Suggestions, Comments and Support

To question what the news and media tell us and to investigate ourselves what may or may not be true. I use to watch conspiracy theories on YouTube as a kid and some seemed real 'out there' but others seemed some what legit based on evidence they examined and provided. Now I just recently read that YouTube started removing these conspiracy theory videos for some reason... do you think that is a good idea (all I see is what the major media companies have to say)? Don't you think we should have different opinions out there and stop putting an imagine on the world "conspiracy theories" to mean "crazy/tin-foil hat/nuts" but instead to mean a voicing of opinions. And you got t…

Is there any little problem with SFN you think needs to be solved? Something we could do to make SFN better? Something we could change? Give you a foot massage? Anything? Post your ideas here if you have any.

I was wondering what people's suggestions might be for things we could do for our 100,000th post celebrations? Please don't reply with things like "parteh!!!!111" etc, because they're annoying. I was thinking something along the lines of an alternate colour scheme/style or some major site improvement, etc.

I would like to know what is the difference between: 1. scientific speculations, and 2. pseudo-speculations as it relates to this topic -- "Speculations", and the "Trash Can" topic. Thank you.

I can understand why the application of negative rep is limited but is it possible to set it so that it can be applied to more than one person a day as I wanted to dish one out to to two people today but couldn't? Is it possible to limit it to issuing to one recipient each at a time but only once in a day from you.

Holy cow . I have read through 2-3 threads in this area, and the amount of vitriol that gets aimed at people is amazing . “STFU, you stupid, ignorant denier” seems to be the standard attitude . Not a “denier” , BTW. But I am amazed at what I have seen reading on a science site . I have read comments from scientists about how they were hatefully attacked , stalked , fired , etc for expressing concerns about issues in the climate science processes , and then I come here and see it on a smaller scale in a place I expected to see rational , scholarly and respectful debate . Seems to be a pattern here . Not good .

New style: love it? hate it? Tell us here. Constructive criticism only please.

I noticed that my own reputation increased considerably after passing 100 without any analogy to the quantity of my posts nor a significant increase in quality (IMHO). I am wondering maybe the reputation system is influenced by time: an ancient member getting reputation points only by the fact old posts are being voted positive by newer members who are influenced by previous positive voting. So as time passes by, I am getting more and more positive votes without doing nothing. Do administrators have statistical elements about this?

yes. Why can no admin administer the rules publicly as the police is doing this? They are afraid, but of what? Since the begin of civilizations “rules” are misused by people above us to suppress everybody who is different. One of the first physicist, Giordano Bruno, was burned alive, because he violated the rule “we are the middle of everything…” Galileo was forced to deny his findings. A unknown number of scientists is murdered, put in jails, in madhouses and their voices are silent. If not that much (mostly by wars) people with knowledge had been silenced we would today certainly at least 1000 years further. (The millions of casualties of the great plague in th…

Do you think that there should be an SFN user of the year award? This is what I was thinking... There could be an award given to an SFN user for a great post made, or some sort of great contribution to SFN. First, nominees will be picked by everyone who wants to pick someone. Next, there could be a pole to determine the winner. The user who wins will be awarded in a simple way. What do you think of this idea?

Over the years, we've had many stances on discussing creationism. Our latest: we've successfully rebutted all those tired old arguments ("If we came from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?"), and seen so little success, so now we just link those folks to TalkOrigins.org, where all the scientific information to correct their honest misunderstandings lies waiting in a single place. However, it's been pointed out recently by a Member Reported Post that we have an obligation to continue to discuss these topics rationally, calmly, and with rigor. If we don't, people who need this knowledge may not get it from places like TO. We have them here, asking questions. Whether…

I'd like a second opinion on something I was faced with elsewhere. It's not my intentioin to bring a discussion from another forum here, but to get an unbiased opinion about something that happened elsewhere. A while back I presented an arguement whereby I proved another member's assumption to be wrong. After I posted the correction to the error I got the following reply, in part -------------------- ever since you re-joined this forum you have seemed eager to prove me wrong every time I opened my mouth . -------------------- Would you say that this is an ad hominem? I looked up the term ad hominem in Webster's Online Dictionary at From Webster http://www.m…

Hello! I'm a student at Oxford University currently studying Philosophy and Law. I find myself learning small percentages of other subjects, due to the nature of conversation in a 'universities environment'. I live in a rented detached abode - with six room-mates; we all have our own opinions on life and delve into our imaginations to answer many of the unanswered questions, for self-fulfilment. We were browsing 4c, and it lead us here; more directly towards the 'Speculation' section. We also noticed that 99% of all threads made in that section are immediately over-run with moderators and administrators - who immediately dismiss any idea when, to their knowledge, …

