Forum Announcements

This will be a listing of users that have been banned or suspended for rules violations (other than spambots that have been immediately deleted) Automatic suspensions for exceeding the 25-point limit of infractions are three days. (edit: points system no longer in use) Other suspensions and bans are from explicit moderator action. "Sabbatical" refers to a user-requested suspension/ban (update 4/24/09) ———————————————————— Zephir has been suspended for 1 week for repeated highjacking via off-topic posts of alternative theories in the physics section (including violations of rule 2.5, use of scientific threads to advertise a personal theory)

Some of you may not be aware of the mod queue feature, or have seen it mentioned but do not know what it is. It's a new toy we received in one of the last major updates a while back, which allows staff to mark all posts made by a member as unapproved until staff are able to review it. We use this for a number of reasons, usually as an alternative to suspensions. The time limit we set on these is not set in stone. We can remove it as soon as we think the issues are resolved, or if this fails to be the case, we will either extend the time frame or suspend / ban the offending person. Since we have a thread for banned and suspended users, and since we have started using t…

AI-generated content must be clearly marked. Failing to do so will be considered to be plagiarism and posting in bad faith. IOW, you can’t use a chatbot to generate content that we expect a human to have made Since LLMs do not generally check for veracity, AI content can only be discussed in Speculations. It can’t be used to support an argument in discussions. Owing to the propensity for AI to fabricate citations, we strongly encourage links to citations be included as a best practice. Mods and experts might demand these if there are questions about their legitimacy. A fabricated citation is bad-faith posting. Posters are responsible for any rules violatio…

This is intended to be a thread that is a guide for folks on how to act and post on SFN. Contents i. General Information ii. Replying to Threads iii. Posting New Threads I. General Information Know the Rules Read the rules before you post. Grammar and Punctuation Please try to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation when you post. It is much easier to understand a post when it is not full of run-on sentences and such. Sure, this may add a few seconds to the time it takes to post, but are you in that much of a hurry? If English is not your native language, and you don't have good grammar, that's f…

We've been having some discussions and have concluded that URL shorteners aren't consistent with a good user experience; too often they mask a spammer's attempt to get you to visit a (possibly malicious) site that you wouldn't be inclined to visit if you could see the actual link. So: don't use them here. We have no post-length limits that might justify them. We will assume that new people using them are spammers and react accordingly. If you have a track record, we'll delete the link and give you a chance to modify your habits.

In the event that you need to contact an admin or moderator, please use the private messaging system. A list of administrators and moderators is available; click the icon to the right of a name to send a new message. If you cannot log in or need to contact us by email, send your message to staff at scienceforums dot net.

In previous threads, staff have mentioned that we have on occasion curtailed or removed the ability for people to use the reputation system. In previous versions of the forum software we were able to limit positive or negative reputation limits separately. This meant that the impact of people who wished to use the reputation system to target specific members was always low, and staff could easily reverse it. This no longer being the case means that the system is more open to being abused by people wishing to use it as a form of personal attack. Thankfully, we have had very few cases where staff have had to intervene. For those cases where we have had to do something,…

Dear all, Recently the amount of spam on the forum has increased. We are aware of this, and we are working on a solution (we know what caused it). The spam is generally of the crappiest quality and easy to recognize. Generally, we patrol the forum and remove any spam quite soon after it was posted, but if you think a particular spam message has been missed by the staff, please report it. Best regards, SFN Staff

The staff have noticed an uptick in spam messages being sent by the Personal Messenger system; this is not being tolerated and any member sending unsolicited links or adverts via the PM system risks being immediately Spam-banned. Could we please ask any member who receives an unsolicited PM which is at all spammy to report that message. Below any incoming message Members should see an option to Report (next to Reply button). A single word Spam in the report will suffice - Staff will then be able to investigate and act. The price of keeping our forum spam free is

As discussed in this thread, please consider whether a post to a video link is a violation of our rule against soapboxing. To reiterate the main points there: We are NOT banning videos outright. This will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to see if they violate the spirit (or letter) of rule #8 "Preaching and "soap-boxing" (making topics or posts without inviting, or even rejecting, open discussion) are not allowed. This is a discussion forum, not your personal lecture hall. Discuss points, don't just repeat them." Basically what this is announcing that we've decided that, as an example, a 30 min video posted by itself, to make or rebut a point in a threa…

As you can see, we've re-emerged from our downtime on a new hosting service and on the latest version of our Invision forum software. There will undoubtedly be some kinks to work out from the upgrade. One notable change: you must now log in with your email address, not your username. We'll be checking out the settings and adjusting to the new version, but let us know if you spot any problems.

