The Gamer's Quarter

dhex · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:24 pm Post subject: interview request (insert Credit)

hey all -

i'll be passing this around come january when things have been further finalized but my initial proposal for an ethnography/study of the life and death of ic via its participants has been approved. so i need interview data, and lots of it. (and maybe a general demo survey later on)

anyway, i want to gauge initial levels of response to this idea, so if you are interested in participating, please send an email to:

moconnor23 AT gmail DOT com

saying "yeah, ok, whatever" etc

with your desired contact info. i'm going to keep this mostly email.

anyway, i am going to be looking for 10 to 20 minutes of your time, with some followup questions to explain certain kinds of data, etc. all results will be confidential, no personal information will be published, names will not be attached to quotations, etc etc and so forth.

please feel free to pass this along to anyone you think might be interested.
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Jeff Garneau · . Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 49

are you looking for everyone to help you out or just the people who had been around since near the beginning?

dhex · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:19 pm Post subject:

anyone and everyone.

thanks!
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Psiga · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 3:47 pm Post subject:

If it's mostly email, what other 'contact info' do you need?

dhex · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 4:02 pm Post subject:

if someone was going to be in the mountains for the next six months and only had a shortwave radio, etc.

just trying to be flexible and leave options open.
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extralife · . Joined: 22 Jun 2005 Posts: 233

I'm so down.

Psiga · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 9:19 pm Post subject:

I've never conducted or participated in an 'ethnographic survey' before, so this should be interesting.

What does it do? Condense the variety of people's differing interpretations and opinions into a chart of their associations to participants along a timeline? Or something?

dhex · Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 9:53 pm Post subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography

edit: i figure the earliest i will be able to start interviews is the end of january, just fyi.
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TOLLMASTER · nippon ichi PR man Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 187

dhex, please don't create a study of ic members. I think humanity might lose the will to continue. While I typically don't have much faith in the human race, that I would be indirectly responsible for the cessation of constructive thought throughout the known world is perhaps too much for me to bear.

Were it not for the potential of causing a breakdown in civilization, I would be in total support of your idea. I can't say I can help, because my depression has been rather troublesome and I'm thinking about going to the hospital soon before it gets worse, so I might not be around. Otherwise, good luck, ganbare, etc.

extralife · . Joined: 22 Jun 2005 Posts: 233

Get better TOLL, we love you! SERECT BUTTON

Mister Toups · Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:26 pm Post subject:

TOLLMASTER · nippon ichi PR man Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 187

The depression is under control, so don't worry or anything if I suddenly disappear. Under treatment and all that! I probably should have said that in my original post. Sorry to worry you guys.

It's mostly just some family health issues and legal troubles happening all at once while my baseline depression being aggravated by the lower light levels of winter, along with me stepping up my program of combatting my agoraphobia. In general, I'd even have to say things are even improving a bit for me; I just kind of hit a somewhat sudden slump.

It's hard to explain, but after a certain point you get so good at gauging your own mental status that severe depression becomes more like having a cold; you just wait it out a few days relaxing while pruning off the more destructive thought patterns, instead of it being a severe crisis.

stotelheim · . Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 118

more like you are combattling depression

because i think that was an annie may or something?

dhex · Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2006 9:02 am Post subject:

i want to quickly thank everyone who responded thus far (about 25 people), though for the actual project i want to get closer to 50 (75 would be perfect, i think). so please pass the word along.

thanks again to everyone.
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the drunken samurai · . Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 30

im in,even if i wasnt there when the forums went down im still in

stotelheim · . Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 118

Dhex I would send you an email but I just can't be arsed to do that so I am instead telling you here in this window that I am down like a clown that has fallen onto the ground because someone tripped him for this interview thing.

B coma · . Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 279

I would totally work through email:

manicquicksand at gmail.com

Harveyjames · the meteor kid Joined: 06 Jul 2006 Posts: 3636

dhex · Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 6:54 pm Post subject:

UPDATE

the survey should go out this sunday. i will be contacting everyone by email and ask toups to post an update on select button.

thanks again to all who agreed. it's been a busy 2007 so far, and i hope this turns out to be productive and interesting for everyone involved.
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internisus · . Joined: 25 Nov 2006 Posts: 354

Dhex, in order to be useful, how quick a turnaround do you need on the surveys?

I'm going to have to be in the right mood to remember and reflect upon that day properly, I mean.

dhex · Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 2:14 pm Post subject:

i'll draw up a cutoff date in the email somewhere, but probably around a month. i won't start writing until the end of february.

i'm not expecting novels from anyone, though if you'd like to write a novel, feel free.
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dhex · Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:33 pm Post subject:

survey is done:

Contact: Michael O’Connor
moconnor23NOSPAM@NOSPAMgmail.NOSPAMcom

Thank you for agreeing to participate and taking the time to fill out this survey. This is an ethnographic exploration of the experiences of the Insert Credit user community and the forums and their closure.

