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I just happened to note that http://www.physicsoverflow.org/ now exists; this isn't a stackexchange website, but seems to run on similar software, and with similar goals to mathoverflow, which seems reasonable to me.

However, it seems to have populated itself with a large number of questions from this site (and perhaps others), and not necessarily with permission (although it does provide attribution).

Examples:

http://www.physicsoverflow.org/25309/free-boson-correlator-%24-langle-x-z-x-w-rangle-ln-z-w-%24

http://www.physicsoverflow.org/25273/why-is-the-exterior-algebra-so-ubiquitous

http://www.physicsoverflow.org/25271/matrix-tree-theorem-via-supersymmetry-e-grassman-algebras

and many others; these are the first three questions on the website as I am viewing it right now.

Am I wrong to feel a little weirded out by this? It seems in some respects to have snatched up a large proportion of this site, users, questions, answers, comments and all, without really clearly having permission to do so.

Edit: Upon looking at the website a bit more, I happened to click on the "Is this you?" link on my "user page", only to have it end up at a 404. This should be addressed.

Furthermore, something else I just thought of: What is there to stop someone else from claiming my account? With the discussion below about academic brands, this is a potentially serious issue.

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    $\begingroup$ It is important to note that the PhysicsOverflow site gives proper attribution and links back to the original questions on MathOverflow (at the bottom of each imported post). $\endgroup$
    – Ricardo Andrade
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 19:23
  • 8
    $\begingroup$ I know that, but it still seems weird that they have essentially created accounts for a lot of users here without actually checking with them first. Attribution is important, but it still seems weird for a website to auto-populate itself with content and users without permission in some way. Maybe it's just me? $\endgroup$
    – Simon Rose
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 19:27
  • 8
    $\begingroup$ For example, I am a "Registered user" on this website, despite having never heard of it before today, and certainly never signing up for it. $\endgroup$
    – Simon Rose
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 19:28
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ There is a short section in the PhysicsOverflow site FAQ dealing with importing questions from the StackExchange network: physicsoverflow.org/faq#a10645 $\endgroup$
    – Ricardo Andrade
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 19:43
  • 12
    $\begingroup$ Importing content should not be an issue, this is what the CC licence is for. Creating accounts may be another matter. $\endgroup$
    – Emil Jeřábek
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 19:47
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ Maybe it is also important for this discussion to remember the purpose of PhysicsOverflow. We will probably respond here in more detail shortly to explain ourself. Our importing of MO questions that are of importance for theoretical physicists too is by no means intended to do any harm to MO or to disrespect its members. We highly appreciate the MathOverflow community, and what it has achieved for mathematics serves us as a (not sure how realistic for us) role model for what we would like to achieve by PhysicsOverflow for the physics community too. $\endgroup$
    – Dilaton
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 21:50
  • 8
    $\begingroup$ The issue of imported user accounts which give the impression that users participate on Physics Overflow that actually never used the site has been raised by several Physics.SE users in the past. The Physics Overflow adminstrators have declined so far to implement a solution to this issue. $\endgroup$
    – user35354
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 22:21
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @MadScientist No, we have not declined to implement a solution, but a clear solution was never really proposed on Physics.SE. I hope the new change on the users page makes it clearer. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 8, 2014 at 3:08
  • 4
    $\begingroup$ IMHO, a true scientist should rather be concerned with the dissemination of knowledge; leave "intellectual property" issues to Hollywood. In this particular case, the more people learn about these questions/answers, the better. $\endgroup$
    – Alex Degtyarev
    Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 10:33
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @AlexDegtyarev At least for me, the first thing that struck me as a potential problem was not the questions and answers, but the creation of the users. But seeing the responses from the moderators of the site, it seems that there is nothing to worry about at all. $\endgroup$
    – Tobias Kildetoft
    Commented Dec 11, 2014 at 12:40
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Regarding the new edits, (1) That's surprising, the link works for me, even when logged out. Are you sure this is not a problem on your side? (2) The SE API/data dumps provides us with the MD5 encrypted hashes of the user emails, so we check the email from which the reclamation request was sent against the hashes. If they don't match, we take other measures to solve the issue (e.g. asking the user to add a short code on his about me for verification). The account details are not revealed if there is any suspicion of identity theft. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 5:05
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @Dimensio1n0 - It's possible it's a problem on my side, yes. I just clicked on the link on the "user" page though, and got a 404. So I don't know exactly what on my end would cause that. $\endgroup$
    – Simon Rose
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 7:12
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ That said, I'm glad there is a way to ensure that user accounts are not so easily co-opted. $\endgroup$
    – Simon Rose
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 7:13
  • $\begingroup$ @SimonRose I suppose this maybe getting off-topic here, so could you share a screenshot of the 404 error in a mail to [email protected] (or on a post on the PhysicsOverflow meta if you're fine with that), so we could find out the exact cause of the error? $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 18, 2014 at 4:21
  • $\begingroup$ @Dimensio1n0 - I just checked again and it doesn't seem to be a problem now. That said, the link seems to have changed - originally it was physicsoverflow.org/imported%20account and now it is physicsoverflow.org/imported-account, so something seems to have changed on your end. But it works now. $\endgroup$
    – Simon Rose
    Commented Dec 18, 2014 at 8:33

