Questions tagged [discussion]

The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.

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82 votes
0 answers
2k views

In praise of "... and links therein"

We've all seen them: short comments saying Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/..., and links therein. Also, we've all seen bunches of useful links to ...
75 votes
0 answers
1k views

Qmechanic reaches 100k rep

Please join me in congratulating @Qmechanic upon reaching the 100k rep milestone. We can all agree that his/her contribution to this site has been nothing short of outstanding, and the recognition ...
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71 votes
0 answers
1k views

Should we get a vector logo?

Right now, we use a raster logo instead of a vector logo. For those who don't know, a raster is an image made of pixels. If you zoom enough, you'll see the image become pixelated (as is the case with ...
56 votes
1 answer
1k views

Please don't use computer-generated text for questions or answers on Physics

In the past couple of weeks, a new generation of computer language-generating tools has become available to the public. The main bit of news is about a product called "ChatGPT," but that's ...
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52 votes
0 answers
1k views

How to conduct a discussion on meta and not kill everyone in trying

Dearest Physicsmeta Stack Exchange readers, I just got done reading through this discussion, its many supporting discussions, its answers, their comments, the answers to the supporting questions and ...
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44 votes
0 answers
888 views

Be nice with the comments

Just a reminder to please be nice with the comments. It seems to me (in a completely statistically unsound survey based on my own impressions) that we're getting a bit snarky with the comments at the ...
35 votes
0 answers
1k views

Turning in my diamond shortly

Heyo folks! The time has come for me to wind down some of my activities here, and so I will be turning in my diamond and resigning as a moderator in a few weeks time. It's... been a year... and a lot ...
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35 votes
0 answers
2k views

Physics Stack Exchange "Ask me anything" (AMA)

Purpose The user base of Physics Stack Exchange is rather diverse in terms of cultural background, career progress, field of expertise, and personality. While the discussion in hbar is lively, it is ...
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30 votes
0 answers
2k views

The User, The Myth, The Legend

User Floris has recently become the third user to obtain the Legendary badge, which is one of the less awarded badges out there. Being one of the most prolific contributors to this site, I just wanted ...
29 votes
0 answers
541 views

How I learned to stop worrying and start asking questions

As has been noted in the past, particularly in Question self-destruction: why don't experts ask more questions? and in Does reputation correlate with the question-to-answer ratio?, and also here, this ...
25 votes
0 answers
620 views

The Theoretical Physic proposal is back underway!

In reference to: Disposition of Area 51 Proposal: Theoretical Physics The proposal for creating a "Theoretical Physics" site will not be closed. Thank you to the Physics SE community — You ...
21 votes
0 answers
565 views

Giving newbies time to think

Maybe it’s just me, however, there are some questions where there exist much better answers somewhere which are not the accepted one. I understand that for an answer to be accepted, it just need to "...
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20 votes
0 answers
228 views

Should we refrain from using canned comments when reviewing?

Since the review queue update, I have seen multiple instances of the following situation: a new user asks/answers a question, a reviewer finds the question unclear or lacking sufficient detail and ...
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20 votes
0 answers
354 views

Regulating user names: protecting researchers

There is a user on physics.SE with the name michio kaku https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/27903/michio-kaku who I strongly doubt is the real michio kaku given his response here A question for ...
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19 votes
0 answers
592 views

Does physics.SE help research?

Does some concrete evidence exist that the physics.SE site offers any help with research? (Note that research in physics may not be confused with theoretical physics, that is a specific thing.) Were ...
18 votes
0 answers
193 views

Please consider supporting arXiv trackbacks on the mother Meta

One long-standing feature request for the Stack Exchange engine is the implementation of trackbacks for mentions of the arXiv on Stack Exchange sites. In general, if you have a blog and you blog about ...
18 votes
0 answers
475 views

Ask Me Anything 12th July: guest's introduction and questions

I will be the next AMA guest. So here it is a brief introduction of myself, and you can suggest some topic/questions that can be discussed during the session. Academic Background. I obtained a master ...
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18 votes
0 answers
304 views

A "cite this paper, will you?" button?

Just for everyone's attention, a nice question has popped up in the MathOverflow meta: Formatting citations to the literature on MathOverflow, shooting towards a button that will insert a formatted ...
17 votes
1 answer
520 views

T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶q̶u̶e̶s̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ ̶q̶u̶e̶s̶t̶i̶o̶n̶

This has been bothering me for a while, and I'd like to speak up about it. I see, with a much higher frequency than I would like, comments that look, with rather little variation, like This ...
16 votes
0 answers
186 views

Education tag and questions on physics education

Today, I have seen this question closed as an opinion-based question. I have read previous (short) discussions about the issue of questions on physics education topics in SE (see also this), but I do ...
15 votes
0 answers
329 views

Why Can't "Bounties" be Awarded To a Question?

I understand that bounties are mostly used to attract better answers but one of the reasons to award a bounty to an answer, as recognized by the PSE, is to reward an existing beautiful answer. I ...
14 votes
0 answers
348 views

How is this question "about engineering"?

Why was this question Why is the ground warm during winter and vice-versa? deemed to be "about engineering" and closed, when the OP clearly stated he was not asking about how to employ the ...
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13 votes
0 answers
325 views

2021 Community Moderator Election

The 2021 Community Moderator Election is now underway! Community moderator elections have three phases: Nomination phase Primary phase Election phase Most elections take between two and three weeks, ...
12 votes
0 answers
442 views

September 6 Physics AMA Secret: question pool

I am Secret and will be the next guest for AMA on September 6 at The h Bar.16:00 UTC (2:00 Syd time and 12:00 EDT. For other timezones, check here). Post questions you like to ask below AMA took ...
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12 votes
0 answers
261 views

Area 51 proposal: Science Educators

I recently proposed Science Educators, a site where teachers and tutors of any field of science (physics, chemistry, biology, earth sciences) can ask questions. I decided to join forces with all ...
12 votes
0 answers
565 views

Theoretical Physics SE - a place for research-level questions

Just recently, Theoretical Physics - Stack Exchange has entered the open beta phase. It is a research-level question site, so we aim at questions that cannot be answered by a standard textbook. We ...
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11 votes
0 answers
253 views

Why are "big-list" questions no longer allowed?

