Theoretical Physics is closing

Question

Note: This is a post from the Meta of TP.SE. Nothing has happened to PhysicsOverflow. 

As mentioned in the recent blog post, I must reluctantly announce that we'll be shutting this site down on Friday, May 4th, 2012. While a fine topic, progress here has been slow for some time now, and it simply does not appear that theoretical physics has a strong enough following on our network to support the site long-term:

But when a site struggles to maintain any semblance of steady progress — when it's struggling to garner an audience, a healthy core of experts, and a steady stream of questions — it becomes increasingly unlikely that the site will find a core audience to sustain it.

So rather than stringing you along with hope of eventual graduation, I'd like to thank you all for the time and effort you've put in here, and encourage you to continue pursuing your interest in the subject - either elsewhere on Stack Exchange, or elsewhere on The Internet.

I hasten to add, this is not the end of theoretical physics as a topic of interest on Stack Exchange: if you see a question here that would make a good addition to the Physics site, please flag it for moderator attention in the next few days and suggest that it be migrated.

After Friday, the questions and answers posted here will be made available for download and re-use by anyone who wants them.

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Just a few hours left... I'd like to thank you all again for your efforts in the migrations and final cleanup. The current plan is to mass-migrate all open questions to Physics, so if you know of posts that would be better off somewhere else (or simply closed), then flag those now. A full list of migrated questions will be posted on Physics later today.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

Comments

Dear Shog9, this theoretical physics site has had a lower traffic because it was meant to be more specialized, more expert-oriented cousin of Physics SE. So when it comes to the quality and relevance of pretty much everything here is enough for Physics SE. Whose confirmation do you want to hear to believe me that the full migration would be welcome on SE?

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

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It was mentioned in [an answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/130377) to @PiotrMigdal's question that part of the reason for closing was because of topic similarity between physics.SE and TP. What is the similarity? TP is for research-level questions, and from browsing the [highest voted questions on physics.SE](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes) it seems that the site is for popular-physics. I had the impression that the whole reason TP was formed was to give researchers in physics a site with a better signal-to-noise ratio?

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@Shog9, considering similar proposals with smaller scopes on area51 (like [QIF](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/36039/quantum-information-and-foundations)) I thought that this might have a better chance of succeeding without leading to the same problem. Anyway, thanks for the reply. :)

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@Kaveh, Shog9, thanks. Sad, but I appreciate that the world is more complex than just the good points. Might I suggest an idea: Some of the thought leaders of the current TP.SE could exchange emails and form a closed, low-overhead, invitation-only group dedicated to continuing the tradition of very open exchange of oddball leading-edge physics questions. Add folks by referral and voting, to help keep cohesion and lower costs. There aren't enough forums for asking such questions, and a well-formed leading-edge question can engage, inspire, and link thoughts in ways that publishing only cannot.

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@Shog9, we have started the process of moving on and seeking alternatives, see http://meta.theoreticalphysics.stackexchange.com/questions/252/where-do-we-go-from-here#question. Keeping the site open for a few extra days might make a big difference for such plans.

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@Terry, I appreciate your comment and hasten to state again that this isn't a knock against the fine folk who've contributed and maintained this site. We're simply not set up to keep a site this size running long-term, and it appears this *is* the long-term size even in a best-case scenario. I sincerely hope that the members of this site can find a hope on [physics.se] after Friday.

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@Shog9, would it be possible to keep the site up for a few months longer if the TP.SE community decides to expand the scope of the site horizontally and vertically? (i.e. allowing questions at the level of senior undergrads and questions from other topics in physics) That can be an interesting experiment to see if things would improve.

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Answer 1

I have only just noticed the deletion announcement at TP.SE, and want to say that this is definitely a loss. There were quite a few world-class researchers contributing to TP.SE, and they will clearly not hang around on a site like Physics.SE.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

Comments

Moshe suggests in another thread the possibility of essentially migrating to a different platform to remove the dependence on SE or other private enterprises. I'd be willing to pay for hosting etc. if people would be interested in this, and put in some time to develop the site. But it only makes sense to do this if there is community interest.

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)

Answer 2

There will be a chat session in the Physics room to discuss merging of the sites tomorrow at 9 PM UTC, and it would be great to have people representing the Theoretical Physics SE community there if anyone can make it!

One of the things we will be discussing is whether there is anything that can/should be done to make Physics SE more attractive to researchers.

(Maybe I should have posted this as a comment, or a separate question... someone let me know if that's the case)

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Comments

I can't make it for that time I'm afraid, but I think a big part of the issue is "noise". Imagine your white board time with colleagues getting mixed up with office hours and a problem class. I know that it's is possible to use tags to filter, but it can still be off-putting. Also, the atmosphere there can be less... genial.

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@Mark: Thanks, too bad you can't make it... we'll keep that in mind. Feel free to offer comments in our chat or on a relevant meta post at any time.

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Answer 3

(It is not an actual answer, just aggregation of links directly related to dealing with the demise.)

The questions on meta.SO (containing further links, so I am not repeating them):

• Salvage questions on closed sites via migration - for our case: to physics.SE and cstheory.SE
• Why did Theoretical Physics fail? - learning from mistakes (i.e. gainings exps from being killed)
• Keeping links to the closed sites - esp. related to the arXiv trackbacks

This post has been migrated from (A51.SE)