Linguistic survey on ubuntuforums.org

[aguafuertes]

Might it be that the earlier respondents were the most motivated towards doing the survey?

Interesting thought - even though SiHa strongly disagrees

Less motivated my ar$e.

How close are you to getting the number of responses you need?

Originally I was aiming at 300 completed surveys - right now I have 175.

I'm very happy with the number of responses I got so far and could work with them already - but there more I get, the better for the statistics. I'll keep the survey online for one more week, hopefully i'll get closer to that goal.

[aguafuertes]

I just took your survey, hope it helps.

Thanks!

something i have noticed with spanish speakers, is that sometimes when literal translations are used they can seem rather rude in english the way they are frased.

Ah yes, literal translations - they also make us Germans sound more impolite than we really are

Do you have a specific example in mind? To me, reading spanish forums, it seems that the tone in general is more "playful".

Completed the survey. Good luck!

Thanks

[koleoptero]

Interesting survey. Some very rude replies to simple questions, and some polite answers to rude questions. We are all nuts, aren't we?

Good luck with the survey.

[earthpigg]

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.


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


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.

this Ubuntuforums.org user's first post in any of the support forums, and it was to tell someone they where refusing to help?

or

someone made a new account just to refuse to help someone else?

either way, screw that person. (feel free to rate this post as 'a bit rude' because i said that )



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.

[earthpigg]

I think it started off with 86% completion rate for the first 100 participants and has dropped nearly 10% for the second 100. Feedback or ideas are appreciated, as I did not change anything on the survey...

im part of that second or third 100 group.

me - and presumably people like me - habitually ignore all ads, announcements, e-mails from people they don't recognize, etc.

the fact that i saw this thread at all -- being that it was in the 'announcements' section -- was a complete fluke.

once it is unstickied, i predict another surge.


also:

Beans: 1

one post in the support forums. nothing wrong with that, but...

when someone changes their sig, it applies retroactively to previous posts they have made.

ubuntuforums.org support threads show up all over the damn place on google.

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.

google presence does amazing things.

i have found that my frequent posts in the support forums, combined with linking to my own project in my sig, has gotten me all sorts of unexpected PR, support, and feedback for my project.

[AvalonSpirit]

Ah yes, literal translations - they also make us Germans sound more impolite than we really are

Do you have a specific example in mind? To me, reading spanish forums, it seems that the tone in general is more "playful".
Thanks

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"

Another thing is that when you use "angry" language and caps in spanish it can be in a, as you said, "playful" manner and when the same is done in english, the humour is lost on most english speaking readers which can interpret it as rude.

[starcannon]

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

GL and HF
~starcannon

[Irihapeti]

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"

Another thing is that when you use "angry" language and caps in spanish it can be in a, as you said, "playful" manner and when the same is done in english, the humour is lost on most english speaking readers which can interpret it as rude.

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.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/sil...-tert-_-voices

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.

[SiHa]

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.

This is especially important when communicating with someone who doesn't know me or my sense of humour.

Regarding the language issue, I work in a company with a large number of Dutch employees, and I've found that written humour is often lost on them, they just take you at face value. They also know this to be true, I was in an IM message with one a few weks ago, he made a pun, and said 'See, I am learning to be English!'

[aguafuertes]

Interesting survey. Some very rude replies to simple questions, and some polite answers to rude questions. We are all nuts, aren't we?

Thanks! My summary would be more like "we are all different", but I know what you mean