PhysicsForum exists to make rigorous, welcoming, accurate physics discussion available to everyone. These five principles keep the community healthy.
1. Be Rigorous
Cite your sources. Show your reasoning. Prefer well-defined statements over vague intuition. “For a free particle, $psi(x,t) propto e^{i(kx-omega t)}$ because…” is better than “Well, it sort of just oscillates.”
2. Be Welcoming
Every expert was once a beginner. There is no such thing as a stupid question. Answer beginners with the same care you would want when you stepped outside your specialty.
3. Be Honest
Acknowledge uncertainty. Distinguish established science from open research, and open research from speculation. “I don’t know” is a fully acceptable answer.
4. Be Respectful
Disagree with ideas, never with people. Avoid sarcasm in technical replies — it doesn’t survive an international audience. No personal attacks, no doxxing, no harassment of any kind.
5. No Pseudoscience
PhysicsForum is for established physics and serious open questions — not for theories that contradict well-tested experiments. “What would Maxwell’s equations look like in 5 dimensions?” is welcome. “My unified theory disproves relativity” is not.
What Gets Removed
- Spam, advertising, and link-farming.
- Harassment, hate speech, doxxing.
- Plagiarism (copy-pasted answers without attribution).
- Off-topic political flame-wars.
- Cranks claiming to have overturned 20th-century physics in a paragraph.
Moderation
Moderation is performed by volunteers. They warn before they remove, and they remove before they suspend. If a moderator action feels unfair, reply to the notification email — we read every appeal.
Reporting
Click the ⋮ menu on any post or reply to flag content for moderator review. Reports are anonymous.