4 Answers 4

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$\begingroup$

Populating with questions, properly attributed, is completely okay, with or without permission. (That's the point of our licence.)

Creating user accounts without permission is completely not okay.

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    $\begingroup$ On the user accounts: as far as I saw, but really I did not look closely, the profile says that the user has not yet signed up. See for example physicsoverflow.org/user/john+mangual the parenthetical remark on the right below activity. Possibly this should be more visible, I do not really know. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 21:51
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @quid It says "Type: Registered user - send private message", and only under "Activity" you find the note: "(This user is not yet participating on PhysicsOverflow, but we hope they will)" You might decide that you are not offended by this, because of the good intentions. However, Scott is right that it is not OK, in a certain sense. $\endgroup$
    – Thomas Klimpel
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 22:05
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @ThomasKlimpel yes, it is prone to misunderstanding; either on purpose or (more likely) out of convenience. My mention of the exact location of the info can be taken as a hint that I do not consider it as very visible or clear either. I have no intention to judge or to defend this site. I only meant to point out that something is done to distinguish actual user accounts from dummy user pages. So that whether "creating user accounts without permission" happens or not is arguably less clear than OP suggests. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Dec 7, 2014 at 22:28
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ General comment, sites such as ResearchGate, LindIn, probably others, pull this kind of crap, one thing is to send out fake invitations from people who are already on the site, supposedly requesting your participation, "friend" status, and so on. Took me a long time to realize that the initial invitation that got me onto one or more such sites was probably fake. I did, eventually, figure out how to send all email from the sites to trash. $\endgroup$
    – Will Jagy
    Commented Dec 8, 2014 at 0:51
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ I have now added a short text at the top of the users page (the only page where it can leading to misunderstanding) on PhysicsOverflow, I hope it's better now. @WillJagy Please don't compare the tactics of Linked-ln and ResearchGate to PhysicsOverflow, we do want to provide as much clarity as possible regarding the issue of importing, and certainly do not intend to mislead anybody into registering. Apologies for the confusion due to this issue, I hope the new text makes it better. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 8, 2014 at 3:21
  • 6
    $\begingroup$ Okay; having had a look around I'm satisfied that the import procedure is reasonable, both for posts and users. $\endgroup$
    – Kim Morrison Mod
    Commented Dec 8, 2014 at 3:49
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ ... How can it be without permission when the license already gave permission? $\endgroup$
    – SamB
    Commented Dec 23, 2014 at 16:11
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @SamB, assuming you're talking about importing questions, rather than creating user accounts, it's important that the license does not grant blanket permission to reproduce content from MathOverflow --- it requires attribution, in quite specific forms. $\endgroup$
    – Kim Morrison Mod
    Commented Jan 5, 2015 at 20:42
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    $\begingroup$ @ScottMorrison: I was referring to your first paragraph. $\endgroup$
    – SamB
    Commented Jan 9, 2015 at 0:36
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I strongly agree with Andy Putman's comment.