As some of you may already know, the SFN server hardware is currently located in the UK. I will quote from what was announced to the staff: “This year the UK government passed a bill called the Online Safety Act. A brief description of the Act is set out here, but the tl;dr of it is that there are now a set of laws in place in the UK that put a duty of care on operators of social media sites in order to make them accountable for the things that are posted on those sites, which could be harmful to children and other users. The focus in the media has mostly been around the larger sites like Facebook, but actually, the act is extremely broad” The upshot of th…

There’s been a recent uptick in off-topic commentary about (alleged) rules violations, happening instead of (or sometimes in addition to) using the report post function. Posts that purport to call out bots, sockpuppetry, trolling, even duplicate posts. This approach show a combination of Bad Faith Arguments, Hijacking, & Soapboxing all at once. They add nothing to the topic that’s supposed to be under discussion, and often lead to these issues being debated instead. And if they aren’t being reported, the mods may not even be aware of any potential infractions. Everybody should be afforded due process in regard to potential infractions - we aren’t going to ba…

I hope you are well and having a good Easter! This is a quick note with two updates: GDPR and CPRA requirements now ask that we require consent for third-party cookies, which we do use to serve the advertisements that support the upkeep of the site. You will therefore be presented with a confirmation box if you live in the EU, UK or California so that we are compliant with this legislation. There will be some downtime for the site on Tuesday 11th April starting from around 9am UK time (presently GMT+1), and lasting for approximately 2-3 hours. This is to facilitate some much-needed software and hardware updates. Please do let me know if in this thread …

As of a few minutes ago, I went ahead and merged many of the threads and posts regarding Coronavirus into three threads: I understand that many have questions regarding coronavirus / COVID-19, but I think we can do without 20 different threads on the topic. To reduce clutter, I have created the above threads, and would ask members to please direct their questions / findings to the relevant one. If anyone objects or thinks I have missed something, please let me know. I myself am working from home; time is a luxury I have far too much of at the moment.

Hello all -- I hope you are doing well in these odd times and keeping safe. This morning I've applied an update to our forum software, which obviously brings a few visual updates and changes in comparison to the older version. This was necessary to ensure we stay up to date with the latest security features and patches. However, from a functionality perspective, I believe this will mostly remain unchanged. Please do let us know in this thread if you have any issues with the site, and I'll continue to monitor the site for problems.

Staff have recently decided to update the text of Rule 7: ! Moderator Note Advertising and spam is prohibited. We don't mind if you put a link to your noncommercial site (e.g. a blog) in your signature and/or profile, but don't go around making threads to advertise it. Links, pictures and videos in posts should be relevant to the discussion, and members should be able to participate in the discussion without clicking any links or watching any videos. Videos and pictures should be accompanied by enough text to set the tone for the discussion, and should not be posted alone. Users advertising commercial sites will be banned. Attached documents …

Apologies for today's downtime. This was due to a power outage at our hosts. All should now be up again and good to go, but let us know of any issues you encounter.

Staff have decided to update the forum rules to include the following: This is in response to a number of threads and certain members who have made threads here under the premise of 'just asking a question,' only to reveal that they are in fact trying to peddle conspiratorial or otherwise nonsense ideas. While covered to some extent by pre-existing rules, we have decided to make it explicit that we will not be hosting these sorts of threads, if for no other reason than the fact that they are a waste of everyone's time.

Unfortunately our domain name registration happened to expire on Wednesday, causing us to go down for about a day until the, uh, responsible party could be hunted down politely asked to renew the domain. We should be back now, though you may find it takes a few hours before different ISPs catch up and start letting you access the site. Sorry for the inconvenience.

We've recently had a few posts by newer members asking for advice and expert input on ideas they are unwilling to disclose publicly for reasons of IP protection. Staff feel that this goes against the spirit of this forum as a place for open discussion, and we have therefore updated the rules under Section 2 to include the following:

In section 2, we have added the following: Please note that the above rules apply to all sections of the forum, including private messages. We have occasionally witnessed actions from people who for some reason thought that posting in PMs and/or status updates would not be treated the same as forum posts would be, often regarding civility. You are still expected to follow the rules in all areas of the site.

Hi everyone, We've upgraded SFN to version 4.1 of our forum software, and things are looking good so far. Take a look around and enjoy the new features, and post here if you experience any weird problems. Some things to note: You may enjoy the new Activity stream, showing everything that's happening on SFN in real time (the page automatically updates). There are some minor updates to the LaTeX rendering we now use, which are detailed in an updated thread in the maths forums. The search system and "Unread Content" button may not work correctly for a day or so -- the system has to reindex all the posts and topics, so search results won't be correct. …

Congrats to Klaynos and Mooeypoo on becoming super mods. Good picks.

As you might be aware, websites are increasingly turning towards secure HTTP (HTTPS) in order to increase security and safeguard user privacy. Browsers such as Google Chrome are placing increasingly stringent requirements on non-secure websites, so we have been investigating switching to HTTPS by default. At SFN, we're planning to trial this from next weekend. Since our forum software only supports one protocol or the other, we are planning to switch over to HTTPS next weekend. From your perspective you should see very little difference, asides from a nice green padlock symbol on your browser bar. However it's also possible that, for a short while, you might see some…