Timeline for Level of questions?
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39 events
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| May 23, 2017 at 12:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/
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| Dec 15, 2010 at 13:49 | comment | added | Sean Tilson | It looks like this will not be like that, which is fine. It isn't snobbery to notice you have something elseyou would rather do. I am sorry that you don't see this yet. It would be snobbery if it were a judgment of how worthwhile the endeavor or person is, but it isn't. It remains a simple fact that if you want to get something done there will be things you can not do. | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 13:46 | comment | added | Sean Tilson | I don't mean to advocate for getting rid of the low level questions, just to point out that they have a very real affect on who will be visiting the site. Thee was this level discussion early on. I asked the question then, and it seemed that the consensus was to keep the site open, which I think is good a priori. I was just trying to point out the affect it will have. I am not a physicist nor will I ever be, so I can't judge what is going on here. I think there should be a site for every field like this, but at a high level so that people can benefit from it, like on MO. | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 12:01 | comment | added | Noldorin Mod | @Sean: Well I do consider it snobbery, and I'm quite keen to stick up for the low and mid-level physicists here. Quite frankly, if you're not a fan of this, please go somewhere else, because that's how the site is going to be. If on the other hand you feel you can be tolerant of different levels of questions, then you're welcome to stay; it's your choice. | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 3:40 | comment | added | Sean Tilson | (cont. from both sort of) The main way a site like this grows is by word of mouth (I think), but that requires it being something people are willing to mention. For example, I thought MO was awesome when I first saw it because of the high level of inquiry, but I would not think about mentioning Math.SE to anyone I know with a PhD. They honestly have better more important things to do, and that isn't snobbery, that is reality. If you want someone to come here ask yourself "Will this person actually learn enough here that they would come back?" Can you say that about PSE and your advisor? | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 3:33 | comment | added | Sean Tilson | @Noldorin: I don't see this as snobbery at all, I think of it as a realization that one only has a finite amount of time to do things in, and there is too much out there to do all of it, and you must choose. The "charter" of the site does seem to say it is for all people interested in physics, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have standards in the quality of the questions. Some questions are just written poorly, and need to be dealt with. | |
| Dec 15, 2010 at 3:26 | comment | added | Sean Tilson | I am not sure how many people have participated in meta.MO, but from what I have read there it appears that the site started out at a very high level. There is a lot of behind the scenes work that is done. The reason you don't see a huge amount of crackpots is that their questions get closed down because they are in appropriate and the discussion is taken off of the main site to meta.MO. | |
| Nov 15, 2010 at 10:11 | comment | added | Noldorin | @David: It doesn't have to be that way indeed, but I suspect it may be. Physics funnily enough is not always a very technologically in-touch field. Not like computer science or engineering, for example. Plus, something tells me the research-level collaboration done within universities is always going to take the foremost role. | |
| Nov 15, 2010 at 7:35 | comment | added | David Z | @Noldorin: why do you think most high-level physicists will be so averse to this site? (I think in practice you may be right, but I don't think it necessarily has to be that way.) | |
| Nov 14, 2010 at 16:04 | comment | added | Noldorin | @Joe: As a largely experimental science, and knowing the nature of most physicists, I'm tempted to believe most high-level physicists will not even touch this site... though I could be wrong. I do however strongly support your creation of a theoretical physics (research-level) proposal. Questions about quantum loop gravity and string theory for example belong on a site of their own really. | |
| Nov 14, 2010 at 10:41 | comment | added | Peter Mortensen | +1. This is an excellent answer in itself, especially the Stack Overflow anecdote. | |
| Nov 14, 2010 at 8:16 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | (contd) That's not to say that a good answer cannot come from somebody else. Merely that if a large chunk of the users aren't research active, the ability to answer the kinds of questions PhD students/post-docs/faculty are interested in is likely to bymuch more patchy. | |
| Nov 14, 2010 at 8:11 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | @Noldorin: I really am not trying to be snobbish about this. On both CSTheory and MathOverflow you can ask a precise question about a technical aspect of a recent paper and get a very good answer, often from one of the authors themselves. For something like this to happen you need a userbase that is regularly reading new papers and keeping up to speed with progress in the area. In scientific subjects this nearly always means people doing research full time, simply because of the time commitment necessary, as well as the background knowledge required to parse a modern scientific paper. | |
| Nov 14, 2010 at 3:27 | comment | added | r_31415 | (cont) Nonetheless, I think that not doing anything to welcome specialized questions does affect the overall usefulness of the site. | |
| Nov 14, 2010 at 3:23 | comment | added | r_31415 | @Noldorin: Are you referring to Joe or to me? Anyway, even if I don't agree with Joe, I can understand why he wants 'high level' questions and answers. However, you're making a very good point that I didn't want to address. It's that tags like undergrad, PhD or postdocs are mostly useless simply because academic qualifications are a poor measure of people's understanding of any subject. As you say, you may know more than the majority of people around here and that's perfectly fine, no matter your academic degree. | |
