From: paul@mtnmath.UUCP (Paul Budnik)
Newsgroups: sci.physics,news.groups,sci.misc
Subject: Re: sci.physics.research: proposed panel of moderators
Date: 9 Jan 93 15:54:46 GMT
Followup-To: sci.physics
Organization: Mountain Math Software, P. O. Box 2124, Saratoga. CA 95070

In article <1993Jan9.002324.22505@galois.mit.edu>, jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes:
> [...] 
> If folks - and especially the other moderators!! - think I've gone
> overboard here, I would gladly recant, especially if we follow Corscadden's
> suggestion and label quantum mechanics interpretation posts in such a
> way as to make them easily kill-filed.  The general issue of threads
> that endlessly chase their own tail is perhaps inadequately addressed in
> Austern's proposal; I had the sense from discussions with moderators
> that such threads would be discouraged... but maybe I was mistaken.

There seems to be a large disconnect between the formal charter
for this group and what John Baez wants it to be. Either of these
two might be good groups, but it is important to be clear about what the
charter is and to recognize that the group's charter and not the desires
of the moderators must dictate what gets accepted. 

Here are some specific issues that I think need to be more clearly addressed.

1. It is a bad idea to have the word crackpot in the charter. You need to
be able to reference the charter when you give the reason for rejecting
an article and calling someone a crackpot is not good form especially for
someone in a position of authority (even the limited authority of
a newsgroup moderator). Miss Manners would not approve. It is also too
ambiguous. If you want to reject articles that are `not even wrong' then
reject articles that are primarily philosophical in nature or that make
claims that cannot even in principle be decided by experiment.
This criteria would probably rule out most discussions of interpretations
of QM since they generally cannot be verified experimentally. You need
to decide whether the philosophy of quantum mechanics is an acceptable topic
in this group. 

2. If you want to put limits on the quantity of articles and have this
influence the decision about what articles get accepted this must be
in the charter.

3. The charter as I read it implys that little of what gets posted
that has real physics content and is not addressed by the FAQ or repetitive
would be rejected even if it is almost certainly erroneous. For example
I think much of what Jack Sarfatti posts would probably be accepted.
It at least reaches the level of being wrong rather than `not even
wrong'. I do not think that is what you want the group to be, but it
is not clear from the charter how you could exclude postings that
contradict well understood principles. Perhaps you need a line
about this in the charter.

4. If you want a group that only addresses research issues as John Baez
apparently does, then you need a different charter. This requires
`heavy' not `light' moderation. It also requires that the moderators
be well informed about what constitutes current research as opposed to
well established results or pure speculation over a broad class of topics.
That is a heavy burden to impose.

Paul Budnik
Xref: sparky sci.physics:22643 news.groups:25444