viXra Rules
Poor Carl. All through the arxiv saga, he wanted to give the arxiv moderators the benefit of the doubt. He never complained when the gravity paper was moved to General Physics. But now, Carl has tried to post another paper on General Physics. It is most assuredly a completely innocent paper about certain aspects of quantum information theory, and contains no offensive material of any kind. Nonetheless, the paper was removed from General Physics, and Carl received an email, which starts:
From: Don Beyer [www-admin]
Subject: arXiv:0908.1209 Removed
To: carl@brannenworks.com
Date: Monday, August 10, 2009, 10:19 AM
Your submission has been removed upon a notice from our moderators, who determined it inappropriate for arXiv.
From: Don Beyer [www-admin]
Subject: arXiv:0908.1209 Removed
To: carl@brannenworks.com
Date: Monday, August 10, 2009, 10:19 AM
Your submission has been removed upon a notice from our moderators, who determined it inappropriate for arXiv.
posted by Kea | 2:50 AM
9 Comments:
That's depressing! Kea, and Carl :-(
Uh, the paper, exactly as rejected, is Spin Path Integrals and Generations. It was 0908.1209 but now they've reused the number, erased my paper like an unwanted figure in a 1930s photo of Stalin.
But I'm not depressed. The paper has advanced at Foundations of Physics from "Editor assigned" to "Under review".
And I'm busily working on the next paper.
Thanks for the link, Carl. Foundations of Physics? Are the editors there considered crackpots?
I admire Carl's persistence in trying to get arXiv to play fair. How can they say that a paper like Carl's is inappropriate without giving any justification? I don't see how it fits any of the "potential reasons for removal" that they mention on the moderation page. They say you can appeal of course, but that is difficult when they don't reveal why they remove in the first place.
On the subject of viXra, it has just celebrated its first month by flying past the 100th paper mark. The administrators (that's me and my spaniel) will be away for a week enjoying the clear air of the Vosgian mountains, so don't worry about the lack of new papers during that time.
Glad you're not depressed Carl.
Guess I can hold off on rejoining the Sesame Street fan club. :-)
Carl, the first two sections of the paper in question just look like you're making things more complicated and less elegant than the usual (and correct) approach.
Also, you haven't replied to my comment at:
http://carlbrannen.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/new-paper-on-hadrons-and-koides-mass-formula/
http://arxiv.org/help/moderation
"arXiv moderators will suggest the removal of a submission that violates arXiv policies in some way. Potential reasons for removal are:
"Inappropriate format. ...
"Inappropriate topic. While arXiv serves a variety of scientific communities, not all subjects are currently covered. Submissions that do not fit well into our current classification scheme may be removed and, where possible, redirected to a more appropriate repository.
"Duplicated content. ...
"Submission of copyrighted material. ...
"Excessive submission rate. ..."
"Inappropriate topic" seems to be the censorship criterion here, despite the fact that it doesn't contain any "offensive" material:
"While arXiv serves a variety of scientific communities, not all subjects are currently covered. Submissions that do not fit well into our current classification scheme may be removed ..."
This "fit well" clause would have enabled arXiv to delete the works of Copernicus's solar system, Darwin's evolution, and others who put doing science before trying to "fit in well" with the work of their contemporaries.
Carl,
Stalin had many people air-brushed out of existence, but at least he had some excuses for being angry and trying to eliminate all knowledge of his enemies. E.g., Trotsky was originally (before air brushing) with Lenin and Stalin in a famous photo, but that changed after he exposed Stalin's corruption by writing The Revolution Betrayed.
Rhys, Re first two sections being more complicated. Well the first section is just an introduction and I can't get away without it. The second section introduces pure density matrix formalism which is much simpler and easier to use than the usual spinor formalism.
Uh, sorry for ignoring your comment. I read the first sentence, "I think I was being a bit silly", and didn't read the rest. I'll type something up over there.
As we have found from his webpage, at least one arxiv moderator is an outright Stalinist!
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