Where Is The Science ?

[MigL]

It is not unusual, lately, to log on and the new Topics list is totally populated by Religious topics with the odd gender/sexuality related topic.

Used to be Science related topics with the odd Political topic.

I long for the 'good old days' when a science discussion would go on for many pages.
Have 'our' interests changed drastically, or are we encouraging people who get tossed from other forums to come post their unwanted topics here ?

I find myself posting less and less, as a lot of the topics don't interest me, and I don't think ( opinion ) they belong in a science forum.
And I've noticed a lot of the more senior members doing the same.

have others noted this trend ?

[Phi for All]

As other members realize this new member has no interest in their replies, and is just pushing an anti-intellectual agenda, responses will dwindle. Preaching is boring, but enough members are discussing the topics that staff isn't going to pull the rug on what appears to be a good time. 

[joigus]

3 hours ago, MigL said:

have others noted this trend ?

I have. 🥹

It's so statistically significant that feels like troll farming. As soon as one is done, there's another one that seems to be saying, 'ok, I'll take over from here'.

[KJW]

56 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

As other members realize this new member has no interest in their replies, and is just pushing an anti-intellectual agenda, responses will dwindle. Preaching is boring, but enough members are discussing the topics that staff isn't going to pull the rug on what appears to be a good time. 

I have to say that I do not complain about the crackpots that appear on this or any other science forum. I find that it's the crackpots who drive the discussions, and that banning them too vigorously is a way to kill the forum. If forum regulars want a better range of topics to discuss than crackpot theories and religion, then they should provide it. But bear in mind that there is no guarantee that the other members will engage if the topic is too esoteric or whatever.

 

[swansont]

4 hours ago, MigL said:

Have 'our' interests changed drastically, or are we encouraging people who get tossed from other forums to come post their unwanted topics here ?

This is a statistical blip. One must remember that participation in these threads is voluntary.

[Ken Fabian]

Nothing wrong with the topics Night FM has posted per se, even if most of them are nothing new; lots of posts here are on topics that keep recurring. Just not convinced the member is engaging in discussion in good faith but that isn't unusual. The subjects can be provocative and some posts did press some of my buttons but there wasn't much in the way of reasoned or interesting arguments to follow or you'd see more participation from me. Pass over and move on.

How to have more and more interesting topics that engage existing members and attract new ones? Going by more popular formats - keep on hammering those same controversial or partisan or divisive topics that press people's buttons over and over and then all over again even harder. Science forums like this suit me just fine but I'm headed into the old codger demographic.

[MigL]

Fortunately, in science, if someone posts something insightful, I learn something.
And I have, more times than I can remember.

Unfortunately, with Religion, most everyone's mind is set; no one is changing Night FM, or anyone else's mind.

Doesn't make for productive discussion

[swansont]

Just now, MigL said:

Fortunately, in science, if someone posts something insightful, I learn something.
And I have, more times than I can remember.

Unfortunately, with Religion, most everyone's mind is set; no one is changing Night FM, or anyone else's mind.

Doesn't make for productive discussion

If it’s just preaching, we’ll shut it down. If a pattern emerges that shows there’s an agenda, we’ll deal with it, but that sometimes takes time.

[timo]

I share MigL impression that this forum is dominated by non-science topics. And not in a good sense, where people talk about other hobbies or exchange baking recipes or funny pictures of their cats. But in the sense that most activity goes into preaching/trolling (religion or culture war stuff) and people taking the bait. The problem is not only the OPs but also the people reacting to nonsense posts. Phi speaks of discussions that "appear to be a good time". And I can understand that from a moderator's perspective. But I find it a bit embarrassing. 

I feel this trend and the inverse relation between quality of a thread and the number of reactions it gets has been there for a long time, like 10+ years. And it is one of the reasons why my activity here has been declining to the point that ... well, my last post was in 2021. In fact, not completely coincidentally one of my last posts here contains a rant about that situation 

I an not sure if the "good old times" really actually existed at all. If not, then it could just be that your interests change, an everyone else feels everything is fine. It would be interesting if we could get some objective measure of this. But let's assume the trend exists: I do not think that "our interests have changed" is a likely reason - at least not on the forum level. Granted, people's interests and life situations do change. One of my drops in activity was when I started my PhD and the topics I was interested in became too narrow for a discussion forum (and also not Sci-Fi enough - not sure I saw a thread about Statistical Physics on this forum ever). Plus, much better opportunities to discuss these interests opened up. But you would expect that people dropping out are replaced by new people.

I think the trend may be a symptom of something else: Forums are dead and people have moved on to other forms of communications. That's just a thought of course. I don't have data to verify it.

[CharonY]

35 minutes ago, timo said:

I think the trend may be a symptom of something else: Forums are dead and people have moved on to other forms of communications. That's just a thought of course. I don't have data to verify it.

