Suggestions, Comments and Support

In the other thread on the reputation system there are repeated coments by moderators who are saying that certain comments about moderation is off topic. The purpose of this thread is to breath life into that subject and as such to discuss everything about being a moderator such as whether the forum rules should be construed as applying to them. My opening question is therefore: Is it against the forum rules for a moderator to be rude to a member when they are operating in moderator mode? Are we allowed to disscuss moderation and moderator actions in threads?

I mean, let's think about it for a second. We have people here who have dedicated their time to help people in their times of trouble. People like... pmb who is very capable of talking about scientfic ''things'' and helping people. No doubt he has dedicated a lot of time to answer people but you take one look on his personal profile and you see he has a negative reputation. Any outsider would look at that and think he is... unreliable, contrary to him being a physicist. Not that it bothers me being ''liked'' here, but it has come to my attention posts I have made could be easily ignored because of this system as well, since recently I have went down quite a few reputa…

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…

Hi folks. I'm reading the book Practical Logic: An Antidote to Uncritical Thinking - 5th Ed. by Douglas J. Soccio & Vincent E. Barry, Harcourt Brace Collegte Publishers, (1998). I think we could all benefit from studying logic and learning of to construct and present cogent arguements. That's the purpose of this thread, i.e. to discuss critical thinking and its application to scientific dicussions. If not that then I'm hoping to hear about how you folks choose to reason about/present an argument. I'm only up to page 47 so far but I love this book. It teaches you how to more efficiently reason out an argument and to more easily to spot logical fallacies, like a…

I saw that Caps has made ''introductions to calculus'' which I thought was a reasonable introduction but could have been expanded. I feel perhaps these things could be good for people who come here directly asking questions about specific topics and could be redirected to these introductions. Has anyone thought of doing this for physics? If no one has, I'd be willing to write up a few posts and let it be continued by people who have more time.

iNow, on 30 June 2012 - 11:13 PM, said: The system was obviously put in place to make your perfect little life less so, Aethelwulf. It was all part of a big secret conspiracy we formed when your mom got knocked up. ">swansont, on 30 June 2012 - 11:15 PM, said: Go right ahead. I listed the four in my earlier post, and mentioned a the fifth just a few posts ago. Post #26, #28 , #31 , #35. You posted #71 earlier today and it garnered neg rep. That's five. zapatos got the same answer. What posts did I miss? I wil go through them myself until... I see some kind of correlation >iNow, on 30 June 2012 - 11:13 PM, said: ''The system was obviously…

I am getting some strange messages... the one I speak about is threatening me.

I tried to send a PM to two different people in a row. The second PM failed with the following message: "You cannot start another PM topic until 26 June 2012 - 09:13 AM" Any particular reason for this?

sometimes i see people post in this weird font that lets them write math so you can tell what is going on how do you do that?

So far my post have had some people say this, I would like to know more on how to avoid these comments coming from other people's BIG MOUTHS HERE" I WAS ASSUMING QUESTIONs WERE JUST QUESTIONS... THANKS

So I was clicking around the Mathematics forum, and I noticed some strange thins in the tutorial on differentiation. Namely, I never knew that "the Basics of Limits" was related to "Conservatives Beating War Drums on Foreign Policy" or that the "Chain Rule" had something to do with ydoaPs pointing at photos of planets. I think the links in the table of contents do not link to the right posts for some reason, or Capn has some devilish plan to confuse Calc I students.

Something weird is going on. I can't initiate a PM by clicking on "pmb" at the top right of the web page like I used to. And when I post a thread it gets butso with these "break" symbols <br/> which drive me out of my mind! And then if I exit or modify it incorrectly the whole post has those symbols and it has HTML symbols for all the equations. And there are no Emiticons to the right of this page and when I try "show all" button, nothing happens. Help. Get me out of this forum hell! (sob!)

