This board is slowing sinking into a terrible sea of pseudo-scientific crap, and only aggressive policing by the moderator can save it. I've hung around sciforums for some time now, and there is a definite downward trend. The moderators here need to quickly identify crackpot threads and shuffle them off to the pseudoscience section where they belong. When someone starts a threat explaining how the universe it really a helical transverse wave packet, or some other such nonsense, it should be moved immediately. Yes, this is intolerant censorship, but in my opinion there's no problem with censoring incoherent drivel and there is no reason we should have to tolerate crackpots who pollute sciforums without contributing anything back. Let's be honest, most of the time there's really no question whether or not someone is a crackpot. We all know that nobody is going to develop a legitimate paradigm-shifting physics theory and publish it on sciforums. As of the time I posted this, ten of the top twenty threads in Physics & Math were crackpot threads. You're already looking at a signal/noise ratio of 1, and that's not even including the crackpots who clutter up legitimate threads by trying to answer people's honest questions with incorrect, incoherent ideas. The way things have been going for the past few months, there are basically two ways this board could go; in another year it could either have relatively few users, all of whom are legitimately interested in science (the way it was back in the good old days, when only maybe one thread in 5 was a crackpot), or it could continue its downward spiral until it's no better than the sci.physics newsgroup.
Well I'm sure correcting those crack-pot's will give the same or even more payoff as talking them down.
Unfortunately crackpots aren't at all interested in being corrected. In all my time here I've never seen one crackpot react with anything other than hostility and/or defensiveness when knowledgeable people try to critique their ideas.
We had the good idea of ignoring their threads, which I do as I couldn't be bothered trying to decifer their self-made language, and they tend to go away. However now they are filling the legitimate threads with their BS and confusing the hell out of the people here who want to learn something. It's pissing me right offPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
So, when will these relativist crackpots finally get banned ?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Vortexx, I think you misunderstood. They are talking about people without mathematics and experimentation to back them up.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
It's not that easy to police, I think. Crackpot posts can immediately be moved to the appropriate forum. But what about threads about legit science, that are hijacked by crackpots? What do we do to prevent topics on curved space-time to evolve into nonsensical discussions about the aether?
1) Remove obvious crackpot threads immediately. Put them anywhere you want, or simply delete them. Who cares anyway? Despite the hemming and hawing of James R, the line is actually pretty damn clear between crackpot and legit. 2) Delete crackpot posts in otherwise legitimate threads, or split the thread and move those posts into another thread in another forum. This isssue has been raised here over and over again -- I was one of those who fought it in the beginning. The bottom line is that James R does not want to be a moderator; he wants to be a spectator. He seems to think that any sort of actual intervention is contrary to the purpose of the forum. We even took votes on what to do with the crackpots. The forum's readership was clear on what it wanted. James R simply responded that he wasn't actually capable of doing what the readership wanted. It's now time to plug physicsforums.com again. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! All you folks who are tired of the bullshit and subsequent moderator apathy, come on over. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! - Warren
Also, I'd like to note something that I think is pretty funny: James R spends most of his time wearing the moderator hat going through posts and deleting or mollifying the angry language often used in posts here. He doesn't seem to stop and think about the reason the bad language is there in the first place: because scientists don't much like crackpots, and crackpots don't much like scientists. Very few of us desire to get into name-calling, credential-bashing nonsense, but often it's the last arrow in the quiver. Proper moderation would deal with this underlying problem and separate the two classes of posters. - Warren
sorry chroot, i have to support JamesR's ways. Afterall, God is but a spectator himself. If its easy enough to identify quack-pot from non-quacker, then why not just ignore the quacking and bother with those answers that make some sense.... Any thread you open, will inherently wind up in the same boat (or alternate parallel multiverse for those of you who don't like boats), because so long as misconceptions exist, people will post quack-pottish concepts. I think for those who are not aware of who is a quack-pot and who is not, if they have a real aspiration towards physics, their first year at Uni level physics will dispel the nonsense anyway.