I also am very annoyed that my account was copied. My name is my academic "brand", so to speak, so I like to have control over where I have accounts.

Listing people who have never heard of, visited, or endorsed your site as users, with fine print saying that they have not actually participated yet, is a dishonest and exploitative practice. Since you have chosen to begin your relationship with me in this way, there is no chance that I would ever use your site.

We unfortunately cannot really "remove" all imported accounts as many would like to reclaim their accounts.

Yes, you really could. Listing someone as a user of a site without their permission seems close to the border of legally actionable behavior. It is not a good way to run an academic website.

Added to address quid's comment: Content contributors would certainly be better. (And I agree that their use of the content is completely unobjectionable.) But in my case, there is no content. Therefore I can't see that my name is being used there for any legitimate purpose. Rather, I feel, as Andy said, that they are trying to make use of "the Pete L. Clark brand".

More to the point, I just don't feel that things are being done in good faith. The site currently says that I first posted three years ago. Any way you slice it, that's simply untrue. They also speak in terms of accounts being "reclaimed", but come on: that's double-talk.

After I wrote this answer, I spent more time searching the site, and I can't find any information whatsoever about who is running it. The founders of the site have taken care to stay anonymous. (Added: More precisely, 2/3 of the founders are pseudonymous. The non-pseudonymous founder is a minor.) It seems that they want to be very careful about the use of their names and reputation. The confluence of this and taking my name and using it to promote their site without even contacting me (hey, if you want me to join your site, how about asking me?) seems hypocritical and disrespectful.

Further Added: @Dimensio1no: "the moderators and their names are accessible quite easily from the "Special users" tab under the "Users" page." Two of the three "Super Administrators" are listed only as Dilaton and polarkernel. Those are not names of people. In fact I received an email message from one of these, which said that s/he keeps anonymous for a "good reason". A serious academic site is one which is run by people who disclose their real names.

It also says

First posted (imported): 3 years

I have never posted anything on your site. What is that you are importing? And how can anything be done 3 years ago on a site that has existed for less than a year?

I am currently looking at the page

http://www.physicsoverflow.org/user/Pete+L.+Clark

If you really want to argue that there is no implication here that I am a user of your site, then we are going to have a problem. Why did you put my name here in the first place? If it is really only because I was listed as a user on another website: that's a problem. I explicitly gave Stack Exchange permission to list me as a user on certain of their sites (and not on others). Taking all the names on another company's site and importing them on your own site is not a good faith action. Moreover you don't even inform the people that you are using their names in this way.

What is the (full) name of your site's legal representative?

Yet Further Added:

As Mr. Abhimanyu has failed to identify anyone else by name as being owner and representative for the site, I will assume that he is responsible for it. Let me respond to his points:

1) Deleting all "imported users" who have not contributed and TP.SE user was a good start. Thanks very much for that. However, in that you are still claiming other users, the problem has not gone away.

2) There seems to be some terminological confusion.

I said "founder", not "moderator". Those are completely different things, and the fact that the difference is obscure both on the site itself and seems not to be not completely clear in Mr. Abhimanyu's mind is not a good sign. Everyone knows that Stack Overflow and then Stack Exchange was founded by Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky. This openness and direct dealing with their clientele was certainly a key to their success. I am kind of surprised that some people hear seem happy to support a site which is untransparent (and in my opinion, even somewhat misleading) about its own provenance.

An "imported user" is still a "user". The language implies that they have used the site. Using this language and then correcting for it later on the "user page" (!!) is not complete clarity; it's double-talk. Mr. Abhimanyu wrote

I do not wish to repeat how the fact that you do not use, contribute to, or endorse the site is the second-most clear thing on the page.

Even by your own admission, it is more prominent that you have a page with title and existence naming people as users of your site. Whether the parenthetical (!!) sentence

"(This user is not yet participating on PhysicsOverflow, but we hope they will)"

is the "second-most clear thing on the page" is not a point I want to debate. But the language is a far cry from saying "This person does not use, contribute to, or endorse the site". Participation is something I never did on TP.SE, but I did sign in and create an account there. The language of your site suggests that my account has somehow been transferred to PhysicsOverflow. That's factually incorrect, it's legally questionable at best, and after all this conversation I still feel like you are exploiting people to promote your brand.

