[Guille]

hi,

I'm especially wanting Robert to read this.

During the past days I've been researching on what themes the commonly and/or mostly posting members of the TOE forums.

It was about what they would like to have as theme/s for the/a chat session/s.

I did this by sending a PM. (btw, another suggestion I give is that if you could please increase the number of members that can be sended a PM at the same time, because I had to go in 4s, and they were around 20 members so 5 copy pasting I had to do).

The results where similar to what I had expected but even more extreme.

None of the members that have sended me back a PM has given the same ideas to another one.

Some told me they preferred posting in threads, or writing articles than chat.

Others (most) gave me chat session ideas that would help them personally for their TOEs and theories. Although there were some patterns: at least four members wanted to talk about cosmology and cosmological themes. Around the same number wanted to talk about quantum physics: basically about fundamental particles. The biggest number though, was in phenomena of our level. To say: forces (which I support), energy, space, matter...

There was one special suggestion that I think was the most original of all. It was given to me by Omni, and it was to make a chat session with no starting theme. I know that in the beginning it may seem that we can do than whenever we want: get in the chat and talk. But usually no people is in there or very little (it can be reduced to me, masa, wild; and yogi sometimes) So setting a time for many to come and not having a starting them would be good.

I think we should also have a chat session out of physics: a philosophy session, I know this is the TOE quest chat, but many enjoy talking about some interesting philosophy topics. Maybe relate philosophic topics to TOE like morals, ethics, logic, existence.....

That's all for now.

[Robert]

Hi Guille,

I bumped up the PM limit to 10 for registered users and 20 for TOE Club members. Hope that works out better for you. It was set at 4 and 8.

The main communication tools at ToeQuest are chat, forum, and articles. Each has its advantages and disadvantages and will appeal in different ways to different members. Chat usually requires the least preparation and is the most spontaneous with quick turn-around time. It's ideally suited for brain-storming topics. The forums allows members to put a little more thought and preparation into their postings, but requires a longer turnaround on responses. The articles can take weeks or months to research and prepare, but can usually better present a member's viewpoint on a subject.

Your (Omni's) idea of having a chat with no topic sounds like a good one. However, I want to keep the bi-weekly themed meetings going. Perhaps the alternating weeks we could do the themeless chat. I don't want to send out more email, but could post an announcement on the forum home page. As far as chat time, I could use whatever time was used in the previous themed chat session. My only concern is that, if we schedule too many chat meetings we might spread folks out too much and only get a couple showing up to each meeting. Interest does seem to be picking up however.

I'll have some non-physics sessions soon. Sticking with physics/cosmology for now because I thought it would pull in the most people. For future, non-physics chats, I'm considering consciousness, ghost in the machine, noumenon, will vs fate, evidence of intellegent design, artificial intelligence, chaos, emergence. I'd also like for some chat sessions to shadow the Study Hall topic on occasion.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Regards,
--Robert