Change to reputation settings

Question

Two changes have been made to the reputation settings:

• Reputation from submissions - Reputation per unit score from submissions, reviews is now ten times as much as reputation per unit score from questions, answers. This is supposed to encourage research-level activity and participation in the reviews section. It is also much more fair, since rep per unit score from an answer has till now been twice as that for submissions.
• Rep requirement for commenting - The reputation requirement for commenting has been set to zero, since it seems that commenting is a good way to spread low-quality information, as comments are ordered by time, as opposed to score. (reverted, didn't know this would be so controversial)

Comments

Oh, that's why I have now -279 points! Too bad author! I am so bad that I do not have even a single review; only downvotes of too good reviewers. I am drown in a sea of the negative energy here.

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It seems the second part of the change does not work ...

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Good that the second part doesn't work! Stop censoring people. It's absolutely unbelievable that you would do this! It's completely contrary to what I thought the whole point of the site is! Even if Vladimir is completely wrong in every way, a discussion of his paper in which he participates is the best way to explain to others exactly where he goes wrong, so that other people don't make the same mistake. To do this, it is not enough to spout the pablum in mainstream sources, but to grapple with the specific models and ideas that he is proposing. One cannot be lazy.

The point of open review, I thought, was to make the review process open, which means that anyone can get a reasonable idea reviewed. I don't mind outright rejecting papers that can be construed as insincere attacks on our credibility, like the crackpot theory-of-everything nonsense, but this is a different kettle of fish.

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There has been a backdoor through the "add comment" button we once installed below the comment thread of an answer. This backdoor is now closed.

Answer 1

To keep things consistent, the rep requirement for commenting should:

• allow an OP to comment on their own answers or questions regardless of their rep.
• have no effect on commenting on Meta since answers/questions there don't affect rep
• should be set positive to say +10 for commenting on all other answers and questions not mentioned above.

Comments

These is a good idea and should not be too complicated to implement.

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This creates a perverse incentive to not place controversial papers for review under your own name, but rather under a pseudonym. I don't agree that negative rep should remove the right to comment, as comments do not do harm.

A different approach is the slashdot/quora method, to collapse comments with negative votes (and their responses). This requires a tree structure for comments.

The only negative rep user we have at the moment is not a crackpot by any stretch of the imagination.

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Related public beta feature request ...

Answer 2

The originality scores on papers are going to increase as people come here, and to get a 10fold increase in the vote score requires only a +12 or so originality score. I assumed this would be typical of any research paper, so that a multiplicative factor of 10 would be automatic once there is enough participation. I don't think putting it in by hand is useful.

The effect of these changes is to shut Vladimir Kalitvianski up, and this is entirely unacceptable to me, at least not unless it is a temporary measure until reviews is fully functioning. It is not healthy to produce censorship of this sort, and I am flabbergasted that it would happen this early on.

Kalitvianski's opinions may be incorrect, but he is honest about them, he reads the responses, he thinks about them, and he has not placed his opinions in places where they are inappropriate. His discussions have has been isolated and sandboxed in cases where they might be distracting, and no further steps may be taken.

I request that commenting be allowed for all participants, at least while we are still doing things like changing scoring systems. You must not punish people for placing a controversial paper here! That will lose you people with controversial papers, and these are the most likely people to benefit from a site of this sort.

In the future, when Vladimir Kalitvianski's form-factor paper is properly evaluated and voted, he will likely have healthy positive rep, so this problem will go away for him personally. But this type of shutting people up is completely deranged, and it is wrecking the entire purpose of the site.  Honestly, are people here this weak that they would jeapardize the freedom of the site to censor one not-even-too-ornery fellow?

Comments

Reverted for now - I didn't know this would be so controversial.

But I still think that it is an extremely useful change to have. It's not done short-sightedly at all, but with the possibility of a crackpot attack in the future in mind. Vladimir Kalitvianski is only a small version, and the negative effects of his comments are terribly minor compared to what could happen in a crackpot attack.

I'm completely shocked that you're willing to make blatantly false statements which you know are false, to protect Vladimir. He is absolutely not honest, he is completely immune to proof, he recognises the problems with his models, but refuses to change his opinion. I mean his edits to the "self-fooling" (which later became "Advice on renormalisation") question. He has very clearly posted off-topic comments, even he can't deny that himself.

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It is done short-sightedly. You deal with problems as they come, not pre-emptively. If you have crackpot attacks, you can deal with them by deleting the comments as off-topic, because they are.

Believe me, I can tell the difference between a dishonest and deluded crackpot type fellow, and one who is just holding a controversial opinion on a topic which is considered uncontroversial. The reason VK doesn't recognize your statements as proof is because they are not fully persuasive from where he is sitting, that's all. They are fully persuasive to you, but that is largely because you don't think too much about classical field theory, and so on, and because they are not controversial anymore, so the political wind is at your back.

In this case, politics and truth happen to be aligned, and modern renormalization is just fine, so these positions should also be persuasive in this case, but you need to explain to VK in terms he can accept. In order to persuade someone with off-the-wall ideas, you need to actually look at the guts of his off-the-wall arguments. It's possible he will never accept modern renormalization, Dirac never did, so what, that's his loss.

He has not really posted off topic comments, except in response to goading by either Dilaton or you! He usually posts one comment with a different observation relevant to some particular thing.

Those comments which were distracting (although on topic) were moved to a special weirdo ghetto, ok, I didn't complain and he didn't complain. But disagreement with dimension10's opinion on what is an airtight argument (which in this case I share) is not enough to get you shut up.

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@Dimension10 the demanding positive (non negative) rep in order to comment (everywhere) everywhere is a simple measure to ensure a minimal quality and spam freeness of the site, it should not be controversial at all. After ensuring that people who have negative rep can still comment on their own posts (questions, answers, submissions) it should be reinstalled.

@RonMaimon In this case, people who post a negatively judged submission can still discuss in comment there for example. In addition, they would still be able to take part in other discussions by answering and starting new discussions by asking.

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@dimension10: Your honesty, let me explain my position. When you advance some physical idea (self-action) and discard its contribution (with bare constants or counter-terms), I see it as a zig-zag "development" due to the initially wrong idea. So I think we should advance another physical idea that would lead to the right results directly. Such an idea would be more physical and our physics would be free from our devils and angels devised to cancel each other. I think I am rational rather than dishonest. Your insisting on the uniqueness of the mainstream point of view in a research area is not even serious.

Answer 3

Demanding positive rep in order to comment is an appropriate and sensible measure to prevent spam and ensure that people contribute positively before being allowed to post new scrap and nonsense. At  places this barrier to comment is set even higher.

People who post mostly controversial stuff and nonsense, can still comment and discuss below their own posts (submissions, questions, answers) but they are not allowed to hijack and spam all other threads with nonsense and off topic stuff.

This is a rather minimal measure to ensure a minimal quality and it should not be controversial at all.

Comments

@Dimension10 and @Polarkernel does someone of you know out of his head if people who do not have the privilege to comment (everywhere) can still comment below their own questions and answers? And if not, could a change be easily implemented such that they can? I would have to test it to know ...