The problem, GW, is not that it's tough to separate crackpottery from legitimacy at all. As I said, it's trivial for most people. The problem is that the crackpots essentially pollute, or litter. Almost every single legitimate post on this forum is eventually hijacked by one or more crackpots and dragged down to become the 150th thread in a row about why special relativity is wrong or how flying saucers will soon invade your anus. As a result, no productive discussions can happen on this forum -- unless you think that a mixture of morons, paranoid schizophrenics, anarchists, self-proclaimed quasi-deities, and science-fiction kooks is capable of some collective productivity. The only legitimate threads that escape this barrage of nonsense are those that are simply too advanced for the crackpots to even digest. lethe's differential forms thread, for example, was immune to the crackpot disease infecting this place. The bottom line is this: of course, it's easy to separate the signal from the noise. But why should I have to? - Warren
And another thing -- what about the legitimate, educated, intelligent people who come to sciforums, see that it's full of horseshit, and click on by? I for one know that if sciforums looked when I first saw it as it does today, I would never have bothered at all. James R was, however, not the moderator when I first joined. - Warren
Hi Warren, "I for one know that if sciforums looked when I first saw it as it does today, I would never have bothered at all. James R was, however, not the moderator when I first joined." This is inappropriate flaming. I've been on sciforums.com for 4 years now (try to beat that Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) and when I first came here, I simply could not understand any of the high-tech talk here (being a second year student etc etc)... At that time, the forum was unmoderated. Moderation has NOTHING to do with the quality of the posts (look up old posts from long-left members like "Plato" or "Boris" and you'll see what I mean). The reason why there is too much crackpottery here is simply because sciforums.com has grown a lot larger since then (I think there were like 50 members back then... now we're up to 10.000 or something). Also, the combinations of several other forums (religion, pseudo-science) sometimes makes people coming to sciforums.com for those forums peak in the physics&math forum, posting their opinion, blabla... I think James does a good job at moderating, but from a personal point of view, I would agree that a more strict "no-science = delete/move" policy could do this forum good. Perhaps a second moderator ? Bye! Crisp
Why not just ignore quackpot posts. If you worry about others responding just make it known that you think it's a quack post by.. quacking... <bgsound SRC="http://www.naturesongs.com/bbwd1.wav">
Exactly! Hey, all you people complaining about the signal to noise ratio.... put the people you think are crackpots on IGNORE. No more noise.......... If people are responding to the crackpots anyway, well that is their choice. Why should you be able to take that choice away from them? Put the responders on ignore too! If they are someone you respect that you don't want to put on ignore, then THINK about that. They CHOOSE to respond to these people. Why do you want to limit their choices? Because you can't drive by an accident without rubber-necking? Sheesh, just because you can't control yourself doesn't give you the right to censor other people. Ignore them. Period. If you can't do that, stop complaining. Adam
chroot, Stop whining like a little girl. If someone doesn't agree with you then you think they're a crackpot. I'm sorry to burst you're bubble, but "crackpot" is a very subjective term that only people with low IQ's use. Why don't you enlighten all of us and tell us what a "crackpot" is? And I want a real definition, not examples. I'm still trying to figure out what makes me a crackpot. Is it because I have alternate explanations for phenomena explained by relativity? I guess anyone who doesn't accept "conventional" explanations must be a crackpot. Maybe I'm a crackpot because my knowledge in math is limited. The universe must be too complex for someone without an advanced math degree to visualize, right? I know, I must be a crackpot because I'm stubborn. Crackpots never admit that there wrong, right? But I've admitted that I was wrong a number of times on sciforums. Does that mean I'm not a crackpot? Maybe a crackpot is someone who doesn't agree with chroot. Maybe you label someone a crackpot not because their model or theory is not possible or unscientific, but because you're jealous of their creativity or intelligence. Or maybe you're just so closed-minded that all new and original ideas frustrate you. Let me remind you again, feel free to to start as many "non-crackpot" threads as you wish. You complain about our crackpot threads clogging up the Physics and Math forum, but you contribute nothing. Should all of us "crackpots" stop posting and wait for an original idea to come out of your limited consciousness? You claim that "crackpottery" is killing this forum, but if it wasn't for "crackpottery", this forum would be long dead. One more thing, James is a much better moderator than you could ever be. Maybe one day, when you resolve your insecurities, you'll gain the wisdom to judge posts based on their scientific values, and not on whether you "like" or "dislike" them. Tom
Beercules, Well, that was a stupid question. I assume that you think that there is more proof that space-time curves than that aether exists. Please prove to me that mass actually curves spacetime and that gravity isn't the result of an exchange of particless. Oh, I forgot, I guess curved spacetime is true because it's included in your physics textbook while aether is not. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Tom
