Wow, I didn't expect this kind of a response so quickly. Thank you all so much! I'll get around to sending out PMs making sure you're okay with this later in the week, hopefully tomorrow, but I'll try to address your concerns now.
RoboBob3000 wrote:
One suggestion, perhaps. You might want to instead focus on a month's worth of posts that have already occurred. Informing people that they're being studied might poison the well. If you want current, why not try Sept. 2011? Or maybe go back and look at a high-activity month, such as a month after a new Caravel product was released.
Edit: Also, you might consider also reading the Development, Electronic Gaming, Bugs, Feature Requests, and Site forums. Those too are a great source of forum creativity and collaboration. It's especially awesome when we start a discussion about a game and somehow manage to lure the game's actual developer to our thread.
I understand why it would be more natural to study older posts, but I felt it would be better to be very upfront about this study so that you understand what's happening before you post. Some people might find it a bit jarring to find out that some student they've never met before wants to pick through their old posts. This method is a bit more ethical in terms of participants knowing what's actually going to happen. The hope is that if you agree, you're not too concerned about other people reading and analysing your posts anyway.
As for reading extra forums, along with other people's suggestion that:
Dischorran wrote:
2. Why only a month? Does that really provide enough data for a good analysis?
A little bit of data can go quite a long way! This "
content analysis"
part of the data collection is going to be more quantitative than qualitative - that is, it won't actually be that analytical, beyond what purpose each post serves and how well-liked it is. That already can tell me about a few basic trends about what kind of posts are well-liked, and a month's worth of data across six boards on the forums, even considering that these forums don't move too quickly, should provide enough data to that end. The real meat of the data will come with the interviews, as they'll provide insight directly from the community itself about how it works.
Dischorran wrote:
3. You're still going to miss private beta boards - a lot of community creative action happens out of the public eye.
4. Does your IRB or whatever sets research ethics guidelines require individual permission for data mining existing posts?
5. Are you also analyzing other forums for a comparative study?
Honestly, I'd forgotten about the private beta boards! I've never done much hold-building myself. I'd already planned this study without those in mind, so I think I'll get by without them, but I'll keep them in mind and see if I can talk to a tutor about changing the study ever so slightly (assuming I can convince someone to let me into a beta board
). Thanks for the heads-up!
The ethics board at the University would probably challenge me if I didn't require individual permission for looking at posts. I was always planning to look for individual permission anyway, because - maybe I'm just speaking for myself here - I know I'd be alarmed if I found out someone was studying my conversations / actions / whatever without my consent.
I won't be analyzing other forums for a comparative study. This isn't just my decision - I had been considering looking at other forums, but after discussing the idea with my tutor I thought it would lead to too much data of too many different types (I don't know of any forums quite like this - I've never seen a system like the Rank Points / Mod Points we have here, for instance.)
Banjooie wrote:
also that would make this guy the second person to attempt to write a banjooie thesis
One dissertation at a time please.
I hope that's clear - I'm not the best at concise explanations, so let me know if you need anything clarifying again!
Also, quick reminder that
you need to be 18 or over to participate. Sorry to anyone who's under 18 who already said yes. I'll edit my original post to make that clearer.