Is an obsolete medical term. https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/intellectual-disability-mental-retardation As such it troubles me to see several members use it in insulting ways. Please do not do this! http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/110774-harvey-weinstein/?page=6 DrP said You had plenty of synonyms. Why did you go with the most offensive term. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/110774-harvey-weinstein/?page=7 iNow said I know you were mocking others and you would never intentionally hurt defenseless innocents. But cause pain you almost certainly did. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/1105…

I must say I was disappointed with both the premature closure of this thread on power generation and the immediately adverse and even hostile reception a new member received. https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/118572-i-offer-the-innovation-green-technology-of-generation-of-the-electric-power-by-means-of-a-new-renewable-energy-resource/?tab=comments#comment-1099130 I say premature closure because I have just looked at the thread for the first time and it is already closed. So I have no opportunity to offer some encouragement and perhaps a way forward to the new member. Any schoolboy with would be able to build a conventional model generator, per…

When the latest forum format was introduced, for all its many faults, it was not slow. For the past few weeks SF have been interminable waits between moving to another page or responding to simple questions like hovering the mouse over the who is online list.

Having read with interest the numbers of threads, in the past few weeks, attempting to discuss religion through a circuitous route in a Science Forum, I think it would be extremely good sense to start a new forum for this debate. The Science Forum has grown substantially quite recently, with new members from all continents, many of them believers. Any new thread which hints at religion or Creationism can be easily diverted to such a Forum and avoid the type of emotionally draining debate which has dominated certain 'taboo' topics. Does this make sense?

In a current thread a member made a lighthearted comment. Another member took exception to it, since it did have a political slant, and asked the first member to keep "the political hogwash" out of the forum as it diluted the quality of the discussion. I posted a suggestion that the member lighten up - a little humour is not out of place here. I don't want to discuss that specific example - it's just what triggered this observation. I think occasional humour in the forum is a good thing. Now, am I right? Is it acceptable, occasionally to inject a pun, a quick, relevant joke, a witty observation, or should we stay objective and humourless at all times?

I notice the moderator hypervalent iodine has closed this thread with this comment: http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/95338-race-and-intelligence/?p=922230 There are two points here. That the moderator has deemed responses irrefutable before I could respond, and that the premise of the OP is "ridiculous". The moderator may consider the premise that IQ varies consistently by race to be ridiculous. Unfortunately the entire field of academic psychology does not. There is no debate about this. The only debate is about the cause of the differences. Why would papers discussing this be regularly published in top psychology journals if the premise was ridicul…

Hi administrators, For 3 days I could not reach these forums. As I see no postings telling us what happened, must I assume it was not a problem at science forums itself? I could not connect from my work, and neither from my home. The error suggested that the URL could not be resolved. Was this a local problem? Swiss? European? Or was it really some problem with the URL registration? I was already desparately trying to find somebody I could contact to find out what was going wrong (WHOIS, trying to find out the email address of one of the moderators). SF is one of my daily mental vitamins. Glad to see y'all back again! Eise PS My, lucky enough ver…

I just looked at sciforums.com, to see the difference, and while they have over 9,000 members, they stink. Not a very good discussion around there, not well moderated, etc. etc. In other words, keep up the good work!!! (and, get more dedicated members!)

These 1-2 minute load times for pages are making the site unusable. I thought maybe it was a temporary problem, but it's been happening consistently for several weeks now.

My Goodness me ! If you stop speculation ,.... You stop the future.....Things not yet even imagined ! ... .If you do that we will go into a spiral of decline ! Mike

As I poked around another forum, I noticed something. On that forum, many users get titles from the admin, things like "Top Poster 2003" or "Top Spammer 2003" or even "Top Waffler". I thought maybe it would be nice to spice things up a bit around here by giving out more of them, and not just to bad people. You could give out "Top Psuedoscientist" titles, or perhaps "Mr. Know-It-All". Or, if a user hit a certain amount of posts, he could get a title. A few suggested titles: 1. Swansont should get one, for always knowing the answer. 2. Tesseract, for posting even though he has no clue what the answer is. 3. ExtraSense, for obvious reasons. ("Martian Believer") 4. a…

Why is it that only the Ignorant people are allowed to judge,move topics,give warnings and abuse their power on this site? Everything,well,almost everything of mine has been judged,removed or abused because of lack of an Understanding in the Field. If a person is not Ignorant in a certain Field, how does he/she not have an Understanding of it? And if a person is Ignorant in the Field, why is he/she allowed to remove,judge or abuse without any consequences? I Understand this is "your site" and I have to follow "your rules." "Abusing power will only hurt yourself." Shouldn't a man/woman with the most Knowledge,Wisdom and Understanding be the one judging other…