Hi everybody, I'm currently writing my thesis in linguistics, on the perception of language use in online communities. Being a long-time Ubuntu user myself, I decided to base my empirical research on the huge and active community that ubuntuforums.org represents. To do this successfully, I need your help: I developed an online survey and need as many participants from ubuntuforums.org as possible - all of you would be perfect Link to the survey: http://attitude.openinformation.org/survey/start/ Screencast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-T64MT5Gp8 Spread the word! More on the survey My online survey takes 4 Threads from ubuntuforums.org, and I simply want to know what you think about them. For this, all you have to do is to rate the single posts in these threads on a scale, going from "really polite" to "really rude". Additionally you can/should provide a short comment on why you chose a certain point on the scale - and markup the text parts that "triggered" your decision (if possible). I uploaded a short screencast (~ 3 min) on how to take the survey to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-T64MT5Gp8 Furthermore, the survey: is completely anonymousrequires Javascript and Cookies to be enabledtakes 15-20 minutesthe best thing: you can win an Ubuntu book One important thing: if you take the survey, please complete it, otherwise I cannot use your results. So hang in there - at the end you can provide your E-mail adress and participate in an Ubuntu book raffle! Once again, the link to the survey: http://attitude.openinformation.org/survey/start/ More background My name is Gregor, I'm from Germany, where I study English Linguistics at Bonn University (http://www.linguistics.uni-bonn.de/). You can find my - currently inactive - blog here: http://blog.openinformation.org/index-en.html I've presented this project to the ubuntuforums.org council to make sure that it is in accordance with the Code of Conduct and in general acceptable for the ubuntuforums.org community. Guys, thanks for your feedback and support! If you have any questions, just write a post in this thread and ask - I'll be happy to respond. Thanks a lot for your interest and participation! Gregor
i find ubuntuforums.org unusually polite. i think this is partly due to it being full of a lot of new linux users sharing a newly found enthusiasm for the opensource movement as well as stringent moderators. i dont think it's particularly indicative of social forums as a whole, but is probably indicative of many tech support forums. are you also doing a similar thing with, say, 4chan's /b/?
Originally Posted by aeiah i find ubuntuforums.org unusually polite. I agree, due to the COC ubuntuforums.org has a very polite atmosphere, especially for a forum of this size. But that makes it more interesting, too: while there exists a clear Code of Conduct, it will be exciting to see how native and non-native speakers of English interpret/enact the COC in their communication - and how they perceive single posts.
ahh yes, i get ya. i suppose its a decent one to use in that case. anyway, i did your survey. be sure to post the results some time, heh
I'd be really interested in knowing why you want to know how long I've lived in the US but not in any other countries of the world.
Forum Social IRC Channel
Thanks! be sure to post the results some time, heh definitely, but it will take a while
Originally Posted by forestpixie I'd be really interested in knowing why you want to know how long I've lived in the US but not in any other countries of the world. The varieties of English (US, GB, AUS etc...) differ significantly in nearly all linguistic features, be it different words, grammatical structures, semantics or pragmatics. I want to be able to set the focus on one variety, if necessary, in comparison to the others Unfortunately I don't have the time to do this for each variety (that would be huuuge), so I had to single out one - the US American variety.
Originally Posted by aguafuertes The varieties of English (US, GB, AUS etc...) differ significantly in nearly all linguistic features, be it different words, grammatical structures, semantics or pragmatics. I want to be able to set the focus on one variety, if necessary, in comparison to the others Unfortunately I don't have the time to do this for each variety (that would be huuuge), so I had to single out one - the US American variety. Thanks for the reply
Thanks for your interest It would be actually cool to have more time and ressources to do this kind of drill-down for all varieties.
I just wondered if it was because you perceived that there were more american users here. Personally, of course, being English, imo the English used here is correct and everyone else is just being different
Ubuntu Forums Code of Conduct
