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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What to do with 'universe' and 'space' tags?
If you look at the universe and space tags you'll immediately notice that except for one or two of the questions the rest either has wrong tags, are closed or else are hugely down-voted (by the way, ...
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Too many comments on answers?
E.g. Mechanics around a rail tank wagon
It seems to me that when most answers have 30+ comments, it becomes very hard to follow what is going on or have a constructive discussion.
On my answer I ...
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Yet another "What level?" question. This time for physics 101 homework.
Consider "help with coefficient of friction".
A basic physics 101 question, and a one-and-a-half step variety at that. As questions-that-students-have go there is nothing unusual about it, but there ...
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Is the site working?
I signed the petition and committed to participating in this website. This pledge accounts for some of my involvement. However, it seems clear from tracking the site statistics that Physics-Stack-...
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What to do with tag wikis?
Having gained 1500 reputation, I didn't lose any time and created a tag wiki for classical-mechanics.
I quickly found out that creating something useful isn't easy at all. Actually, I am not really ...
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Does this question belong on this site?
The question Sonic boom equivalent for speed of light barrier seems to have provoked much debate in terms of whether this question is appropriate, in level and content, for this StackExchange site. ...
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How to deal with closed questions and questions to be closed ?
The current system is to add an answer to What questions should be considered to close by 500+ users? for question to be closed, but it is not obvious what to do when the question are closed. The ...
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Interpretation of quantum mechanics
The wiki article on interpretation of quantum mechanics discusses 16 different interpretations. It is a subject that probably will continue to come up among users. And I personally think that the ...
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Is chemistry an abstracted subset of physics
I was really disappointed to see the chemistry site on area51 having just 32 followers compared to roughly 700 for physics.stackexchange and 3.5K+ on math.stackexchange.
Isn't chemistry also "up ...
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Tag synonyms for voting
Post here tag synonym proposals for voting.
For example: what tags should by synonyms of "quantum-mechanics"? See also this meta post.
This post can also be used to suggest minor changes to a tag, ...
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What tag should we use to indicate "how does X work?" ?
This can help distinguish questions about specific problems and theoretical physics from "practical" ones that tend to generate interest in people that are less interested in science and math. I am ...
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Mathematical Physics: Does it Belong here?
Does mathematical physics questions belong here, or on math?
Say, for example, I wish to ask about Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems-- basically they are just the theorems and the solutions of ...
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Structural Dynamics Numerical Method Question: Does it Belong here?
I just wonder whether numerical solution to structural dynamic question belongs here, or belongs to Math SE?
An example of such a question would be: What is the stability of Newmark numerical method ...
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Are history of physics questions allowed?
I've been meaning to ask about the timeline of discovery of a certain physical phenomenon on the main site, but I thought I should probably ask a more general question here on meta to clear the air:
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user172
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How to deal with ambiguous / wrong wording in questions and answers?
How do we deal with wording that is wrong or ambiguous?
Particularly when the mistake is a very common one, or a widely miss-understood one.
For example, the question on water in a vacuum, someone ...
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Mathematical methods?
I was disappointed that my question about eigenfunctions of the fourier transform was closed so quickly. Given the ubiquity of the Fourier transform in physics, it seems like an excessively narrow ...
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What questions should be considered to close by 3000+ users? [closed]
As long as we don't have many hi-rep users, it is useful to have a place with list of candidates to close; at least it worked well on other betas.
Rules:
Add a link to the candidate for closure ...
user68
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Where should research-level questions go? Theoretical Physics SE or Physics Research SE?
Among users of Physics SE there is a group of people who wants to have their 'Physicsoverflow', that is, a group oriented for research-level questions.
It is almost impossible to turn this SE into ...
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Nominate and elect our temporary moderators
update Our first four moderators have been appointed (in alphabetical order):
Cedric H.
David Zaslavsky
Noldorin
mbq
Congratulations! Please respect their judgement but also don't hesitate to post ...
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Level of questions: what do we do now ?
There has been a lot of discussions about the level of the questions and the quality of the questions.
It seems to me that we have a core group of users, that are following Physics SE from a long ...
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My question was closed on Phys.SE. Can you recommend me another Internet site where my question might be on-topic?
My question was closed1 on Phys.SE. Can you recommend me another Internet site where my question might be on-topic?
Here we keep a list of other Internet sites that might help students2 of physics. ...
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Quantitative Questions?
While I am not too bothered about the level of questions per se on this site so far, I am slightly disturbed by the lack of any quantitative questions.
The existing range from high-school to ...
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Can we get rid of the "philosophy" tag?
