Making Sciforums more Successful.!!!
- Thread starter cluelusshusbund
- Start date
Well, there was Reiku..........
(Maybe internet is slowed right now. I meant to copy my post before I replied but accidentally deleted it.)
* People don't generally like to be silenced.
* Moderators still have the ability to lock or delete threads.
* Sometimes I'm bored.
Maybe it's a bad suggestion, but it could also turn to be a good experiment. I tend to only stick to certain sub forums, so I can't really judge. This would also assume that threads would not be purged.
:EDIT:
I was replying to Stryder
* People don't generally like to be silenced.
* Moderators still have the ability to lock or delete threads.
* Sometimes I'm bored.
Maybe it's a bad suggestion, but it could also turn to be a good experiment. I tend to only stick to certain sub forums, so I can't really judge. This would also assume that threads would not be purged.
:EDIT:
I was replying to Stryder
You know, I don't know anything about Reiku's work or that whole tempest about it on the physics subfora. What was it, and what was wrong with it?
The changes that are required are really limited and personnel-based only.
The 'effectiveness' of any forum is a simple function: the availability of regulations and the will to exercise power ethically. Even moderate regulation is sufficient with a strong staff component. But no amount of regulation, no establishment of rules is sufficient to protect posters where there is no will to do so, or where there is a countervailing attitude to prevent discourse by the abuse of rules coupled with with the protections that staff status offers. In the more recent flame-outs here, ask yourself: would these offenses have been tolerated if a common poster had done them? Well, no.
I'd be interested to track post content and activity and eventual departure or banning on the site: it seems as though many of the long-term, frequent contributors - which may or may not draw an audience, relating to the economic imperative of the forum - are 'weeded out' at some stage, after such flame-out wars. Some are genuine trolls and might really require banning altogether - where they're merely eccentric, this may be regrettable. But others are important contributors that merely have views that diverge from the agenda of some staff members. I wasn't here for the SF... ahem... "Golden Age"... and I can't say whether such enormous flame-out wars were really functional in the generation of the narrative of SF overall. My suspicion is that they were hugely detrimental.
Firstly, I think many of the culprits involved in such battles remain on SF; whether or no, I suspect that they have contributed to a culture of such flame-wars that continue to this day, with all the requisite character assassination, blatant misrepresentation and vitriol. I believe that this is how this culture has persisted; but worse, with the lifting of regulations for protected classes on SF, some individuals in that latter group now appear to be using the forum as a platform for social progressivism. This is regrettable in that the latter is not inherently a bad thing, obviously: but the methods by which it is advanced on the forums appears strongly unethical. This is no surprise: it's just simple exploitation of an existing power vacuum. The natural tendency of those lacking either ethics or discipline is to exploit such a space for whatever goals they have in mind. Again, that's not inherently wrong, but for some the ends - as they see them - justify whatever methodologies are taken up.
This you would not find on an appropriately-regulated 'science forum'. As such, it's not dissimilar to others on line at the moment and probably worse in many respects. My case is a bit egregious: I can't talk about my own work since it's a bit revolutionary and either a) might permit others to begin stealing it's concepts (I have several competitors at the moment in this critical area) and b) would allow my ready identification - which would permit R/L character attacks by the more unethically-minded of SF and their 'ilk' for their political goals. I doubt these would be very successful, but I have a family. Can I take such a chance? Of course not. But shouldn't Sciforums be a place to talk about one's own work otherwise? Of course it should.
This begs the question as to whether it can be mended. I suspect not; or not as currently existing. The changes that could be made are limited in scope but are essentially untenable at this time or in the foreseeable future. I appreciate that some have indeed been trying - one could hardly miss their efforts, which have been notable and much to be applauded - and I sympathise with the unworkable problem with which they are presented.
Since you probably can't see the thread in another forum I'm thinking of, because it's in the trash, you'll have to take my word for it that I just read this there.
In response to my post of'
Also, there are others on the forum that know what I'm talking about and they could voice their opinion sometime. So, I hope they see the suggestion of allowing posts in cesspool and not having them purged.