| Nov 14, 2010 at 2:34 | comment | added | Noldorin | I am truly dismayed by the snobbery I see here. If you want to feel good for down-trodding other people, please do it on another site. I am at the end of my undergraduate degree in physics, and probably know more than the significant majority of people on this site, but I try not to let it get in the way of anything. We should not discourage learning of any group of people! | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 22:32 | comment | added | r_31415 | I understand and that's true, although I don't think that's the gist of the problem. Are you willing to put a question to know if there are enough users that can provide high level/quality answers to a high level/quality question?. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 22:12 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | @Robert: I think "students" can be interpreted as anything from the time you take your first physics class in school up to PhD. To be able to consistently get answers to hard questions you really need a core of users who are PhD students, postdocs or above. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 22:05 | comment | added | r_31415 | @Joe: You mean the tag 'students'? | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 21:56 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | @Robert: I think that is setting the bar too low. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 21:23 | comment | added | r_31415 | @Joe: The site is being explicit about the level expected: "Physics - Stack Exchange is for active researchers, academics and students". Case I: There are enough users with high level questions and answers. Case II: There are not enough users of this kind. In case I, you only need to post a high quality question and see the response of the community. In case II, we need to come up with ideas to attract people with high level questions and answers. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 20:46 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | @Robert: No, I don't accept that that is the case. You simply need to be explicit about the level expected from the very start, and try to attract high level users early on. While a lot of people might have a stab at answering a question on a site which comes across as a pop-sci Q and A site it does not imply that they are deluded as regards their level of knowledge. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 20:31 | comment | added | r_31415 | @Joe: If that's true, it is unrealistic in a physics proposal (because of your argument 'There are many orders of magnitude...'). Of course, Mathoverflow avoids crackpots because of its overall high quality, however, by no means the number of crackpots is high enough to be considered a problem. It's about 2 % or 3% of all the users. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 20:02 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | @Robert: I think this runs counter to the guidelines on proposing sites. Everything I've read from the StackOverlords has recommended aiming at the high end first. There are any number of mathematics crackpots, and yet MathOverflow managed to avoid these problems. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 20:00 | comment | added | r_31415 | (continued) However, to reach that point, we need to have enough users to answer very specific questions. Otherwise, those questions go nowhere. But if you think you can reach that point of having high level questions and answers quickly, please let us know. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 19:58 | comment | added | r_31415 | @Joe: I guess it is natural the difference. There are many more users interested in physics in a recreational manner than the likes in CSTheory. I don't think the idea is getting enough users and then magically the quality will rise. No, instead the path is the following: Wait to get enough users, then some users will ask high level questions that in turn produce high level answers. Therefore, the amount of low level question will diminish (in the same way in which MathOverflow maintains the number of inappropriate questions in a minimum). | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 19:33 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | (continued) There are many orders of magnitude more people who will happily try to explain the uncertainty principle or black holes than there are who can solve the Schroedinger equation or find the Schwarzschild line element. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 19:30 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | @Robert Smith: I participated in CSTheory from exactly the commitment stage, just as I have with this site, however the experience couldn't have been more different. I am actively participating in it, where as here I already have one foot out the door. This shouldn't be the case: I am a physicist after all. However appealing to the lowest common denominator makes the site all but useless for research level stuff. The idea of simply getting enough users and hoping quality content is not an approach that I think is likely to work. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 19:12 | comment | added | r_31415 | (continuation) Also, I'm very surprised to see people expecting to enter a site which has everything they want from the start. Precisely, BETA stage is the point in which the site is defined to serve the users' needs. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 19:03 | comment | added | r_31415 | @Joe: It could be, but take into account that MathOverflow has 8260 users (of course, I take for granted that a sizable amount of them are not active users), however, there is enough users to answer very specific questions. Even so, most of the questions receive one or two answers, which is not ideal. That's exactly what you expect when dealing with this kind of sites. I'm not sure that CSTheory Stack Exchange is the right comparison, however, if you know a way in which it is feasible to enforce high level discussion, I'd be happy to read that. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 17:26 | comment | added | Joe Fitzsimons | @Robert Smith: I think that is entirely the wrong approach. If you want high level discussion it has to be enforced right from the start. That is what MathOverflow did and it's what the cstheory stack exchange has done, and both are extremely useful resources. I don't believe you can do this the other way around. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 6:42 | comment | added | r_31415 | @Eric: I don't think you're in the minority, however, we need to be patient since the site is young and the number of users is not enough to produce high level questions and answers at a significant rate. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 5:09 | comment | added | Eric Zaslow | I understand your point, but disagree. Most of the basic questions have been asked many times, and that is why researchers write textbooks -- edited textbooks. Honestly speaking, the reason people come to the site to ask these questions is because it is more accessible than a bookshelf, bookstore, library. The benefit of having a site for grad- or research-level questions is that there are no standard references for many of them. Now I see I am in the minority here. My lament: there are other places to find answers to undergrad-level questions of this type. Not so for the hard ones. | |
| Nov 13, 2010 at 0:23 | history | edited | Robert Cartaino | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Nov 12, 2010 at 21:40 | history | edited | Robert Cartaino | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Nov 12, 2010 at 21:29 | comment | added | Noldorin | +1 I very much agree with Robert's answer here. | |
| Nov 12, 2010 at 18:02 | history | edited | Robert Cartaino | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Nov 12, 2010 at 17:57 | history | edited | Robert Cartaino | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Nov 12, 2010 at 17:32 | history | answered | Robert Cartaino | CC BY-SA 2.5 |