Hey everyone, new mod here. I’d like to hear you on a few things, in order to make this community grow:
1. Who should be the primary target audience of this community?
We could tailor it primarily for layperson or for people with deeper Linguistics knowledge. Or we could simply let it roll.
2. Which type of moderation do you guys like? Stricter or laxer?
A stricter moderation would include rules like “quote your sources”, “no crack theories” (proto- or pseudo-scientific hypotheses lacking methodological rigour), stuff like this; it would also mean that I’d discourage off-topic a bit further.
3. “Almost no crown or cross” rule: yes, no, indifferent?
By “almost no cross or cross” I mean that posters would only be able to talk about politics and religion as much as necessary for the subject of Linguistics. For example you’d be still fine posting something like this, but you wouldn’t be able to discuss here the Marxist side of the matter, only the Linguistic one. Just an example, mind you.
4. How much do you know about Linguistics?
Are you a grad, undergrad, informed layperson, or just curious? Are there areas that you feel confident on, like Sociolinguistics or Phonetics or something like this?
5. Which type of content do you want to see here?
Papers? Videos? Discussions? Historical Linguistics? Sociolinguistics? Phonetics and Phonology? Since mods are IMO responsible to nurture a community, I don’t mind looking for stuff to post here, but I’d like to know which one.
Thank you!
EDIT: I’m reading all your comments, even the ones that I didn’t reply to, OK?
- A mix would be nice.
- I’d certainly prefer stricter moderation; “quote your sources” and “no crack theories” seems like a bare minimum to making this community valuable.
- Yes, it would be nice to keep the focus on the linguistics, which is how I understand the “almost”.
- I have decent familiarity with computational linguistics, but linguistics is not my main area.
- I’d be most interested in keeping up with and seeing discussion on the latest publications, but I’d have no problem with other content.
Good to know that there’s people from the CL here, as I’m clueless when it comes to that area!
Yup, that’s what the “almost” means. Thanks to you folks I have a good idea on how to implement the rule.
New user here (formerly lurking for years on r/linguistics (and r/conlangs)):
1 (and 2). While everything depends on what “deeper” is, I think the sweet spot would be to have both advanced and beginner-friendly (as in helping beginners and giving resources) while not allowing crank linguistics, i.e. trying to close topics such as e.g. “is English a Romance language?” posted by people with absolutely no clue of the topic. (of course that should probably be done by having one or more lists of resources to share with newbies, shutting them up would not benefit anyone I think).
- I’m kinda indifferent but, yeah, topics going to discuss the non-linguistic side but the political or religious ones should go to another community, I think it should be part of a wider rule on going off topic.
4 (and 5). I studied languages in university but formal linguistics courses only as an aside (although those were quality courses). That said, I have been conlanging for a whole decade now and studying topics of linguistics for and because of that, so that I do read some papers once in a while for curiosity… “informed layperson” I think sums it up. As for topics, historical linguistics and phonology might be the ones I’m most interested in, but everything is welcome as long as it’s of an intermediate-advanced level; and I would prefer papers, somehow linguistics is not a subject I can keep attention to if it’s presented as a video, the only time I look for them is to hear other languages being spoken.
- Who should be the primary target audience of this community?
I think it’s fine to let that play out
- Which type of moderation do you guys like? Stricter or laxer?
Similar to above, but a baseline should be maintained to keep the initial contributors coming back. E.g. for one, I’m not looking to get angry by PIE-denialist drivel for example (this might be a location-specific concern).
- “Almost no crown or cross” rule: yes, no, indifferent?
I find it better to moderate the quality of the discussion, rather than the content. So long as it is still relevant to Linguistics and it’s not a flamewar, it should be acceptable.
- How much do you know about Linguistics?
Stopped short of pursuing a PhD in the field. Studies were focused on language disorders and non-typical morphosyntax.
- Which type of content do you want to see here?
Definitely not papers. I would prefer discussions. Most of what I did on Reddit was to support language learners by giving them linguistically informed explanations of grammatical phenomena in the languages they were studying, and discuss with other language enthusiasts about emerging linguistic change or non-mainstream usage.
Eventually there might be a necessary split between a community of the science (this one, perhaps) and another one purely for language learning, but for now it might be most sensible to keep them at the same place.
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Let it roll! But I’m a fan of pop-science and think the community could be a good place to discuss general questions, maybe delving into them if we see they hit an interesting area
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Yeah. No spurious stuff, though maybe we could have some kind of Bad Linguistics Mondays? And allow for posts that have bad linguistics examples with a rule making it mandatory for the OP to explain what’s wrong and provide the correct explanation
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As someone else here said, as long as it doesn’t cause a flame war I think it’s not too harmful to let things go a little off-topic, as long as they have a tangential relation to linguistics or languages
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I have a Bachelor’s Degree! I like all subfields, but I think my favorite would be historical linguistics and semantics!
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As standalone posts I wouldn’t know what to tell you… Definitely news, though.
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Nobody commented yet, might as well:
- Let it roll for now, see who appears
- and 3. Less rules for now to not discourage activity, maybe check again when more users are commenting in here
- I’m a trilingual translator but not a studied linguist - so mostly curious layperson.
- I’ve been through what you’ve posted so far - it’s all interesting. I do appreciate if not only videos are posted in a group, but that’s just my personal preference.
It’s a bit empty in here, but I hope you don’t give up, I’m sure people will appear eventually.