No names or identifying characteristics will be used in the final ethnographic report. The survey should take 10 to 20 minutes of your time - please answer the questions as honestly and completely as possible. I have left space at the end of the survey for respondents to insert any additional information they feel is relevant to their experiences. I may also contact respondents with some brief follow-up questions.

If you have any questions or concerns about the study please don’t hesitate to contact me.

The final report will be available to all participants. Thank you very much for your time.

A fresh copy of this document is available at:
http://dhex.org/cuny/ethnography/IC/oconnor-ICsurvey.doc

i just want to stress that i am very interested in the experience of all users, regardless of posting involvement. if you have any questions please feel free to email me at the above address.
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dhex · Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:05 am Post subject:

a plain text version of the survey is now available here:

http://dhex.org/cuny/ethnography/IC/oconnor-ICsurvey.txt
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dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:41 pm Post subject:

i'm going to be contacting people with followups shortly (hopefully by this weekend, depending on work/job search concerns) but i am also going to be contacting a random sampling of some folks to request a "real time" gmail chat (or aim or whatever) interview.

thanks again to everyone who has responded. i appreciate the effort. and there's still time for anyone else who wants to submit, i'm not going to close off extra entries for a few more weeks, minimum. (hi dess!)
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dessgeega · Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:35 pm Post subject:

hi dhex ;_;
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showka · . Joined: 11 Nov 2005 Posts: 70

Wow, I can't believe I never noticed this thread before.

Dhex, if you create a bound report, you should have some kind of picture of you know who depicting him as the main villian. I always thought he was the most colorful character in that whole episode. If it had been a game, he'd have been the last boss you fought, though the cut scenes might try to indicate he wasn't simply pure evil (kind of like Solidus in MGS2).

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000313.html
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resetbutton.net: videogames for unattractive people

dhex · Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:07 am Post subject:

dhex · Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 11:27 am Post subject:

hey all, just about done processing everything; i'd like to do some more gmail chat (gchat?) interviews with people, so if anyone's interested (nights and weekends are pretty much it as far as availability, so 7PM EST onward figure) drop me a line at moconnor23 AT gmail DoT com and we can set something up.

and if anyone has any surveys not yet done, it's not too late to hand things in; i've only just started writing my outlines and methodology bits.

and thanks again for all of the responses. this has been very insightful and interesting.
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

Hey, Dhex, can we un-announce this?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dhex · Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:05 pm Post subject:

sure. unannounce away.
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dhex · Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 7:41 am Post subject:

and so we find ourselves at the end of the road.

http://conchobar.org/IC/oconnor-IC_ethnography.pdf
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Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

I printed this out. This is going to be hilarious isn't it?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

dark steve · . Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1110

It's not especially hilarious, outside of trying to pick out who the anonymous quotes are from.

I was pretty stunned to hear that marketers were actively parsing IC for data. I always sort of assumed the forum was too shut-off for that sort of thing (although come to think of it, I guess I'd have to wonder how prolific the practice actually is).
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dessgeega · Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 11:45 am Post subject:

i got quoted! and i didn't even fill out the survey! (sorry.)

this is good. have you submitted it yet? i found a few grammatical errors (a "whom" that i think ought to be a "who", and a mangly sentence at the end of the paragraph describing the insertcredit subforums).

can we link this around? you know, not too far around.
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dhex · Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 12:00 pm Post subject:

send it to whomever. as far afield as you like.

and yeah there's probably a few things wrong. i upped a slightly corrected version (lost shit between edits) but honestly...i'm just fried from looking at it so fucking much.

i'm going to up a final pc pdf tonight because it's insane that this file should be 900 something k when it's 90k as a pdf off my home machine.
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seryogin · Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 1:58 pm Post subject:

Wow, mike.

You certainly have a flare for writing well-researched papers.
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Intentionally Wrong · Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 3:02 pm Post subject:

It was great to finally read that.

the drunken samurai · . Joined: 02 Dec 2006 Posts: 30

now we wait for the something awful version.

oh, and i didnt read it all,i just skimmed through.

B coma · . Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 279

Hey, I was the first block quote. neat!

great read so far, I think I can actually see dhex's tongue poking clear through his cheek while detailing Internet forum slang.

dark steve · . Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 1110

If there was one thing I felt that was sorta skimmed over (by the participants maybe)(sorry :/), it was that the axe itself (or so i'm thinking) was something that was actively hidden from unregistered members, and was used to remove flaming/junked topics from the boards that outsiders could see.

Although, I'm not exactly sure where why or how you'd address whatever that would mean.
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B coma · . Joined: 06 Dec 2005 Posts: 279

yeah.

In fact, the whole axe sub forum had a pretty terrible stigma in the beginning. at one point chuplayer was raging with anger because one of his awful threads got moved there. and no one even went as far to create threads in the axe until (tollmaster? wasn't it tollmaster?) asked if it would be okay to do that... and a few months after that things had really turned around, you could say.

FortNinety · Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 2:50 pm Post subject:

I can't believe I missed this!

I'm printing out a copy for the long train ride home. Hope I made it in somehow!