These times are not good times for the moderators to step back too much from help closing question, as the flood of homework, popular, effortless one sentence etc questions does not stop, on the contrary. The site is getting drowned in these things and there is no end in sight.
Has Stack Exchange or just the Physics moderators decided, that Physics SE is to be a popular physics site in the future?
I need to no this, because at present visiting the site is no longer fun for me. Whenever I click the site and look on the questions list these days, they are flooded with homework, popular, and way to basic posts of 1rep users and people who have almost no physics knowledge of their own.
All I do then is flagging this things like mad, but I come no longer to look for questions that interest me and which together with their answers I like to read, try to answer anything, and asking what would interest me is pointless under these conditions because it would be flooded down and nobody would take not of it.
Just coming here to flag things, without being able to see or do interesting physics is not what I click this site for. I want to learn interesting things beyond the popular and very basic level.
So again, @DavidZaslavsky and @dmckee:
** What is the targetted future of physics SE? Is it meant to be a site for popular and very basic physics as it is at present? And people interested in undergrad upward level physics better look for another place to go?**
I am not interested in taking part in an almost exclusively popular level, non technical, physics site.
@DavidZaslavsky yes exactly, if our or another moderator tell me that Physics SE is indeed meant to be a purely popular physics SE site in the future, I should consider deleting myself indeed. This is why I am asking. I could then really put away any hopes that the site will improve again and stop coming here.
The targeted future is to try and get a good audience of all levels. Yes, we wish to get more emphasis on the higher level topics. But not at the expense of the lower level ones.
@Dilaton what matters is not what the moderators tell you. You have your own idea of what constitutes a popular physics site, and if the site as you see it matches that criterion, then you're welcome to leave.
@Dilaton Happens all the time. The really good questions get asked first. Even Stack Overflow had many, many interesting questions at first. Now you find a gem in a thousand normal questions
@ManishEarth yes that I know. When I listen to you, it seems that the more important part of the site of the site is the popular and very basic part, which is largely increasing and has indeed started to dominate the picture of the site. Everything else is optional and nobody than me misses it if it goes away.
It is really a pitty, first when I joined the site looked like a great place where physicists, students, and enthusiasts could lean and enjoy physics together internationally and unrestricted by geographical separations. I liked it that I could took about topics here with international physicists who know what they are talking about, about topics I have nobody to ask in my institute. It was really great. But today, the site is only good for popular science.
Learning here about a bit more advanced things at a technical level is no longer possible, and this is what I came for here as I joined.
I've noticed a sudden increment in the close vote queue (minimum 10 per day, upto 15 or so) for the past few days. Maybe people (except a few) haven't noticed that mods are having a vacation. I can feel their absence in the active page. They haven't informed anything about this to the community.....
@Dilaton maybe you can switch mode of operation away from browsing and hoping to come across an interesting question towards asking substantial questions instead. There are still some good people around who can answer them, and it would help with the quality issue. Just a thought....
@Dilaton Gimme a break..! I've heard the same phrase (atleast converging to the same context) again, again & again (in h-bar, main and of course, meta) to about some 20 or more times --- What is the point of everything? What are you trying to bring here? No offense, but looks more like some "rant" to me..!
2
Dilaton, In my view "The world is not burning" and it won't for now ;-)
Instead of crying for the gone, what you can do is - Bring your optimist in front :D
I understand that matter cannot pass through other solid matter because of the electrons that orbit an atom prevents this but I was curious to know if it is theoretically possible to somehow get passed this problem caused by the electron shell and by doing so would this allow th effective passage...
"In recognition of your contributions to Stack Overflow, we’d like to invite you to create a professional profile on Stack Overflow Careers 2.0. A Careers 2.0 profile is a great place to showcase your professional work as a programmer [...]"
@DavidZaslavsky I've seen Susskind mention (and answer) the (title) question.
@gugg Be careful, programmers have arcane weapons like garbage collectors and branch prediction. You'll be piped to /dev/null if they see through yoir disguise
@DavidZaslavsky Anyway, I think Susskind appears in "The Elegant Universe" YouTube (or something similar) in some office and points at the wall, and discusses walking through it, although I think he said it will take him longer than the age of the universe. Something like that.