I know there are good tags and not-so-good tags, but this one in particular just irks me. Physics is not philosophy; philosophy is not physics, and if we have a "philosophy" tag on the site, it's ...
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Do we like the current background on Physics SE? [closed]
Personally, the graph paper design that is characteristic of many StackExchange sites, and currently is the background for Physics SE, is not pleasing to my eye. In fact, it has made me not feel as ...
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Level of questions?
The level of questions (and answers) on Physics is not high enough.
I'm not saying this snobbishly, but because if the answers are not
high quality and accurate then the website does the community a
...
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Specialized questions
Are specialized questions about some detail of a physics paper appropriate? (ie this)
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Do we have a language policy?
I'm looking at What is the temperature of the surface and core of a neutron star formed 12 billion years ago now equal to?: part of the question was asked in Russian, which is the first time I can ...
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Are engineering questions OK?
What would be the real-world implications of the Kessler Syndrome? is essentially an engineering (applied physics) question. If we ignore the specifics of that question, should we accept applied ...
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This is currently a site for people at all levels. Let's make something really positive from this - distributed labs.
This is from a meta level positive rant I temporarily appended to an answer to a question about performing the Cavendish experiment at home. I realized how few lab type experiments we reference ...
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Where are all our committed users?
Looking at our Area 51 page I notice that it says about 10% of the users who committed to the site proposal have actually signed up. This is a little worrying given that the private beta is almost now ...
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Write an Elevator Pitch / Tagline
The Elevator Pitch
This isn't as easy as it sounds. Imagine the user who will never read your FAQ and you have two seconds to grab their attention. It should be catchy but descriptive. It should be ...
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How should we promote the site?
Question #7 of the 7 essential meta questions is about promotion: once the private beta ends, how do we get people, and especially experts, to sign up and start asking and answering questions? I ...
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Is it okay with you to write "seed" questions?
To increase the amount of knowledge on the site (in question and answer form), I am considering if I should write some specific questions that I could provide answers to myself, with others answering ...
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Should we allow computational questions?
I'm wondering whether questions such as these should be considered appropriate on this site:
Mathematica to help for an Hamiltonian problem
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/107/conversion-...
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Did you know there is a chat room for physics?
Sorry for such pseudoquestion, but check it out:
http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/71/physics
user68
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Towards a canonical homework question
Note that the site's current policy on homework questions is found at
How do I ask homework questions on Physics Stack Exchange?
which will always have the current version of the policy.
Many ...
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How should we assign credit for ideas?
Professional physicists often jealously guard their good ideas, since they are afraid that competing researchers might steal them and publish first. As a junior scientist, I am sometimes appalled by ...
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The design looks high school-y, don't you think?
How is this site conceived? Math Overflow is a pretty valuable
tool for research mathematicians. There is a parallel site
for undergraduate-level math. If Physics Overflow/Area 51/Physics
is to be ...
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How do we deal with perpetual motion and other hoax questions?
Fortunately, no questions of this sort have been asked yet. I suppose it will happen sometime, but I have no idea how we should respond. We could simply mark for deletion, but this will only cause the ...
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Astronomy/Astrophyiscs related question here? [duplicate]
I'm doing Astronomy as a GCSE (at high/secondary school) and the teacher often goes above the course, and we (the students) often ask above what the course requires. But because its a GCSE there's a ...
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Are "Puzzle" Questions Appropriate?
May I ask questions that I know the answer to, but are puzzles? For example, can I ask whether the level of water in a cup of ice water goes up or down while the ice melts? This is a standard ...
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Shall we force to use SI?
It seems a lot users here will be from USA, but still SI units are standard in science-level physics and may encourage broader participation. What do you think?
user68
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Wikipedia like questions
My feeling is that we will have a lot of "Basic explanation of xxx [theory | principle | ..." questions.
What is your opinion about that ?
Mine is that we should not hesitate to point to wikipedia (...
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Can I ask several related questions in a single thread?
I have several physics questions, all of which are about the sloshing mode of water. Should I ask all the questions in a single thread, or create separate threads?
Return to FAQ index
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Physics subfield tags and general tag rules
Since we have a fairly broad definition for what is allowed for discussion, we'll probably end up with a number of variations on the standard physics subfield tags. What are some general rules we ...
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What to put in the FAQ (the "on-/off-topic" section)?
Half a section of the FAQ can be edited (just copied the image from math.SE):
It was recommended we just include the on- and off-topic stuff, e.g. copied from Super User:
Super User is for ...
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How basic is too basic?
My own daughter asked - only two days ago - "What is physics"? While that may be a little too simple - there's plenty of definitions easily available - how simple can (or should) we go on this site?
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