Here is the message Manishearth wrote to me as he banned me
sent Apr 21 at 22:57
Hello,
I'm writing in reference to your Physics Stack Exchange account:
http://physics.stackexchange.com/users/2751/dilaton
I've noticed that you have widely spammed the following comment on many closed questions:
People who diagree with this recent change in policies, which disallows questions about any study material and references (papers), instigated by David Zaslavsky and a few other powerful people without the whole community having a saying about it, you should have a look at this meta thread and vote accordingly. There are some people who disagree with these new policies, but they are not powerful enough. Study material/reference questions should exactly be allowed for the site to be useful for students and researchers.
I have multiple things to say about this:
It has already been made clear to you that this is neither a recent change in policies, nor is it "instigated by David Zaslavsky". You have been warned about making similar accusations in the past, which is why I am suspending you for 14 days.
Posting this comment all over the place is not OK. This is a form of spamming, and is an offence that one can be suspended for. Please consider this your final warning; do not continue with this once this suspension is lifted.
The policies do not disallow "questions about any study material and references (papers)". Again, this has already been explained to you. The older book questions are OK because they are about reasonable topics. Some of them have been closed to keep the answers in one place and to prevent polling. The newer resource request questions are generally subsets of these, and can be moved there — which is why we close them.
You are welcome to come back to the site after 14 days if you can address the above issues.
Regards,
Manishearth
Physics Stack Exchange moderator
My response
sent Apr 22 at 8:56
1.Since the moderator elections, questions about study material and references get rigorously closed for SE political reasons as soon as they appear on the main page with zero tolerance.
People, who get their questions closed for said in 1. political reasons are often not aware of the ongoing meta discussions about the corresponding SE policies.
So I pointed them to these meta discussions below the closed study material / reference questions such that they can state their opinion in the discussion too, if they disagree with this SE policy as it is currently enforced by the dominant moderators on Physics SE. They have the reight to express their opinion too and as they dont look on meta and chat, they have to be more actively invited to take part in these discussion.
The community of physicists has never agreed on the recent change of the community conensus concerning study material / reference questions, which was respected by the moderators up to the last elections last year. The dominant moderators are enforcing the new policies by means of an iron fist without the community of physicists ever having approved them.
So pointing out the ongoing meta discussions about the study material / reference policies below the corresponding main page questions which get unilaterlaly and fast closed is NOT spaming the site but important to secure that people who are badly affected by the changed policies can express their opinion in the corresponding meta discussions too.
Therefore I officially challenge Manishearths decision to ban me for just pointing out the relevant meta discussions to people who are negatively affected by the policies discussed there. This is NOT spaming the site but showing people where they can take part and express their opinion in the discussion too. And I protest against the attitude of the dominant moderators to suppress and now even eliminate people from the site who disagree with the SE policies as they are currently enforced and want to change them or their application on Physics SE.
I will write an email to the team too.
Manishearths answer my response:
Dont worry,
I will test now if I can get technical theoretical questions at Quora answered too (at least I know how LaTex works there), and if it pans out I will stay there until I and some others are able to start a new physics site somewhere, which is moderated by the local community of physicists instead of being governed by external rules invented by peole who are not physicists.
The kind of questions about topics I would like and appreciate are no longer popular here anyway. Physics SE makes me no longer happy (on the contrary) since the horrible things happend before the last moderator elections.
Bye, for I dont know how long
My take on this
After having had too much (!) time to calm down, I agree that the comment I used was a bit over the top, it would have been enough to just say for example "there is an ongoing meta discussion about the policies concerning such questions [link]" to make people aware of the relevant meta discussions. However I would strongly disagree with banning me or other people just for pointing out relevant meta discussions if the coresponding issue comes up on the main page ( I have seen other people, including moderators doing this), or just for disagreeing with policies and rules, speaking their mind concerning SE political issues, etc...
In my opinion, questioning or challenging the appropriateness of rules, policies, moderator actions or yes, even more generally the accordance of the actions of certain moderators with the will and needs of the physics SE community, should not have negative consequences like bans and other punishments.