3) The claim that "Pete L. Clark" is licensed content under the Creative Commons is truly alarming. Even with my "account" deleted on your site, I feel that I will have to consider responding to that legally. Probably my first step would be to consult with an attorney at my university and have her correspond with PO's legal representative. Once more, who is that?

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    $\begingroup$ What if it said "content contributors" instead of "users"? What I would like to understand is what is your specific misgiving. If they want to import content you created here, they can do so as much as they like and they should do it if they like. This is the main point of having a permissive licence here. They'd also have to say it is from you. This is also given by the licence. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 22:11
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    $\begingroup$ @quid: If you look at an imported post, there is a line at the bottom saying something like “this post imported from MathOverflow, posted by SE user XYZ”, including a link to the original post and to the MO profile of the user in question. This, by itself, is a quite adequate way of attribution as per the license. There is no need to additionally create and publicly display a user profile for the author of the imported post. $\endgroup$
    – Emil Jeřábek
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 22:29
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    $\begingroup$ @EmilJeřábek granted (and I was not unaware of it), but my point is that it might be really debatable what is more adequate in such a case: to link all the content of some author together and to mention the authors prominently or not to mention at all visibly the amount of content due to authors' not members of the site. Somebody could then complain for a different reason like: look how much content there is imported, but they give the impression, at first glance, all the content is due to the users of the site. The true authors are only mentioned in a footnote. Or something like this. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 22:43
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    $\begingroup$ Thank you for the reply; your objection is now more clear to me. Just to be clear: I have nothing to do with this specific site and not even any particular sympathy for it, at least not anymore since quite a while (due the conduct of at least one of the representatives of that site in the SE network, though this is not directly relevant to that site). I was really curious about the general problematic. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Dec 15, 2014 at 22:56
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    $\begingroup$ Apologies, but most of this answer is just factually incorrect; the moderators and their names are accessible quite easily from the "Special users" tab under the "Users" page. See physicsoverflow.org/users/special. The imported users are now not at all displayed as users of the site. There is no reason to change "user" to "content contributor" because the user pages now just say "John Doe" not "User John Doe" for imported users. It does not say that you "first posted 3 years ago" - it says your first posted import was done three years ago. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 4:49
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    $\begingroup$ The founders have not "taken care to remain anonymous" - you can find our names easily as previously mentioned. We are not using your name to promote the site - the part on the user not participating on PhysicsOverflow isn't fine print, it's red and stands out as the clearest text on the page besides perhaps the site logo. Under type, it says "Imported user" now, and does not say that you've registered as a user on PO. Regarding the particular case of your account being imported, I suppose you had posted on TP.SE, all of whose users are imported. Would you like your account deleted? $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 5:02
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    $\begingroup$ @quid Hm, it would be good if you could point to a specific place or event where you consider the "conduct of a PO representative on an SE site" to be poor? By the way, PO is mostly community-run, with the moderators having special priviledges just to execute the will of the community... $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 5:05
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    $\begingroup$ @quid I guess he was only trying to prevent Maths.SE from going through the same issues that Physics.SE did, but OK, I understand what you mean now, and sorry for that. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 8:10
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    $\begingroup$ Regarding your latest edits... As earlier mentioned, the "first posted" clearly says "imported". Indeed, in your case, you didn't post anything which got imported either - this is because you were a user on TP.SE. Sorry for this, and I have deleted your PO account. The "3 years ago" is the time at which you created your TP.SE account, and that time stamp was imported by our import plugin. I do not wish to repeat how the fact that you do not use, contribute to, or endorse the site is the second-most clear thing on the page. As for the legal implications, all user-generate content on SE is $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 12:20
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    $\begingroup$ licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, and your submission of your name to SE is, also, a user contribution. As long as it is mentioned that you are an imported user, this is not a violation of the license at all. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 12:22
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    $\begingroup$ The license only covers copy rights. The issue here has nothing to do with copyright, it is about personality rights protection. I am not a layer so I do not know whether it is within the actual legal boundaries or not, but as it is a sensitive issue to people, you should avoid even getting close. If you intend to run a reputable site, your number one concern should be that You Don’t Mess With People. This should also be your number two concern, and number three concern. $\endgroup$
    – Emil Jeřábek
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 13:57
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    $\begingroup$ Your number four concern should be transparent accountability: you need to indicate clearly who (an actual person or company) is legally responsible for running the site. Moderator election does not enter it. $\endgroup$
    – Emil Jeřábek
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 13:58
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Regarding your edits again; (2) Ok, I understand now. The requested information can be found here: physicsoverflow.org/8348 , which is a public official post. (3) Upon further thought, you are right that the usernames do not come under the purview of the CC-BY-SA license. Maybe I just don't interpret the term "user" in the same way as you do... So if I understand correctly, you are asking that the term "user" be removed everywhere from the profile pages, right? E.g. "Imported account" instead of "Imported user"? In that case, OK, the change will be done as soon as possible. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 15:01
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    $\begingroup$ @Dimensio1n0: Yes, exactly. Also, contrary to what I said before: obviously making this change would take real work and would be a good faith effort. If you do it, I would consider using your site in the future. And certainly, I would stop publicly complaining about it. $\endgroup$
    – Pete L. Clark
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 15:10
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    $\begingroup$ @Dilaton thanks for following up on this. $\endgroup$
    – user9072
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 16:07
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$\begingroup$