I've recently seen the following (actually very long and well accepted) question on MathOverflow. Examples of common false beliefs in mathematics. Which I think is a great "question" and one ...
11 votes
0 answers
231 views

2020: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network ...
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11 votes
0 answers
265 views

Links/resources for the 2016 moderator elections

The 2016 Community Moderator Election is now underway! Here are the relevant links and resources: Election page: Includes a brief statement from each candidate. Official questionnaire: Questions that ...
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11 votes
0 answers
109 views

Tag cleanup - burnination

In my recent perusal of the tags, I came across a couple that seemed unnecessary. Can we get rid of the following tags? proof-that-1-plus-1-is-2 Seriously, why? Even Mathematics doesn't have this as ...
user avatar
10 votes
0 answers
201 views

A possible canonical Q/A on symmetric time dilation?

We have lots and lots of questions on the symmetry of time dilation. That is when two observers are heading towards each other how can each think their clock is running faster? These questions ...
10 votes
0 answers
454 views

The gamma^5 question

The question Can one show that ${\gamma^5}^\dagger = \gamma^5$ directly from the anticommutation relations? was recently closed as homework-like. I agree that this is in somewhat of a grey area as far ...
10 votes
0 answers
149 views

New New Design Launched

The "new new design" just went live, thanks for the feedback!. If you see any CSS glitches, please start a new post, and tag it with "Design" and "Bug" so I can track them easily. For now I'm using ...
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9 votes
0 answers
114 views

2022: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year. As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
  • 101
9 votes
0 answers
159 views

Is it time to unlock/vote to reopen old book recommendation questions?

Looking at old book recommendation questions, I noticed that some of them were closed or locked almost a decade ago. But our policy on book recommendations today is much more liberal. Is it time to ...
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9 votes
0 answers
205 views

Was the new font incompletely implemented?

As you all might have noticed, our posts appear in a brand new font since today (as requested long ago. However, there are some places where the font has not been implemented, and this leads to some ...
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9 votes
0 answers
128 views

Is there anything physics.se can do to help chemistry.se growing?

I made here a short analysis on why chemistry stats look bad (3rd bullet point). I believed with bio and phy.se existing, chemistry as connecting branch and huge overlap in research would be able to ...
9 votes
0 answers
422 views

Theoretical Physics is close to launch

The Theoretical Physics SE is now rather close to launch, having a good number of participants committed. But, its commitment score is rather low, in part because people committed over a long period ...
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8 votes
0 answers
357 views

Can you help me to make question 483886 more specific?

I did this question but they say it's too broad, I modified but I think they consider it still to broad. I don't understand why, can you help me? What is the approach to the mathematical modeling?
  • 1,680
8 votes
0 answers
188 views

Has Stack Exchange changed how it counts daily visits?

I realize that this is almost certainly a network-wide question, but I am asking it here, because this is the only site on which I have seen it manifest: Has there been a change in how daily visits ...
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8 votes
0 answers
178 views

Prematurely closed "duplicate"

This question, asking why oceans look blue but rivers don't, was closed as a duplicate of another question, which was answered with a good explanation of why large masses of water, including oceans ...
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8 votes
0 answers
187 views

Best of PSE 2016 - Best community work

What was, in your opinion, the best answer in 2016 which where two or more authors contributed a significant fraction of the content? Vote either by posting an answer linking to your favorite ...
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8 votes
0 answers
384 views

Splitting EmDrive questions into reference-request and reference analysis

We just got another EmDrive question, https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/185380/emdrive-in-relation-to-newest-nasa-article-does-it-extract-energy-out-of-the-q, and much as you would expect it ...
8 votes
0 answers
194 views

We have more than 12,000 anonymous feedback votes

Just a heads up for those of you who have access to the so-called moderator tools (10k+), you can see various statistics related to the anonymous feedback mechanism (i.e. that from persons of no ...
8 votes
0 answers
139 views

Distribution of answers and questions

When I was lamenting the (relative) lack of fluid dynamics questions in the chat yesterday, it was mentioned that I may not be the only one to feel that way given the number of people who answer those ...
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8 votes
0 answers
479 views

2012 Moderator Election: Town Hall Chat

In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the ...
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7 votes
0 answers
214 views

New bioacoustics SE site may be of interest to you

The Bioacoustics Stack Exchange has reached the Beta stage and is LIVE! It is also in a critical stage, and we need your help to keep it alive. Bioacoustics uses methods from physics, signal ...
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7 votes
0 answers
187 views

Could we link the "Image equation to TeX" question from TeX SE somewhere?

It has been discussed before that one should not post images of text or formulas. However, many users still do – probably because they consider typing all this text too much work, which to some degree ...
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7 votes
0 answers
148 views

Improving the quality of canonical resource request questions

We currently have a system where there are a bunch of canonical resource request questions linked here, which theoretically cover all the bases; then theoretically almost all questions can be closed ...
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7 votes
0 answers
220 views

Reopening a question about the recent LIGO event

My recent question about the significance of further LIGO events was appreciated, it appears, by all but five people. I'm lobbying for reopening. This question is not too broad--it's exactly ...
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