Just have Cesspool not able to be viewed to unregistered guests.
In response to my post of'
Also, there are others on the forum that know what I'm talking about and they could voice their opinion sometime. So, I hope they see the suggestion of allowing posts in cesspool and not having them purged.
Just have Cesspool not able to be viewed to unregistered guests.
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Make the atmosphere "more amenable" for them to do so? Introduce a category-specific type of banning that prevents a troublesome or clutter-generating member from posting only in the science section. Which would allow long-term bans to be dispensed more liberally without having to fret over somebody's rights being hastily, universally trampled upon over the whole website.
Any current mod inconsistencies that allow spurts / degrees of fussin' and fightin', flooding disruptions, incivility and crankhood can keep on rolling elsewhere -- it doesn't matter for the rest of the fora. Just keep the namesake part of this place pretty / neat and up to the expected academic / professional standards for adequately boring to death causal passerbys turned-off by paragraph after paragraph of abstract signs and in-house technical nomenclature. But still accordingly attracting the desired applicable authorities who now have a more serene environment -- free from the uninteresting interruptions and follies of amateurs -- for completing navel-gazing inner indexing of their proper knowledge. Supplemented by a then finally growing number of peers for critiquing whether or not such is really being kept up to snuff in the ol' memory banks.
[Note: For any Adrian Monks and Doc Martins out there, there's some facetious sarcasm in the above.]
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Oh yeah! I've been suspended once and issued two infractions during my entire time here and have not seen one of posts or threads in Cesspool (or at least I believe this is accurate.)
On another forum, which I rarely posted on anyway, I kept telling a moderator to F himself constantly (using four letters of course) and various other things. As the story goes, he made me angry. I thought he was a prick. He didn't like me. I don't think he was affiliated with any physical sciences, but a professor in the humanities or something. He thought my words "center of mass" made me look stupid. And he failed to see and give me any credit for my Hawking quote I copied from wiki, and that it came out before the discovery of dark energy. (The dates were the most important.) I didn't get suspended or banned however. I tried too though. (I do know of at least one member here whom is a administrator of the forum that will not be named.)This was all done in a thread unavailable to unregistered guests and my ranting did have some cathartic effect.
Moderators can still lock and delete threads on SF.
Oh, and on that forum you could restrict members to only certain subsections!
On another forum, which I rarely posted on anyway, I kept telling a moderator to F himself constantly (using four letters of course) and various other things. As the story goes, he made me angry. I thought he was a prick. He didn't like me. I don't think he was affiliated with any physical sciences, but a professor in the humanities or something. He thought my words "center of mass" made me look stupid. And he failed to see and give me any credit for my Hawking quote I copied from wiki, and that it came out before the discovery of dark energy. (The dates were the most important.) I didn't get suspended or banned however. I tried too though. (I do know of at least one member here whom is a administrator of the forum that will not be named.)This was all done in a thread unavailable to unregistered guests and my ranting did have some cathartic effect.
Moderators can still lock and delete threads on SF.
Oh, and on that forum you could restrict members to only certain subsections!
OK, if no one backs me up on this quote I just read in the Trash Can on TheScienceForum, then maybe my suggestion doesn't deserve consideration.
"The trash can is the only place I can respect on this forum. You are being a nice person to me and I thank you.
Many here are just being dinks though, and I don't like the ways they speak.
Now if I am free to speak up for myself, this is fine, but man, I have been banned here
already 4 times for speaking my mind. "
"The trash can is the only place I can respect on this forum. You are being a nice person to me and I thank you.
Many here are just being dinks though, and I don't like the ways they speak.
Now if I am free to speak up for myself, this is fine, but man, I have been banned here
already 4 times for speaking my mind. "
I'm joking.
Some of it was "borrowed".
Other parts were of the "Einstein was wrong" variety.
He used to make promises of reform.
He'd behave for a while.
Then he'd backslide.
