SamBridge

This is for you sci-fi fans How many Vulcans does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Well, there are super fluids that are friction-less like liquid helium (http://phys.org/news91000719.html) and super conductors that have 0 resistance and nearly-weightless metal, it would not be impossible that Prison Break got the idea from asking an actual scientist if it is theoretically possible, or researching to find such technology is being developed. But Indium and gallium seem like weird metals to use, they are close to semi-metals and gallium being able to be liquid at room temperature has a somewhat unstable structure that inhibits electrons passing though it to some extent, I suppose there's this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_wire But you need Vanadium, they probably only mentioned those elements so they could spell the word "bargain".

Yeah well as I said I think time is a factor, and honestly for no reason at all I feel like giving people like staff moderators and long-time members points and not always other newer members that still make intelligible posts. I don't do it of course, but the fact that someone who tries to be as logical as me irrationally wants to do it and I don't even know exactly why, that says that the reputation system can't be a 100% accurate thing, or even a 90% accurate thing. I'm not saying they didn't deserve it, but reputation doesn't make sense. Your not retarded just because you don't understand how Newton's laws work, your not cognitively dissonant just because you don't see enough evidence for or against the existence of god, I mean what the heck? It doesn't make sense, I don't even know what reputation is measuring I don't see any units. No that's not right, people come here to answer questions or to get questions answered and/or cause they like debating. For me it's a combination of all three. Most people I know don't like debating philosophy or physics at all, and on the internet it's not really that personal of a thing.

if it's the internet even if it doesn't actually matter people still infer based off of it. Like me, I assume that people with a really high reputation often know what they are talking about as if they are 100% correct. It would probably be better if I did research once in a while, but I figure they have a high likelihood of being right because they have a good reputation usually. But that's not what I should do unless it's something pertaining to common knowledge, what I should do is research what they are saying because they are bound to eventually be wrong about something. If everyone's "reputation" was neutral or people didn't have an actual "reputation" , then I think no ones statements would be taken as 100% accurate but not as 100% wrong, which is how it should be because without evidence you don't know, which encourages you to seek evidence. Well I did not say they don't make intelligible posts, not that I'm saying you said I did, but the amount of time they've been here definitely is a major factor, over time things just cool down,it becomes less likely they will make some kind of demagogic mistake. It's not all based like that but you have to admit for an internet forum that is a part of it.

I said in my second post that this isn't about my reputation and there's is documentation proving I complained about it not only when my reputation was good but on the very first day I signed up (or at least within the first 3 but I'm pretty sure it was the first 24 hours), I used myself is an example but I'm not comparing myself to Galileo, I hardly knew him. I can guarantee that even moderators and staff members have gotten some kind of bad reputation from some random people maybe even spammed negatively, but you don't see it because it's canceled out by so many other good marks because they've been here so long. It shouldn't have to take "so long" though to see if they are actually experts though, it took them a very long time to get a good reputation, but why should it take that long when they were themselves then entire time they were here? Surely there can be some more accurate way.

Well just as a general point, it seems as though every great scientist has faced some major problem of "bad reputation", and I know there are people who don't really properly follow scientific procedure, but how can you completely trust its accuracy. I could see how over maybe a minimum of a year that you would get a good reputation, but only in the same manner that the Church only forever Galileo in the last 30 years, it's just that over time things cool down and people then learn to not make posts that are of a risk to attract scrutiny, but people shouldn't have to fear scrutiny at all even if they have a bunch of positive points, if something is actually wrong there should be evidence for it and if something is actually right there should be evidence for it. Newton hid calculus for nearly 20 years just because he didn't want to deal with scrutiny.

Well I mean this isn't about just my own reputation, the reason it takes literally months to build a good reputation from what I've gathered is because there are people who use it with no real reason other than they don't like admitting they're wrong. If you make 20s of posts in a day, you will get them marked, but I've been monitoring my reputation and believe it or not it was actually "good" or really near "good" at one point, and on average I get 1 maybe 2 markings all of the posts the whole entire day, and this has been the case since I came here and after the event which in one 24-36 hour period my reputation jumped from 7 to -16. This is not a coincidence, if you're following the rules, which I am, because I have no warning posts, then it still takes a lot of posts and time for your reputation to change in either direction but it would go faster without emotional uses. Now I'm not here just trying to make a case for myself, but I don't think it what I'm saying is bad or based off of my current reputation, I made complaints about the reputation system when my reputation was good and even the very first day that I signed up here and I think maybe even the day after when my reputation was of course neutral. Ok well I don't mark posts ever I did not now there was some daily limit. But is it for an individual post, or of a user, or at all? And was it always like that? Well, would you at least rather have a little less work not having to worry about some religious fanatic marking down a bunch of posts? But I think in my system it wouldn't be hard to detect as much, because it wouldn't really be as easily able to be used for emotional purposes as well in the first place, it's just "you correctly answered my inquiry", so I suppose it would take some testing. You would do some beta testing to see what the average amount of marks are in a day, and if someone's marks significantly exceed that then a few staff members would be notified. I don't know how complex that is to program, I assume there are components of this site that can recognize things like that already so it would be a matter of building off of them and modifying them. I don't think it's necessarily the "norm" either, but it also has no clear scientific purpose. What does it even actually mean if I have a bunch of positive or negative marks? And how do you know for sure? The current reputation system is open ended like that; demagogic in that manner. At least with the new one you have a better sense that if they have many inquiries answered it means they have a lot of experience answering questions in an understandable way as something definite and concise. If you don't like the exact way I laid it out that's fine, but I would push for some version of it.

So normally it takes months to build a good reputation as any good experienced member will tell you, but often times the reputation system is abused for emotional purposes while the reputation itself doesn't seem to have a logical place in concluding of something is logical or not, so instead I propose a new type of reputation system: Instead of having "I like how you talk, therefore you are logical and a good scientist" and "I don't like how you talk, therefore you are illogical and are a bad scientist" and all sorts of other non scientific uses r illogical fallacies, we simply have a button for each post that you can press that says "This post answers your current inquiry". That way the reputation is actually more based off of answering questions and logically in an understandable manner rather than some easy demagoguery. You can ask any staff member (I would think if they were on ever) that negative spamming can also be a problem. This essentially get's rid of that while also providing a more accurate concept of someone's work for answering questions. And since spamming is easy to recognize as I've been pointed out, if someone crates an alt account and brings their new reputation up it can be found out. You might ask "well why not keep the current one if it's the same work to keep track of spamming?". Well its not, instead of having to worry about both positive AND negative spamming, staff members would only have to keep an eye out for positive spamming. I'm not saying the current reputation system has no validity, but I think this is a much better way to go about that sort of thing.