h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi,

So we've made mistakes, and we've had some interesting experiences while trying to get people to participate in our research. I could belabour my side of the story, and we have pretty good reasons for acting the way we have, but that is not the point.

I thought it would be a good idea for me to write an edited guide article on the do's and don'ts of conducting academic research on this site - in many ways, we've found it a confusing on how to map our research methods onto the rules of this site (for instance, where to put the study information, whether or not to give out the consent form right away, how much lead participation in conversations etc is required before we request contact, what are the routes to the gatekeepers, etc). I think that others who might be seriously interested in this community might benefit from knowing these things. Of course, this information would not apply to non-serious researchers, and those who would simply want to use h2g2 as research raw material, but then, they would not be interested in any of the experiences we've had either, and would not be using the same study methods either, nor would they be interested in establishing their legitimacy (as we have been, albeit not too well), nor would they have participant protection measures.

Please let me know what you think: you've had some very specific opinions on how we should go about doing our research (if at all), and I would like to collaborate with you on writing this (if at all). Naturally, this would be written for an academic audience, and not for everyday readers.

regards,

arvind

Your message really interested me. Right up until the last sentence.

I'm impressed that you've come to the lair of the person who seems to be your loudest critic. I'm pleased to see that you're thinking of giving something back to the community via the Edited Guide (although entries about h2g2 itself haven't done very well up to this point).

Unfortunately it's just proving my point when you say that you're going to attempt to enter an entry into the EG that doesn't meet the writing guidelines. We write for the everyday reader here, so trying to write an entry not for the everyday reader is going against everything that the EG is. As this seems to be the first question in your study I'm surprised that you don't know this already.

Have a look at the Writing-Guidelines, and if you think that you've got something to offer us, then I would be happy to let you use some of my comments. Although of course, if the Powers That Be decide that research studies aren't allowed on h2g2, then your entry might have to take a very different approach.

I should also say, welcome to h2g2. I hope that you indulge in the richness of what we have to offer, and add to it. I hope that you stay and contribute. I hope that you and the others understand that my comments are not personal. It's the *way* of the thing that I object to, not the *who*.

Thank you for listening. I have looked at the writing guidelines, and I'm perfectly sure I can write for the everyday reader about this topic. The reason I said that this article would be written not for the everyday reader but for the largely academic person is because much of what we will talk about will make sense only to an academic researcher.

For instance, if I talk about "conflating personalities", or "participant observation" or "consent procedures", it would take an academic to completely understand that i am talking about mixing people's identities and what they say in order to confuse people who are trying to recover their identities from our study, or that we are referring to a method of research wherein we participate in a community in order to understand it, or that there are various forms of getting participants to agree to the study and understand its risks for them, and how we will protect them

Having said that, I believe the fact that most articles are written for the everyday reader is more of a cultural convention here, than an explicitly stated goal (really, have a look at the writing guidelines and correct me if I've gotten the incorrect interpretation). In fact, in my two year stint here as dancingbuddha I've been involved primarily in the Alternative Writing Workshop, and not in the Edited Guide, because I felt that I could not/did not want to write in a fashion that met the EG guidelines on anything that could be of public interest.

But I appreciate your suggestion: if writing for the everyday reader is the goal here, that is what I will do.

Well, there have been technical entries in h2g2 that contain words and phrases that I don't understand before, and you're right, there's nothing in the guidelines that say you have to write for the everyday person - but if you write a lot of stuff that no-one understands you might be encouraged to explain yourself a lot more and end up writing for the everyday person anyway.

I think you should go for it. And maybe write an entry (just for fun) about why people might want to come and research the researchers.

Out of interest, I know someone who is studying communities for a dotorate (is that the right word?) and never once has she tried to do any research without going through the proper channels.

Is part of your work going to be 'how the research' went? By that I mean, are you learning how to research, while you're doing it?

I see your point about explaining myself increasingly.

Yes, we're learning to research as we're researching. This is the first time we're involved in researching online communities, and the protocols for getting to the proper channels are not so clear to us as the corresponding protocols in real life. If, for instance, I was studying people at a coffee shop, I'd go to the person who serves me coffee and ask for the proprietor. Here, things get missed more easily (like we missed the link the team page from the feedback page). I hope that explains our desperate attempt to be kosher, yet actually get on with the research. We'll be out of here in a week's time - the report is due on the 10th of March, 2005.

As I mentioned to one of the other students, I manage communities for a living, and I am seeing more and more people coming into those communities (both on and off the BBC) and thinking that they can say and do what they like simply because it's all text - they can't see the people behind the screen, so they think real life manners (such as asking if it's ok to do their research or whatever before they start) don't count. It's just a load of text, isn't it?

A proprietor of a coffee shop is much more visible, because you can clearly see that there are staff to ask. On an online community that's not so obvious, and it pains me to see that people won't take the time to realise that online communities mimic real life to such an extent that there's always going to be a proprietor to ask, people to upset and that this sort of thing does cause unasked for disruption, but rather think that there's a little goldmine where they can ask their questions without even going to the effort of leaving their seat.

You're real people too, and if it's been hurtful to see me going off on one about this, then I'm sorry for that. But I do have good reasons for thinking that this should have gone through BBC staff for a decision before anyone even thought of bringing this to the community.

I agree with you. As we said, we're still learning the ropes of how this works. As of now, we've actually temporarily suspended recruitment until Natalie or someone from the team gets back to us on our description to them of our research methods & credentials. But you're right - ideally, we should have gone through the staff first. Hopefully, there will be some way to remedy the situation, though that is no excuse for having caused it in the first place.

I'm a little bit cross here for a number of reasons.


Your teacher hasn't given you lessons on correct research methodology and implementation, but has expected you to pick it up as you go along?


Your sampling method seems extremely flawed and you accept that the results will be invalid.


You've deliverately chosen to be subjective and are asking people to interview who will support your pre set opinions.


You assume that people on h2g2 aren't able to understand your long words.

Never underestimate your audience.
B.Sc(Hons)

whoa. allow me to explain.

>> Your teacher hasn't given...
1. our teacher *has* given us a lesson on correct research methodology - we just have not been able to realise it completely here

>> Your sampling method seems...
2. How is our sampling method flawed? we're picking people who apparently have something to say on the subject. We *might* have invalid results, because we don't have the time or the resources to sample a larger population - please keep in mind the nature of the research question itself.

>>You have deliberately chosen...
3. Again, the nature of the question we are asking is not something that lends itself to clean-cut, objective answers as might be expected in other disciplines - in particular, a survey would have been exactly the wrong thing to use as a research tool. I don't see how asking people to interview who might have opinions related to our question makes us out to be supporting our pre-set opinions (which, btw, you have no idea what they are)

>> You assume that...
4. I believe you are jumping to conclusions here. My discussion with Mina was about the difference between everyday & academic readers, not whether people on h2g2 will understand what I say or not. You're clearly not an everyday reader, so that just proves my point.

I believe you're missing something, and as I've said in another post, this is a descriptive research project. We are analysing this community in terms of several parameters we have defined internally, and supplementing that analysis with user experiences at the site. There is no hypothesis to be verified, and threats to validity come from less from sampling incompleteness than from the rigour of our analysis.