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  Why does Physicsoverflow still import questions from Physics Stack Exchange?

+ 0 like - 3 dislike
8002 views

I can understand the reasons behind Physicsoverflow importing questions from the old Theoretical physics stack exchange, but why has this policy been extended to importing current graduate questions from Physics Stack Exchange?

Mathoverflow doesn't import graduate/research level questions from Math stack exchange, but is able to depend entirely on questions uniquely being posted on there, so why not the same for Physicsoverflow?

Even if legal, It does make the site look unprofessional, parasitic and a poor imitation, which isn't appealing to first time users. The site needs to be creating unique content, even if little to start with.

asked Apr 4, 2014 in Discussion by physicsnewbie (-20 points) [ no revision ]
retagged Apr 4, 2014 by dimension10
For example because there are PhysicsOverflow members who explicitely want to have specicic or their own SE posts here.

Not all the questions we listed to import are imported yet.  

Also it is unfair if we stop importing now. Of course, we will eventually have to be self-sufficient.  

1 Answer

+ 3 like - 1 dislike

I think the answer is because Physics.overflow should put physics.stackexchange out of business regarding grad level questions and higher. They are not competent to answer these questions, due to their broken political policies, they censor anyone knowledgable with their blocks and their power-mad administrators. We will never do that, under any circumstances, since we trust the community.

While copying is not a good solution in the long run, we can extend the answers here, and gradually improve the quality of the answers using a better community. Replacing the broken nonsense at stackexchange is one of the goals in setting up the site, but of course, we can go much much further than stackexchange intends, because we are interested in academic discourse, not in commercial discourse.

answered Apr 8, 2014 by Ron Maimon (7,720 points) [ no revision ]
Most voted comments show all comments

@dimension10 because I like the idea of this site becoming the physics equivalent of Mathoverflow.

@dimension10 (oops, no, that wasn't dim10's comment): Yes, yes, I am childish! +1 on your comment. I don't understand why you are not, as you are an actual child, while I am just faking. You should have a natural advantage in this respect (but it seems not, you are extremely mature). I went over stackexchange questions one by one, I am doing pages 5-10 now, and they actually have a pretty good crop recently of actual detailed questions about physics from graduate students, plus a few layman insights that are actually get at very deep physics. I made a list of questions which look graduate level to me, there are more than you would think upon casual inspection. There are some where the wording is superficially simple, and the poster is not a physicist, but a proper answer is grad level (for example, the relation between lyapunov exponents and inflation, the zipline velocity issue, photon coherent spin states in linearly polarized light vs. incoherent density matrix spin in unpolarized light, vortex shedding minutia, and so on). These questions are being ill served  by stackexchange, because they have crappy answers which cannot be given a hostile review.
 

@ron that last comment was from me, not Dimension10.

OK, that's a valid point for importing graduate level questions here: because crappy answers can't be given a hostile review over there. This would work if there were more guys with your level of competence. If you could do it regularly, like criticize a few answers a day, then it could make the site more attractive to others.

I'm not being funny, but in all seriousness, maybe the site could have a special link: Ron Maimon's answers/comments to crappy answers.

Once the stupid administrative stuff is done (it takes forever), I was going to go through all the questions and answers and do a serious hostile review of everything. It's not hard, although some things I need to go and research some. Mostly when I read stackexchange, I'm wincing, because there are answers there which would be torn apart on a site without censorship, they are simply wrong, or empty babble, or grasping for votes, without any deep understanding.

@Ron Maimon: That comment was by physicsnewbie, not from me.  

Most recent comments show all comments

@ron "I was initially against importing anything from SE, but now that you say we shouldn't, I went and read through the questions and asked to import all the grad level ones."

Your antics can be very childish sometimes and disturbing, just so you can "hurt" sites.

@physicsnewbie Seriously, if you are satisfied with elsewhere, why are you here anyway?  

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