As others have noted, copying posts with suitable attribution and license terms is allowed by the CC BY SA license, and the attribution seems to be done reasonably. However, I'd be unhappy if my user account were imported (fortunately it hasn't been), for some of the same reasons as discussed in the comments. Here's a proposal for a solution.

The imported accounts do say "This user is not yet participating on PhysicsOverflow, but we hope they will" under "Activity", which is honest. However, it doesn't jump out at casual readers, and there are several other issues that could cause confusion if someone doesn't study the page carefully:

  1. The accounts prominently say "Type: Registered user". To me, saying someone is a registered user strongly suggests that they have chosen to register. I suppose it's ambiguous, since technically one can register someone else without their permission or even knowledge, but it's misleading.

  2. They also list a time of first posting. If one of my posts is copied to another site by someone else, I wouldn't describe it by saying I posted something there.

  3. Even the heading "User John Smith" sounds like John Smith is a user of the site.

In an ideal world, I'd recommend against having imported accounts at all, but I imagine that would require nontrivial software changes. Another option would be to add more emphasis that the imported accounts are not real. For example, by changing the heading from "User John Smith" to "Imported content by John Smith", saying "First posted: never [all posts were imported from other sites]", and changing the type to "Type: placeholder for imported content" or the like. Basically, to make the status obvious even at first glance. This is probably no harder than adding the note under "Activity" was, and it would really help clarify the situation.

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    $\begingroup$ For now, I have simply made the notice "This user is not yet..." red to increase prominence. For the other changes, I would need to contact our system developer (as the changes would need to be made in the core code). However, I would like some clarity on the exact suggestions first: (1) Would it be better if it were just blank? (2) Would "Earliest post" be a better caption? (3) Would it be better if the word "User" were omitted and it just read "John Doe"? What we really want to do is be absolutely clear on both aspects that (a) the account is imported and (b) the account can be reclaimed. So $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 16:48
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    $\begingroup$ I think that stating "Imported content from John Doe" would not really do the latter goal justice. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 16:49
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ If you'd like to advertise that the account can be reclaimed, you can add a note about that ("If you are <user name> from <other site>, you can activate this PhysicsOverflow account by <necessary actions>."). That would be clearer than mixing it in with the other concerns. $\endgroup$
    – Henry Cohn
    Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 16:58
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    $\begingroup$ Basically, my feeling is that it's best to err on the side of caution. There are creepy sites out there that auto-generate accounts for hypothetical users, sometimes with dishonest intent and sometimes apparently innocently. It's best for non-creepy sites to set a good example by being extra clear. $\endgroup$
    – Henry Cohn
    Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 17:07
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Apart from making it clear that imported accounts are imported but can be reclaimed, I think we should also keep (at least implicitely) conveying that owners of imported accounts are welcome to join the community and "actively" contribute if they feel like. $\endgroup$
    – Dilaton
    Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 17:19
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    $\begingroup$ @HenryCohn Thanks for the clarifications - I've sent the necessary feature requests to our system developer. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 10, 2014 at 14:21
2
$\begingroup$

As a moderator on PhysicsOverflow, let me clarify that the purpose of importing posts from MathOverflow is certainly not to demean or disrespect MathOverflow or harm it in any way. On the contrary, PhysicsOverflow certainly wants to maintain friendly relations with MathOverflow (and this is reciprocated too).

