What is the ultimate purpose of physics.stackexchange - revisited

Question

I note What is the ultimate purpose of physics.stackexchange?, but it seems to me that the accepted answer doesn't answer the question. I have no special wish to get excessively philosophical, but I think being clear what we're trying to achieve will help clarify vexed issues like homework.

Leaving aside what SE are trying to achieve (profit presumably), it seems to me that good reasons for the effort we put into this site include:

1. Fun
2. Encouraging interest in physics
3. Education
4. Research

Experience suggests that research will only ever be a tiny part of site activity because there are too few research physicists interested in participating. Let's also leave aside Fun because it's a given - few people will do things that aren't fun unless they're paid or forced to. If you're with me so far that means we basically have two aims, to encourage interest and to educate. Arguably encouraging interest is also educating, but at a popular science level, in which case our sole purpose in life is education.

Since this is supposed to be a question rather than just a diatribe, I guess my question is whether you agree with my analysis and if not, why not?

Answer 1

Well, John, it's actually pretty simple from my perspective. The purpose of this site is to promote the creation and trading of value for value for those interested in thinking about and doing physics.

This, in my opinion, is the only valid reason for this site's existence. I've learned a good bit here from other's answers as well as through composing my own answers; a process which forces me to think very clearly about the particular topic and, in so doing, sharpens my own thinking and deepens my understanding.

I assume that I'm not special in any way and thus that others desire to create and trade value here in the same way.

I certainly feel no obligation to participate here for some "larger cause". My participation is for a purely selfish reason: I profit from it (in the larger, proper sense of the word).

I hope that is the reason others volunteer here to answer and moderate; that they too find value and profit for themselves in doing so.

Answer 2

The primary purpose is to "Make The Internet a Better Place™". What this means is that the Q&As should be of the form that are useful to others. People searching for a conceptual explanation or the resolution of an apparent paradox should find this site and be helped here.

This has a long history. If you've ever googled for help with something and come across a forum, you might have been frustrated by the signal-to-noise ratio on that forum. I recall coming across tons of tangential discussion, and sometimes pages and pages of discourse which reaches no resolution. Besides that, many of these are cluttered with duplicates and one-time problems that are really too specific for anyone else to benefit. Forums are useful to the people asking questions and the handful of community members participating in the discussion. But the wider audience from the Internet has a hard time with forums.

Stack Exchange tries to do away with that, by keeping posts focused and only allowing posts that will help many people. This was the essence behind the "Too Localized" close reason that many of you may remember, — the point was that while the answers may help the OP, there's a very little chance of it helping anyone else.

This is also one of the main reasons why we close homework. Besides the no-effort-please-do-my-work-for-me, homework questions don't help any other visitors. While the answers may be conceptual, it is pretty hard for someone with the conceptual question to find the homework problem via Google or otherwise, as the question focuses on the problem, not the concept ¹. As for people who want help with the same homework problem, well, that's pretty rare.

So the main purpose is to also help people other than the OP, people who will come to the Q&A after searching related terms.

But that's just the primary purpose. As you mentioned, fun is another factor², as is encouraging interest and conceptual education. The "fun" bit extends itself; I personally don't participate just because it's "fun". I write answers because my own understanding is strengthened by doing so³, not just to help the OP and the other readers.

I'm not intending to say that we aren't here to help each other. We are. The community feeling is a great thing, and helping each other learn physics is a good goal. But one should try to have a look a the larger picture, helping a couple of people on site is dwarfed by the countless other non-members we help.

Research is a different beast. Our non mainstream policy, in its attempts to be as objective as possible to avoid unnecessary arguments, stops us from developing new physics⁴. I guess this is OK, because frankly speaking, the people here have better channels to develop new physics; by discussing with colleagues and collaborators. The ones who choose to try to develop the theory here are usually the type that are proposing some non mainstream ideas. Besides all this, the limitation of discussion on the main site is a damper here, though that is easily remedied with chat.

Note that this is in no way saying that research level questions are discouraged, just that using the site as a platform to develop new theories collaboratively is discouraged.

^{1. Which is why we encourage making HW question conceptual; people will actually find the question then}

^{2. Don't let this blog post tell you otherwise ;-)}

^{3. The act of codifying nebulous thoughts on a topic into clear English is something that seems to immediately highlight one's own conceptual misunderstandings and inadequacies.}

^{4. Neither does MathOverflow, they have a policy against open questions and the like, and they still maintain a good level of research-level questions. MathOverflow disallows well known open problems, but they don't seem to have any research being done on site, even if the posts may inspire research.}

Answer 3

In addition to "Encouraging interest in physics" and "Education", an important part of most SE sites is also to get real feedback on both questions and answers. This is what allows some of us to learn provide clearer answers and ask more focused questions.

Answer 4

It isn't possible for there to be a single ultimate purpose, since the existence of Physics Stack Exchange depends upon a diverse range of purposes:

• those within the community contributing to the site,
• the unpaid moderators
• the company financing the project
• the motive of the founders
• other people and group motives I'm not aware of

Maybe a better question would be to ask: What's the purpose behind you being here?

For me, the fundamental reason is given in Alfred Centauri's answer. I liked the idea of contributing to the site, putting it down on my CV as one of my interests, and the interviewer could take a look at some of my answers and hire me. Now that I'm more aware of my incompetence, I use the site more passively to learn from others, in the hope I might actually get round to asking good questions more regularly.

Answer 5

Sticky content that allows SE to get lots of hits. That allows the investors and owners to make money.

Answer 6

The purpose of physics stack exchange is simply to allow students from across the world to ask their homework questions, and for students and experts to gain personal fulfillment from answering other's people's homework questions, improving assignment grades around the world.