I know you should "look before you leap" or think first, act later. However if I do something rashly then I'm sure others do too. Sometimes I post a reply and then wish I hadn't. Perhaps I quickly realise that I have misunderstood some-one else's post or that my reply is inappropriate in some way. If the "edit" facility is still available I can change the wording of my post - but I can't delete the whole post. Since I have to post something I end up, perhaps, posting an apology. Would it be a good idea to allow use of the "edit" facility to cancel completely a whole post? Example from one of my posts - "Changed my mind - might come back"

I'd like to recommend that two new forums be created under physics; Themodynamics, Electrodynamics and Philosophy of Physics

I would rather handle this through private messages, but for some reason I am being prevented from sending private messages. What qualifies a moderator to make judgments in the religious and philosophy forums? It has become obvious intentions are good, but a lack of education in these fields is resulting in bad judgement. The interference in threads is ruining the very meaning and purpose of our freedom of speech which is to discover truth. This is wholly different from preventing harm caused by bad intentioned people. It is causing harm to discussions created by good intentioned people with terrible social ramifications, just as the church's of old efforts to…

What is the EDIT time-limit please? The "timed-out from editing" limit after posting. Is there a latex sand-box (or external link) that matches the SFN coding requirement? I'm familiar with itex. And http://www.codecogs....x/eqneditor.php But not all codings that work at "other physics forums" are happy here: see example below. Help! Thanks, Gordon ((2s\cdoth/4\pi) \cdot (\delta_{a} \lambda\rightarrow \lambda_{a^+}\oplus\lambda_{a^-})\;cos[2s \cdot (a, \lambda_{a^+} \oplus\lambda_{a^-})])_Q = (\pm1)\cdot (s\cdoth/2\pi)_Q.\;\;(11a)^{11} ((2s\cdoth/4\pi) \cdot (\delta_{b}' \lambda'\rightarrow\lambda'_{b^+}\oplus\lambda'_{b^…

Hey guys, http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/88-mathematics-tutorials/ the presentation of the thread is good indeed. it help me a lot to get some intuitive on learning calculus, but only 1 thread? well, currently I'm struggling with integrals; as far as I understand it, it's said to be "opposite of differentiation". yet, like "differentiation" topic, I can't grasp on how the symbol works. Furthermore, there so lack of resources on integration topic on the net. Thus, actually I'm wondering why does there almost nothing in the subforum, at times, someone just really need it... ;3 btw, it seems only admin can open new topic there... why not make it more open? I…

I am preparing an academic alternative to Wikipedia. In a well-known chemical forum the community has given some space to this project in a specific thread in their Education subforum. I can ask many questions in that forum, except those far from chemistry experts (cosmology, general relativity...) and I would like to know if this community would be interested in participating in this project, for instance revising and correcting the drafts or solving my occasional doubts. If the response is affirmative, where would I post? For instance, I have just uploaded a new draft Open, closed, and isolated systems. The part discussing the terminology used in atoms in molecules …

I used to be in love with my SFN blog, but I think its time for a complete reset. I'm no longer interested in some of the things I once blogged about and somehow the comment section has exploded with spam (I had to disable notifications). I'm considering to get back into it though, and want to stay on the SFN platform. Is this doable?

hey guys, I'm login from my fb, when I change my avatar pic to other pic, on the next day it change back to my fb account pic, how can I fix this?

I have an idea, how about adding Economics category? Thanks for any considerations.

Just wondering...

I tried to post the following - BUT with the Hitchins quote indented to show it was from a different source. But if I indent it I get an error message that opening and closing quote tags do not match Says who? Countless generations in which the most adaptable are more likely to survive seems pretty convincing to me. Very rarely. There is precious little corroborative evidence for the new testament stories, let alone those of the old testament. No. I go to my partner, my family and my friends. I try to lose the feeling of despondency and start doing something to make my situation better - I do not, and I think this is common with …

I'm pretty good with photoshop, and other people probably are too, and from what I know, many websites that have user-interfaces such as with forums allow users to have a sort of personal banner or logo or signature.

In the past I've accidentally hit the wrong button, and I can't change it, so there should be the ability to change your vote if you want.