I think this is exactly it. 

[Mordred]

I'm a member on a few forums and I've noticed over the years that every forum I visit (though this is my main forum as I prefer this one over the others) are all experiencing significant drop in activity in the last few years.

 It's not science forums either example Plctalk.net/qanda which is an excellent site for those with electrical engineering interests has also been affected.

[StringJunky]

3 hours ago, MigL said:

Fortunately, in science, if someone posts something insightful, I learn something.
And I have, more times than I can remember.

Unfortunately, with Religion, most everyone's mind is set; no one is changing Night FM, or anyone else's mind.

Doesn't make for productive discussion

I set up my own stream years ago that excludes Religion. I've noticed it sneaking into Philosophy, or some other forum a bit, but it's quiet on that front for me.

[Eise]

I think it would be a good idea to suppress theological discussions. Religion is surely interesting from a scientific or philosophical point of view. But I agree that internal theological topics have nothing to do with science, and therefore have no place here. Topics like history of religion, psychology of religion, sociology of religion etc would fit here. But not questions like why/how Adam and Eve were driven out of paradise, Paul's position about women, etc.

On a personal note, I notice that sometimes I would like to participate more, but at the moment I am running against a lack of energy: there is quite some stress in my personal and professional life, and then post comments that fit to my standard of quality postings, it feels just like work. An example is the thread 'Where does atheist morality come from?' I felt a lot of possible reactions, but spending half an hour to write a good posting was just too much. There were a few reactions that mentioned points I had in mind, and so I let it be.

[studiot]

3 hours ago, Eise said:

I think it would be a good idea to suppress theological discussions. Religion is surely interesting from a scientific or philosophical point of view. But I agree that internal theological topics have nothing to do with science, and therefore have no place here. Topics like history of religion, psychology of religion, sociology of religion etc would fit here. But not questions like why/how Adam and Eve were driven out of paradise, Paul's position about women, etc.

On a personal note, I notice that sometimes I would like to participate more, but at the moment I am running against a lack of energy: there is quite some stress in my personal and professional life, and then post comments that fit to my standard of quality postings, it feels just like work. An example is the thread 'Where does atheist morality come from?' I felt a lot of possible reactions, but spending half an hour to write a good posting was just too much. There were a few reactions that mentioned points I had in mind, and so I let it be.

This may also be more to MigL's liking.  +1

 

[MigL]

15 hours ago, Eise said:

On a personal note, I notice that sometimes I would like to participate more, but at the moment I am running against a lack of energy: there is quite some stress in my personal and professional life

I have always found SFn, both the arguing and the humor, a good way to release stress.
Maybe you should be posting more.
( and since you always post interesting stuff, I might post more often also )

[OldChemE]

Maybe part of the problem is trying to judge interest on the basis of discussion posts.  I can only speak for myself, but I enjoy the forum, go to it every evening, and read many posts.  However, I frequently have nothing to add that hasn't already been said, and I only log in if I have something to add-- so probably 95% of my activity is never visible.  So, my daily visits without signing in leave the impression I'm not involved.

[Mordred]

3 minutes ago, OldChemE said:

Maybe part of the problem is trying to judge interest on the basis of discussion posts.  I can only speak for myself, but I enjoy the forum, go to it every evening, and read many posts.  However, I frequently have nothing to add that hasn't already been said, and I only log in if I have something to add-- so probably 95% of my activity is never visible.  So, my daily visits without signing in leave the impression I'm not involved.

Hadn't seen ya in a while glad to see your visiting. Even though I'm quite knowledgeable in physics I find I still learn things here.  That also includes certain discussions in physics.

 

[TheVat]

Noticed today that another sister forum (the dot com that several members here also visit regularly) seems to have gone down.  I had to wonder if the owner (no idea who it is) might have noticed how much of recent posting there is more on political, social/economic or religious topics.  SFN seems to do a little better, in terms of sticking to science and tamping down offtopic personal disputes.  Probably helpful that SFN has several moderators, whereas SFC is down to one.  If SFC is a goner, I will miss the skeptics v believer threads there, which were often both entertaining and informative.  It's a nice bunch of interesting people over there, so I would have no problem with inviting them over here if they feel homeless.  (getting email addresses would be a hurdle, though, if that site is permanently down - I have not personally corresponded with any of them outside of using the site's PM feature)  

[CharonY]

On 10/14/2024 at 12:33 AM, Eise said:

I think it would be a good idea to suppress theological discussions. Religion is surely interesting from a scientific or philosophical point of view. But I agree that internal theological topics have nothing to do with science, and therefore have no place here. Topics like history of religion, psychology of religion, sociology of religion etc would fit here. But not questions like why/how Adam and Eve were driven out of paradise, Paul's position about women, etc.

