Jesus. I'm risking identifying myself here, but it has happened before. I was one of the earlier moderators of PhysicsForums back in 2003 and one of the younger ones. I think myself and one another was an actual student, whereas the others were all professors or retired. I believe my last login was 2013 and last real activity well before that. I no longer have access to the email used and couldn't recover the account even if I wanted to.
I only talked to Greg remotely and never met him. This is a huge betrayal of trust. Older moderators have died since then. This is a very longstanding community. Even if we didn't stick around forever, many of us became real-world friends. Adding autogenerated summaries is one thing, but inserting comments in a real person's name that they never made, when you have no knowledge of what became of that person, who may even now be dead, is beyond the pale. You're rewriting history. The fact that this site still exists at all is extremely gratifying. It's a huge part of what has made me who I am today. It's a big part of why I don't really pontificate all that much, don't have a blog. I read what I wrote there nearly a quarter century ago, and it's not all bunk. A lot of what I said holds up. Plenty of it was raw factual data never in dispute. But when it came to politics and economics and forecasting of the future, I said things so wrong and thing I so strongly disagree with now that having that record teaches me how flimsy and full of shit so many of our opinions are, no matter how smart we are and no matter how strongly we hold those opinions. I've 180'd things I was completely certain of during the first Bush administration. Heck, you can add voting for Bush to that list. There is no way in hell I would do that today.
History matters, Greg. It can both humble and enlighten us. But only if it's true.
I only talked to Greg remotely and never met him. This is a huge betrayal of trust. Older moderators have died since then. This is a very longstanding community. Even if we didn't stick around forever, many of us became real-world friends. Adding autogenerated summaries is one thing, but inserting comments in a real person's name that they never made, when you have no knowledge of what became of that person, who may even now be dead, is beyond the pale. You're rewriting history. The fact that this site still exists at all is extremely gratifying. It's a huge part of what has made me who I am today. It's a big part of why I don't really pontificate all that much, don't have a blog. I read what I wrote there nearly a quarter century ago, and it's not all bunk. A lot of what I said holds up. Plenty of it was raw factual data never in dispute. But when it came to politics and economics and forecasting of the future, I said things so wrong and thing I so strongly disagree with now that having that record teaches me how flimsy and full of shit so many of our opinions are, no matter how smart we are and no matter how strongly we hold those opinions. I've 180'd things I was completely certain of during the first Bush administration. Heck, you can add voting for Bush to that list. There is no way in hell I would do that today.
History matters, Greg. It can both humble and enlighten us. But only if it's true.