Posts about Physicists
Dear r/physics and r/askphysics communities,
You might be aware of the recent changes in the Reddit API policies, namely, last 18 April, Reddit announced it would begin charging for access to its API leading to third party applications to become unaffordable due to the price of the API access, this includes several third party apps, including Toolbox and RES. This sparked a discussion and a movement from several large subreddits to go dark, going private, on the 12th of June for at least 48 hours.
Reddit admins have promised minimal disruption with their recent changes. However, this is yet another promise to moderators and the community at large.
In 2015, in response to widespread protests on many subs,, the admins promised they would build tools and improve communication with mods.
In 2019, the admins promised that chat would always be an opt-in feature. However, a year later, an unmoderated chat feature was made a default feature on most subreddits.
In 2020, in response to moderators protesting racism on Reddit, admin promised to support mods in combating hate.
In 2021, again, in response to protests, Reddit's admins promised a feature to report malicious interference by subreddits promoting Covid denial.
In 2022, Reddit finally took action against and banned or quarantined subreddits supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine after community outcry.
Reddit's admin has certainly made progress. In 2020, they updated the content policy to ban hate and in 2021 they banned and quarantined communities promoting covid denial. But while the company has updated their policies, they have not sufficiently invested in moderation support and support for site navigation at large.
(thanks to r/europe for the above text that summarizes a lot of the discussions)
As a mod team we always acted in a concerted, observing majority vote, trying to keep the users as the main focus when taking decisions, this time it is no different and given the implication of our decision we would like to let the community decide what path to take. We offer you the choice between three options
1: Do not go dark but pin a post about the issue during the duration of the Blackout/Until changes are made
2: Go dark for the duration of the blackout 12th for 48 hours (exact start time in UTC will be given)
3: Go dark 12th for at least 48 hours (exac start time in UTC will be given) and stay dark until changes have been obtained
A few words about the options, 1 is a tame option, while 2 carries some weight the subreddit will be back after 48 hours, option 3 however carries much more weight, in the event of reddit not caving to the demands, r/physics would go dark indefinitely until demands are met.
Please, consider your choice before voting, your vote matters.
Below the link to the voting poll
As I was in the draft phase of this post the situation evolved quite considerably, Some very sizeable third party apps have already jumped ship and there is an AMA planned for today with the Reddit CEO which promises to be an interesting one. This is still an unfolding situation still but we think it is still important to ask for your decision and to go through given the fact that the last developments are not great for the users and developers.
We would like to also take the opportunity to thank all of you that spend considerable time scouring for news and make high quality posts/comments/content that fits both the subreddits and thank you for participating.
Please, once again, consider your choice before voting, and vote, your vote matters.
/u/wodashit on behalf of the r/physics and r/askphysics mod team.
Edit: of course I had to make a typo in the title...
Hi r/physics and r/askphysics
Here we are, the community has spoken and the recent AMA from /u/spez probably cemented some of the sentiments that were out.
In spite of the good news for the disabled that would still have access to their apps through special free API calls, /u/spez doubled down on demonising third party apps and unfortunately I hardly see an easy way out of this one given the answer from reddit so far.
Therefore, I hereby announce on behalf of the mod teams of r/physics and r/askphysics that the countdown has started, we will go private from 00:00 PDT/UTC-7 on the 12th of June until 00:00 PDT/UTC-7 14th of June. Afterwards, according to community decision the subreddit will be back to limited submission until further notice or demands are met. The demands are very simple: Have an API pricing model that does not price out third party apps and try to restart dialog with third party developers in good faith.
We do not think this demand to be unreasonable and we are still hoping this could be salvaged.
To address the concerns of some of the community that there might not be a strong stance from bigger subreddit such as /r/videos will follow a similar hard line to the finish protest. But as they pointed out we all might as well be removed as moderators by reddit for going through with this.
If you have opinions that you would like to share or, given the situation and the potential for no solutions, have suggestions where we should redirect the community or what we should do please use the following google form in addition if you wish, even if in normal times I would not advocate for it as we were lukewarm on chat for reddit, here is a discord for /r/physics (please use your reddit username for an easier time)
We will keep the light on, and hope for the best.
See you for updates on the 14th, if not here, somewhere else.
/u/wodashit on behalf of r/physics and r/askphysics.
On this note I would like to take a minute to take off my moderator hat and speak as an individual:
I was not expecting to join this mod team, now 8 years ago. In that spawn of time, we all have grown differently, people have come and gone, arguments have been had, crackpots have been spamming and goddamn physics mug posts kept on being posted. We had our highs, we had our lows but overall we have shared our passion for the understanding of nature and I hope that we made this place even marginally better by our presence. Technology is a mean to help people and improve our time on this earth, and even though all of what those subreddits are are just words on a screen, just a website, they reflect many people from all around the world with different experiences and very complex and different lives and I am privileged enough to be able to be at the service of those many people, even if my contributions were not major, or even sometimes clumsy, I am glad I could help.
Although it does not mean much, I would like to thank all of you, lurkers, usuals, posters, commenters, fellow mods for all this time, I do not know what is next to come, maybe something here or somewhere else, but I hope that I will keep on helping, in whatever capacity, wherever this might be.
It’s been a privilege posting with you tonight.
Whomever you are, wherever you are,
Take care,
Woda.
Edit: I have got enough inputs to know why it's hated, now I want an alternative, the more the merrier. McIntyre's quantum textbook is the preferable choice as of now. Anyone can add their favorites here. Thank you to everyone who responded.
I have been reading many reviews online about D.J Griffiths' book Introduction to Quantum Physics and the reviews I have read so far appear to be divisive, while the reviews on amazon say it's as good as any other top book out there, others (somewhat whom I think are better informed) criticize the book 1. I wonder why that is and I would be interested to head of a good alternative to DJ Griffiths' book.
PS: I have been reading Introduction to Electrodynamics by the same author and it has been a pure joy till now. I had already bought Introduction to Quantum Mechanics thinking it will be as like his other book, should I give it a read if I am preparing for an exam (or should I prefer some other book)