On a personal note, I notice that sometimes I would like to participate more, but at the moment I am running against a lack of energy: there is quite some stress in my personal and professional life, and then post comments that fit to my standard of quality postings, it feels just like work. An example is the thread 'Where does atheist morality come from?' I felt a lot of possible reactions, but spending half an hour to write a good posting was just too much. There were a few reactions that mentioned points I had in mind, and so I let it be.

 I believe the original idea was to keep a Religion section as a kind of containment area. When I joined (20 years or so ago????) there were tons of semi-religious threads pertaining to evolution (and, also in a mirror of some the recent threads, abiogenesis). I think some posters also used that to hone their arguments. I certainly learned to simplify my explanation of parts of evolution, which actually were quite useful also for teaching students.

 

[Sensei]

I think part of the problem is that long-time users rarely start new threads in the science sections. If they do start one, they usually create a new thread in the Lounge section (like this one) or in Politics section. The best chance for a long-time user to start a new thread about science is in the Science News section.

If you look at Physics, Chemistry, Biology sections, the people who start new threads are mostly newbies who have just joined. They come and go or are usually banned.

The practice of (over-)banning people who have not been simply rude, is discouraging people from being active, which must result in the demise of the forum. Not just this one, but every one. No one wants to come to a club or disco where they know they will get a slap.

 

In the course of time, also those newcomers will register less and less frequently to ask scientific questions - after all, they now have chatbots that will generate answers in topics that interest them.

[Genady]

10 minutes ago, Sensei said:

(over-)banning people

I don't recall any of the banned users that would be contributing to the forums if they stayed.

[Sensei]

9 minutes ago, Genady said:

I don't recall any of the banned users that would be contributing to the forums if they stayed.

If someone is a novice, it is you who contribute to expanding their knowledge. But this requires patience. How can a novice contribute without knowledge? Only by asking interesting and stimulating conversation topics.

 

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

Noticed today that another sister forum (the dot com that several members here also visit regularly) seems to have gone down.  I had to wonder if the owner (no idea who it is) might have noticed how much of recent posting there is more on political, social/economic or religious topics.  SFN seems to do a little better, in terms of sticking to science and tamping down offtopic personal disputes.  Probably helpful that SFN has several moderators, whereas SFC is down to one.  If SFC is a goner, I will miss the skeptics v believer threads there, which were often both entertaining and informative.  It's a nice bunch of interesting people over there, so I would have no problem with inviting them over here if they feel homeless.  (getting email addresses would be a hurdle, though, if that site is permanently down - I have not personally corresponded with any of them outside of using the site's PM feature)  

It's not down down, but limping. You can get the site up but if you try to post you get that infuriating, smug "Oops, I just forgot [sic] how to use auxiliary verbs" message. So it looks like a glitch rather than anyone pulling the plug. Or else one of the mad Trumpies, trying to bring the evil libtard site down with some sort of IT attack, I suppose. If they have the brains. 

But on the thread topic, as you know, I believe you need a sprinkling of cranks and nutters to keep these forums lively. One can debunk  some craziness, maybe even teach a bit - and sometimes one learns titbits one didn't know. For example I learned about Tyndall's fascinating  and ingenious c.19th experiments with IR absorption, from that Doogles character we had, and about Carnot's deeply insightful work with caloric, from Tom Booth. Really interesting stuff. (Not to mention that Tesla had bonkers ideas about thermodynamics, which I had not realised.)  

I also agree with @OldChemE that many of us don't start many threads or, if we do, they are so uncontentious that nobody comments. For example I started one last week on the biochemical building blocks found in the sample returned from the asteroid Bennu. And got one sole reply. Presumably because while true and sort of interesting - at least I thought so - there wasn't really a lot more to say about it. So as a discussion topic it had limited potential. I guess that as scientifically minded people we don't pose questions that much. We mainly wait until there is an answer to some question. 

 

[Genady]

55 minutes ago, Sensei said:

If someone is a novice, it is you who contribute to expanding their knowledge. But this requires patience. How can a novice contribute without knowledge? Only by asking interesting and stimulating conversation topics.

 

I don't equate "novice" with "without knowledge".

We all were novices once.

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

I also agree with @OldChemE that many of us don't start many threads or, if we do, they are so uncontentious that nobody comments. For example I started one last week on the biochemical building blocks found in the sample returned from the asteroid Bennu. And got one sole reply. Presumably because while true and sort of interesting - at least I thought so - there wasn't really a lot more to say about it. So as a discussion topic it had limited potential. I guess that as scientifically minded people we don't pose questions that much. We mainly wait until there is an answer to some question. 

That is absolutely true. Engagement for better or for worse is driven by emotion and controversy. That is something that algorithms have learned and which we actually discourage. And another aspect is that we as a community have diverse expertise, but not enough critical mass in one particular area where it could spark certain in-depth discussions.