I am turning to the community to determine a means by which I can limit my incessant desire to participate on this site.
Does anyone, especially one of the more active users (you know who you are), have any constructive suggestions?
I am turning to the community to determine a means by which I can limit my incessant desire to participate on this site.
Does anyone, especially one of the more active users (you know who you are), have any constructive suggestions?
I think there are some unnecessarily cynical views in Nikolaj's answer and the comments to it. It's human nature to like approval from your peers, and upvotes are a proxy for approval - a virtual pat on the back if you will. Of course the flip side is that downvotes are really quite wounding - I hate being downvoted and won't downvote others without serious provocation.
Anyhow, if you find yourself addicted to this site it's because it's more enjoyable than your everyday life. The solution is to look at your everyday life and figure out how to improve it. In my case I'm semi retired and only work for a few hours in the mornings. The alternative to the Physics SE is doing the gardening or some DIY. I mean, come on, what would you do?
For the record I hate your answers because you invariably get in just before me (often when I've nearly finished typing up my answer) and then you rub salt into the wound by making your answer better. You should immediately quit the Physics SE and never come back :-)
I have been retired from active research since 2001 and for me this site is a way not to forget my physics by enjoying the answers and answering where I can without using too many formulas. I have not learned how to use the codes for them.
I would advise you to start reading in depth one of your subjects in your graduate studies. Try to focus your attention on problems that are hard, worry them like a dog with a bone. I believe then you will find that most of the questions arising on this board will seem irrelevant to your interest and you will reduce your participation, which I do enjoy.
Depending on the extend to which you want to remove yourself, you could either get yourself banned or make going online a reward. I mean just look up self-help sites on online addiction in general, sure they'll cover the basic strategies.
Well you could always join reddit ;-)
(reddit's /r/askscience is actually another very good place for experts to share their scientific knowledge)
Seriously though, there are some techniques out there to limit your internet browsing, usually involving some program that will block access to designated websites outside of a preconfigured period of time. I've never used them myself, because if I did, I would waste more time figuring out creative ways to get around the block than I would have on the site it was blocking, but if you don't suffer from that problem you could try this method. Alternatively, if you want to completely shut yourself off from this site for an extended period, you could edit your computer's HOSTS file to point physics.stackexchange.com
to 127.0.0.1
. Again, it's easily worked around, but I guess that works for some people.
An alternative, as Nikolaj suggested, is to get your account suspended. I think there's a precedent for this but I'm not sure what the relevant policies are. You don't have to do something bad on the site that would actually deserve a suspension (and we'd rather you didn't), just ask a moderator in chat or something and we'll look into it.
Another option, which sounds like (and mostly is) a joke but actually has something to it if you think about it, is to become a moderator. Moderators do a lot more janitorial work - editing, reviewing, closing and reopening posts, and other things which can be handled in 10-second chunks - and a lot less asking and answering, so although it doesn't directly force you to spend less time on the site, it does alter how you'd be spending your time here, making it a lot easier to pop in for just a minute or two between your real-life obligations. Plus, you will get thoroughly sick of handling flags after a while. Of course, this would require demonstrating the need for a new moderator election and then winning that election, so it's not straightforward.
In the end, though, it has to come down to your own willpower. As we've learned from handling trolls and spammers, there is no foolproof way to keep someone off the site if they really want to participate.
Since this has been brought up a few times, here's the available info on requesting a temporary suspension of one's account to help with site overuse issues.
The earliest I can remember is a comment of Shog9's:
I have seen more than one person request a suspension voluntarily due to realizing they were unable to balance their time on the site with other responsibilities... – Shog9♦ Dec 6 '12 at 17:36
though he quickly would "generally suggest other ways of temporarily revoking your own access".
This has come up a few times, from what I can tell, in MSO, and particularly Can an account be self-suspended and "Ban myself" button in user profiles. The useful-looking How do you escape an addiction to Stack Overflow? has been closed for some reason. It has definitely happened occasionally but it is my impression that the SE team is in general not particularly in favour of this. In this site, it would come down to whether our mod team think it's the most appropriate course of action.
Note also that like most other artificial devices to stop your participation - chrome nanny, userscripts, host file modifications - it is easy to circumvent by setting up a new account. It does have the advantage that your reputation is and privileges are locked away from you, but if you've managed to sidestep the ban then all you've accomplished as a whole is to make your experience of the site more miserable and more guilt-ridden than before.
To be clear, I don't think this is really the way to go. I don't agree with Nikolaj's tone, but if you find you can't stop coming here, you should see it, at least for the sake of self-analysis, as an addiction, and learn to come to grips with it that way. Find out what triggers you, personally, to come here instead of working on your research, and change those triggers. Or simply drive them down to an acceptable level.
It would be a shame to watch you go, though!
Other commitments in your life will be sufficient to regulate your participation on this site; you just have to ensure that you're not ignoring other opportunities that can help you live your life more fully the way you want to:
Is my participation optimized for the sort of life I could live?
For example, if I was passionate about research and hoping to go into teaching later on, I'd be using the site to:
On the other hand, me coming on to the site becomes a problem if it undermines the sort of life I can lead, such as:
Everyone love this site. Some might ask more questions, some might answer more questions, some might do both, they enjoy doing these. This make them to visit the site often, me too.
It is not a bad thing to visit the site often, it will help you develop your reasoning, your ability to question in a clear way, answer the questions in a better way, in the sense confining the large matter to a shorter paragraph, to make one not to loss the significance in the bulk and every other things.
Generally, it will harm your performance in the exams, your participation in the SE will confine you to use your limited time to learn only some concepts, but you would had learned them in depth. The question papers contain only those questions, which are not in depth, but the questions which are easy. But, as one wouldn't had learnt all the concepts because of his non-economical use of time, he drops from his standards.
If you are going in depth about physics asking questions and answering which are unanswered (rather answering/asking easy questions), it is worth spending time here, as I can assure that you are going to be our next Noble prize winner:) It makes you proud that you are different from others.
Its worth spending time to focus on your course and also participate here, both have some advantages and disadvantages.
The one thing you could do is that you could visit this site only once in a day for 45 minutes (if you could utilize this long time), or visit this site thrice, each of 15 minutes period. I have tried the latter, but I desire to spend more and I go on. So I would suggest you to follow the former.