Linguistic survey on ubuntuforums.org

[aguafuertes]

took the survey & enjoyed it. look forward to seeing the results.

please post them in this thread, or post a link to them in this thread... for us folks that only keep track of threads by using forum search to search for all threads we have posted in.

Cool, thanks! And yes, that is the plan, using this thread to keep everything related to the survey together.

+1 for requesting the survey software be released as Free Software.

Will happen, as soon as time permits. Really glad you like it, but as I said before: it is just a small Django app by a python newbie for one special use case, so don't expect too much

changing the avatars, handles, and post count would have tainted the results. in one case, i rated a post as 'very rude' because they had a post count of 1 and told someone they would not help them. [...]
and i rated someone more polite than i otherwise would have because they had a smiley/happy avatar of some critter. that's honestly how my brain works, so i don't think that answer would be considered 'tainted' results.

Interesting - and yes, that is exactly why I wanted to keep as much context as possible. Our perceptions depend on many details. Did you also explain this in the comments of the respective post?

Thanks for the feedback!

[aguafuertes]

ask people with a couple thousand beans to include your survey in their signature, and you will get survey results for years to come from people google-searching an ubuntu problem, reading through the threads, and maybe seeing your survey linked in someone's signature.

the poor man's google adsense.

That is a brilliant idea, should have thought of that before! It does not "spam" people and is nonetheless very present. Right now it is probably a bit late for doing this - I don't know many people here and the survey is open only one more week.

But if any of you reading this would put the link to this thread in their signature, there's nothing I could do (meaning it would be great!)

[chriskin]

i'm in check my sig in some seconds

eh, before i do it
should i link the thread or the survey itself?

[aguafuertes]

hmmm... not many examples come to mind now, but a simple one: when asking for help
"quisiera que alguien me ayudara" meaning "I would like someone to help me" in a polite "tone" is sometimes translated to "I want help"

I see - and yes, in this case I would even translate the example to "I wish someone could help me" to translate (my) perceived level of "politeness". Interesting

[aguafuertes]

i'm in check my sig in some seconds

eh, before i do it
should i link the thread or the survey itself?

great, thanks! The link to the thread would be better, so that people have some context, I think.

[aguafuertes]

Cool survey; please post the results/paper/what ever you do with the data, I'd be curious to see how it turns out.

Thanks, will definitely do that. I'm curious as well

[aguafuertes]

It's not confined to translating between languages. Even between two people whose first language is English, humour and playfulness can be misunderstood when communicating online.

True - even in German conversation I`ve ended up misunderstanding someone oder being misunderstood. And in electronic discourse it is worse, as the interlocutors are often unknown and all you can do is rely on the text.

Recently, I had a couple of personal experiences of this, on these forums, and realised that I wasn't getting the kind of responses I wanted. Now I have a better idea why I needed to change what I was doing.

The thing is that, while "playing it safe" often prevents one from being misunderstood, it also keeps the communication at a more conventionalized/distant level - which is also not always what one might want. Depending on the situation not an easy choice.

[aguafuertes]

Most of the time, I reread any electronic communication, beore hitting 'send' or 'post', as I have also found out, to my cost, of the offence one can inadvertently cause by the lack of body language / expression.

Same here, especially when I communicating in an international, public setting.

he made a pun, and said 'See, I am learning to be English!'

I'm desperatly waiting for the day when finally someone will associate "being funny" with being German

[longtom]

Same here, especially when I communicating in an international, public setting.



I'm desperately waiting for the day when finally someone will associate "being funny" with being German

This could be a long wait... but just shows you how preconceptions rule us. Having said that, Germans do have humour - it's just not easy accessible for non Germans.

Take my word for it - I am one of them. However - I always was a big fan of Monty Python and that kind of humour. I was therefore perceived of "not being funny" in most German settings apart from a small, like minded group.

[aguafuertes]

This could be a long wait... Germans do have humour - it's just not easy accessible for non Germans

Hehe, I know, but one day...