The purpose of importing posts, in fact is precisely the opposite of what it seems to be (mis)interpreted as in this thread. The purpose of importing posts, especially unanswered ones, is mainly to help the OP and others get an answer to their question. Even though MathOverflow is a much larger and more successful community than PhysicsOverflow, it is often the case that a question needs an answer from a physics point of view, and thus is equally or even sometimes better suited for answers on PhysicsOverflow. Thus, the post is imported (often through this queue) and once it receives an answer, a link is posted below the MathOverflow question as a comment, to the answer on PhysicsOverflow.

Sometimes, even on answered questions, it's possible that the question can be answered from a more physics/physicist's point of view, which could make it also suitable on PhysicsOverflow. We only import questions closely related to physics, and for the purpose of trying to get them answers, to help both the MathOverflow and PhysicsOverflow communities.

As for the legality of the issue, since all MathOverflow user-generated content is licensed as CC-BY-SA 3.0, all legal criterion are met by the attributions below the posts. Regarding the unintentionally misleading nature of the users page, I have now added a short text at the top of the page. I hope it's better now.

Sincere apologies to the OP and others who were troubled by the lack of clarity.

Also, thanks to those who voiced their concerns regarding the import of accounts. We unfortunately cannot really "remove" all imported accounts as many would like to reclaim their accounts. However, those who would like their accounts deleted may write an email to admin [at] physicsoverflow⋅org or comment here (when writing so in the comments, I had expected the admin mailbox to be full of emails requesting account deletion - on the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised by a number of MathOverflow users asking for account reclamation).

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    $\begingroup$ Perhaps I wasn't clear; I honestly was trying to get a feel from the community as to whether or not I should be concerned about this. My initial reaction was that this seemed weird, but it seems that my misgivings were misplaced. $\endgroup$
    – Simon Rose
    Commented Dec 8, 2014 at 7:55
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    $\begingroup$ I'd be very happy to see my account there deleted. It only appears because of one comment I made on physicsoverflow.org/16345/… regarding the original title that was full of spaces. $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 18:17
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    $\begingroup$ I also am very annoyed that my account was copied. My name is my academic "brand", so to speak, so I like to have control over where I have accounts. $\endgroup$
    – Andy Putman
    Commented Dec 9, 2014 at 19:30
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    $\begingroup$ @AsafKaragila Your account has been deleted as requested. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 10, 2014 at 5:15
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    $\begingroup$ @AndyPutman Your account has also been deleted as requested. Any other users who would like their PO accounts to be deleted can write a mail to admin [at] physicsoverflow⋅org or comment here. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 10, 2014 at 5:17
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    $\begingroup$ Thank you very much! $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Commented Dec 10, 2014 at 5:18
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    $\begingroup$ I also want to thank you very much for being so responsive to my request! $\endgroup$
    – Andy Putman
    Commented Dec 10, 2014 at 5:31
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    $\begingroup$ Please delete me. I agree in the strongest possible manner with what Pete Clark has said. You have no way of knowing if I had or have any interest in participating on your site or indeed any other Physics site or any other StackOverflow site. $\endgroup$
    – Yemon Choi
    Commented Dec 16, 2014 at 16:46
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Please delete my "account" also - I am only on there because of some minor comments. If and when I would like to participate I will sign up. $\endgroup$
    – David Roberts Mod
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 1:47
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ @DavidRoberts Your account is deleted as requested. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 4:38
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @YemonChoi Your account has been deleted too, as requested. $\endgroup$
    – Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir
    Commented Dec 17, 2014 at 4:39

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