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What do people think about Physics.SE engaging in some type of partnership with Physicsforums.com? Physics forums has over 3 million posts and 300,000 users and contains a great deal of relevant and high-level threads. SE allows for to the point and consensus-driven answers to targeted questions in an efficient way- conversely, the forums allow for discussion. Do you have any suggestions for a mutually beneficial relationship or object to the idea? Suggestions perhaps could include a chat room for physics forums users (I don't believe they have chat rooms) that would be non-invasive yet introduce individuals to Physics.SE or anything.

Suggestions, objections, no opinion? Of course, what everyone in the community wishes will rule.

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  • $\begingroup$ They are not interested in using our chat function. Any new thoughts aside from the below $\endgroup$
    – Seth Rogers
    Oct 31, 2011 at 18:44

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We actually considered reaching out to PF early in the site's development, but we got shut down by their moderators. Their opinion appears to be that any mention of a competing site constitutes an advertisement, which is against the rules there. If we could think of some way to create a partnership that they would actually be interested in, I'd certainly love to see that happen, but we haven't had any ideas that seem promising. Even so, I do occasionally send people over to PF when they have particularly discussion-y questions.

Physics Forums does have a chat room of some sort (I've never participated), but they only open it up for a few hours at a time every few weeks because of the stress it puts on their server.

EDIT: I've been thinking of a couple of things we could possibly offer Physics Forums:

  • As in my comment, every once in a while I'll see someone asking a question on PF which is addressed quite well by a question on Physics.SE. In those cases it would be great to be able to post a link to the relevant PSE question in the PF thread.
  • PF occasionally gets people who, though not trained physics researchers, have ideas they are interested in publishing and are looking for feedback on the work. (example) Ever since their Independent Research subforum was shut down, there is no appropriate place on their site for those kinds of discussions, but some of them can be accommodated here. In particular, either this site or theoreticalphysics.SE could accept questions about what prior research has been done in a particular field, and our chat room could be a good place for people who are legitimately interested in getting feedback about their ideas.
  • The General Discussion forum gets a number of non-physics-related questions that are (or could be) addressed by other Stack Exchange sites. (example, would be great for money.SE) Once people at PF are aware of the Stack Exchange network through this site, they might also be interested in making use of other SE sites.

I'm making this community wiki so that other people can add items to the list as they think of them.

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  • $\begingroup$ They are open to discussing our suggestions at this point. $\endgroup$
    – Seth Rogers
    Oct 18, 2011 at 18:42
  • $\begingroup$ Oh good, have you been in touch with the people in charge there? $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Oct 18, 2011 at 18:47
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, one of the administrators. $\endgroup$
    – Seth Rogers
    Oct 18, 2011 at 18:51
  • $\begingroup$ OK, cool! I'll start thinking about ideas again and I'll try to pull people into the chat room to get discussing. At a minimum, it would be nice to have their blessing to be able to post relevant links to physics.SE questions and answers on PF threads. $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Oct 18, 2011 at 18:53
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I saw an ad in the top banner when I visited:

enter image description here

This could just as easily be an ad for this site. If Physicsforums.com is an important site, sponsoring an ad there would be a good way to drive traffic here.

Perhaps CHAOS should get involved in this?

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  • $\begingroup$ That's a good suggestion which we've been considering. We're creating an ad featuring questions from the site which may be useful in this instance. $\endgroup$
    – Seth Rogers
    Oct 21, 2011 at 15:29
  • $\begingroup$ It is a good idea, although FWIW registered users don't see that ad. (At least I don't... I'm not sure if it's only a subset of registered users though) $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Oct 22, 2011 at 1:41
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidZaslavsky - Do you see any ads? Are you using an ad-blocker? $\endgroup$
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Oct 22, 2011 at 19:10
  • $\begingroup$ Ah, it looks like an ad blocker was at fault. (I didn't realize I had it installed, since it was failing to block ads on other sites) $\endgroup$
    – David Z
    Oct 22, 2011 at 21:35
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I have no Earthly what you are proposing, technically.

That said, of course I'm in favor. I'll go make an account right now.

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    $\begingroup$ The idea is to brainstorm how to bring advanced PF users to Physics.SE to ask their high-level questions. The partnership ideas are towards this goal. $\endgroup$
    – Seth Rogers
    Oct 20, 2011 at 23:29

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