Then he'd start getting mad and threatening retribution.
Entertaining for a bystander, that's all.
If you put the word sciforums into google, one of his rants appears as the 6th result.
@ GeoffP - Post #125
@ C C - Post #128
I read quite a bit of Truth and Wisdom in both of your Posts.
I became a Member about 33 months ago(although I read SciForums for a few years before joining) and things have definitely "changed", fairly recently.
@ C C - Post #128
I read quite a bit of Truth and Wisdom in both of your Posts.
I became a Member about 33 months ago(although I read SciForums for a few years before joining) and things have definitely "changed", fairly recently.
Do give it a good one.
That is a little amusing, I guess.
I suppose I don't have any implicit objection to a re-evaluation of Einstein, although it was my impression that the relation was fairly straightforward and theoretical physics isn't my field so I doubt I'd be able to pass judgement on him. Any physics people on that might want to make it simple and explicit? Thanks for noticing. I suspect many long-term contributors have marked this also; as to why now specifically I couldn't say. Is it that people are being challenged more frequently recently?
Well thats a hell of a plan;;; those ideas woud seem to solve some prollems such as keepin the intelegent comunity seperate from the riff-raff... the mods work load woud be much less cause the intelegent comunity woudnt need much moderation and the riff-raff let run wild wit-out the aid of moderation... everbody woud get what they want plus site traffic woud increase by 32% which woud make the owners hapy... so... it ant likely to hapen :shrug:
Why not drop the pretence of bein a science-only site an openly accomidate a wider varity of posters by makin a separate area for the people who feel the need to bicker.???
That's where you end up with problems, the sites initial name and direction is what gave it identity, if we start trying to do what all the other sites already do, then it loses it's identity and it just becomes another drone hive.
It would make more sense to create an entirely different site (with different domain) if the intention was to go beyond it's initial parameters. (After all the domain is "Sci" forums, so it's obviously something related to "Sci" that are forums, so that could be short for science, or the "Steel Construction Industry" take your pick. although the latter would likely require union subforums and scantily clad pictures of the fairer sex purely due to machismo.)
GeoffP, I am not absolutely sure of what you mean by "being challenged more frequently recently"...though if we were to add in the observation that some Members do not know how to behave "decently"...throw in some Thumping Hip-Hop sampling...and...Voilà, a Pop Ditty that might just go Platinum!!
Onto a more serious note.
There are a few Members that seem to practice an extreme version of "Do as I say, not as I do", coupled with excessive Pride and Joy in their blatantly expressed hypocrisy.
Not surprising is that those very same few Members seem to exhibit a serious deficiency of any true learned knowledge of the Real Sciences, or any other issues or discussions that they must incessantly, inanely and repeatedly explicate in.
GeoffP, it has been repeatedly mentioned that there are quite a number of young people that visit SciForums with a true thirst for Real Scientific Knowledge.
They come here to Learn.
The most prolific of the "few members" that I am speaking of, though apparently quite proficient at Posting what seem to be purely puerile, if not just plain profusely pathetic, problematic Posts - produce, or present no palatable, nor profiable lessons for any young prospector seeking True Scientific Knowledge!
Wow, so many "P"'s in the last sentence of that paragraph, that I now feel a pressing urge to purge my bladder...
Also not surprisingly, is that those few Members seem to possess no respect for themselves or other Members, no decent mental discipline and absolutely no inkling that they should exhibit, at the very least, a modicum of decorum when Posting on a Public Forum.
I do, however, enjoy my discourses with Members such as yourself, GeoffP, and the other Members of SciForums that Post here for no other reason than to engage in Open, Earnest and Honest discussions.
I sincerely appreciate that these Members allow me to participate in their discussions!
To be clear... do you thank movin childish bickerin to a seperate area such as the cesspool woud cause Sciforums to lose its identity as a science forum... an do you thank such a change woud decrease site traffic.???
Well, maybe if my initial rant about the Physics And Math moderators being inactive, my suggestion would have been better received -meaning they were active.