This just started. I am using a public internet connection from my hotel. Help?
Stating that nothing can happen at a few TeV, because nature has already performed "experiments" in that range, and nothing has happened, is a foolish if not depraved statement of pseudoscience. Direct, focused, grouped, head-on particle collisions are manifestly distinct from the more diffuse, i...
The question itself is wrong, because the LHC isn't a takeout diner that you can be "banned" from. It's an exclusive club which only well-pitched experiments get to
One of my friend's mother spends half her year at CERN. He has been there many times too. I am severely disappointed that he didn't press any big red buttons saying DO NOT PRESS while there -_-
@BrandonEnright Makes for a good question though: What would happen if you sent a hamburger through the LHC (pretty sure that hamburgers aren't charged)
@BrandonEnright AFAICT that answer can be deleted. It's not mainstream physics :S
When the LHC gets decommissioned, they should de-core it and install a larger chute. Inside the chute will be a magnetized (or charged) capsule, inside which humans can sit. Then charge a million dollars per ride.
I'm pretty sure that that would be deadly, but clever advertising can get past that :P
"The electron, positron pair perhaps a manifestation of ring singularity to hypertorus cycle, imbedded in the wavefont surface of our universe, with photons themselves, as integrated wavicles of this electro-positronic wave-state, 'riding' around this hyper-hoop, looping around hyperspace through future and past, in a most cool manner."
@Crazybody, thanks for the clarification and explanation of the internet connection issue, in fact I am traveling and facing similar things at present ;-). Otherwise, the closevotes I mentioned looked very strange and unjustified to me. Apoligize for insulting you if this is the case, I did not mean it. In fact, I think you are a bright student, I am much slower in learning and there are many things here on the site I have no clue about...
@BrandonEnright explains why I haven't heard it before; I try not to frequent such forums because it's not always easy to tell the difference between quack and mainstream.
I do always worry a bit about conformation bias though. If I never see or never let myself see information or argument contrary to my beliefs or what I think to be true then I'm likely to continue believing them even when they are not correct.
@BrandonEnright Of course. Thing is, there are well-researched theories that, while not yet mainstream, have a chance. And there are kook theories that have been sketched up with little effort.
I have my personal theory that consciousness has a lot to do with QM (owing to the fact that it is QM which restores free will to physics), but it's just a curiosity for me -- not something I think is worth pursuing at this stage
And as long as there's nothing other than intuition to back it up, it's not more than a kook theory :P
@BrandonEnright I am with my parents in north-western Germany, almost as far north as Denmark. The landscape is very lovely, many wild animals, birds etc. But it is very far out the country side, so the internet connection is very slow and sometimes even breaks down .... And now even my akku is down, GRRR !!!
@Dilaton "shut up and calculate" seems like the least controversial way to handle it. I don't know the math or have enough QM background for it though so I'm stuck with crappy interpretations.
QM is of the type where it's usually better to look at it as a mathematical framework, nothing more. If you want to get deep into interpretations, you need to understand the maths completely and be fluent with it.
I understand the idea behind the "landscape" and all of the knobs and dials for tuning that could solve the hierarchy problem on the apparent fine tuning of the cosmological constant. I just don't think that because there are 10^500 possibilities that it's an asset.
It doesn't actually answer or solve any problems. Lenny seems to think that having 10^500 options is an asset and I think it's a non-answer.
My favorite joke is as he proofed 2-3 or something like that in the course of a derivation of something related to black holes, if I remember it correctly. That almost made me spit my coffee on my screen :-D. His lectures are full of such funny remarks and jokes...
Yep I agree, those guys invoking the landscape, multiverse, anthropic reSoning etc are just too la
zy to narrow down the space of solutions further by mathematical and physical insights :-p
@ManishEarth as with almost everything in life. That's why life and learning are awesome. The more you know the more you know all the stuff you don't know.
Focusing and grouping high energy particles in a collider is a way to increase the rate of collisions of individual particles, in head-on collisions. This focusing and grouping of the particles prior to collision does have effect: It provides scientists with so much imaging data to analyze that t...
@BrandonEnright I keep forgetting about the protection tool. I use it whenever popular qs get newbie comment-in-answers (and Qmechanic seems to like it a lot), but I forget that it's useful in cases like these
Though I personally think that it shouldn't be preemptively applied on popular questions (not pop-sci questions, questions that somehow get lots of views and votes)-- these are a good way to attract new users
@BrandonEnright arguably, the worth of this site lies in writing answers, not questions. While I have gotten extremely insightful answers to my question here, I've asked only a few and most of the times in cases when I expect the answer to be deep.
Indeed almost all of the useful information comes in the form of answers. You still need just the right, really good questions to get good answers though.
What physics.SE is useful for is this: In the process of teaching physics to others, your own physics will improve a lot. I've gotten a lot of great insights into physics by clarifying classmates' doubts. I've only been here (P.SE) for a month, but it has helped immensely. Writing answers is a great way to clarify your own knowledge. Knowledge is a sort of abstractish bundle of fluff.
@BrandonEnright yep, Qmechanic is an awsome wise and nice theoretical physicist who exactly knows what he is.doing and talking about. It is good that we have him as a mod. And on queytions he chooses to answer he writes so nice and detailled posts :-). I guess he has such a deep knowledge about everything that there is not much left for him to ask ... And he is alays very nice and helpful.
@ManishEarth: That ping (which I included along with Dilaton) was really to bring you into attention if you were alive in SE at that time) and the argument wasn't really with you at all..! ;-) (Hope you know that already)
@ϚѓăʑɏβµԂԃϔ I wasn't sure: and I don't like to assume that there is no problem when dealing with others in my capacity as a mod. So I assume the worst, and go on :P
I assumed that because a linear resolution of 5000 works (in cut3d -- helps create data files for graphing), a 3D resolution of 500x5000x5000 should work too (after all 5000^3 is more or less the same as 5000, right?)
When cut3d didn't respond I naively assumed it was done. Went onward to the next step: running gnuplot (the graph tool). That hanged, and then I realized what went wrong :P
I suddenly can't get any browsers to Facebook. It says I might need to configure my network to Facebook. I asked a friend to go to my Facebook from their PC and they had no problem. This just started. I am using a public internet connection from my hotel. Help?
