Paper finished June 12, 2003 10:29 PM   Subscribe

Mefite squirrel's communications studies paper, as originally mentioned here, is finished, and interesting.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken to MetaFilter-Related at 10:29 PM (18 comments total)

The first few pages were interesting, but once I hit the transcript of the Abortion discussion, my adobe started having issues with the text within; it couldn't read it and only random letters and numbers were showing up. Anyone have any clue why?
posted by dazed_one at 10:54 PM on June 12, 2003


Damn, beat me to the post! It was very interesting and I give kudos the DavidDark and fivefreshfish for agreeing to be subjected to such close (not to mention public) scrutiny. Also to squirrel, of course.

I had no problem loading the report initially, but it is now giving some grief, including crashing Mozilla. Maybe it is a bit overloaded? MeFi/MeTa can do that to a server.
posted by dg at 11:02 PM on June 12, 2003


Very nicely done, squirrel.

Perhaps the two should have a rematch, on a pay-per-view thread. We could call it: DD vs. FFF Part Two: The Annihilation.
posted by Ljubljana at 1:43 AM on June 13, 2003


DD vs FFF PtIII : The Battle for the Alphabet.

dg, I hope you're in training for Pt4. ;)
posted by twine42 at 2:11 AM on June 13, 2003


The first few pages were interesting, but once I hit the transcript of the Abortion discussion, my adobe started having issues with the text within; it couldn't read it and only random letters and numbers were showing up. Anyone have any clue why?

Need more info, but you could try downloading it with "Save target as" and then view it directly from Acrobat (if you were using it from within a browser). Or you could ust get the latest version of Acrobat, as it is updated with some frequency.
posted by the fire you left me at 2:54 AM on June 13, 2003


from the letter sent to ask for an interview:


I would like to open an IRC chat channel to offer you some questions to respond to about the exchanges on thread 25379. Your responses would appear anonymously in my research, and I wouldn't share them with anyone.


posted by the fire you left me at 3:11 AM on June 13, 2003


Stav, I have to ask - given the preceding comment - where did you hear news of this? Has squirrel made it explicitly public anywhere? Not that I'm questioning your own motives (it's an interesting read, and if it's got a URL it effectively is public), but if DD and F3 were promised anonymity and that promise hasn't been honoured, that's a concern. I'd go so far as encourage Matt to pull the link in that case, despite how interesting we MeFites may find it.

If squirrel has come to some later arrangement with DD & F3 to make the paper public, then of course it's fine.
posted by rory at 4:50 AM on June 13, 2003


[stav, with your time zone hope you don't mind me answering]
rory, it all began here, and from my e-mail(all who posted in the thread received one): Both subjects have expressed a willingness to take this study public,
It is interesting indeed; no problem printing it.
posted by thomcatspike at 5:39 AM on June 13, 2003


Good to hear, thanks thomcatspike.
posted by rory at 5:47 AM on June 13, 2003


That's great stuff squirrel. Really interesting. Hope you get top marks.
posted by walrus at 7:03 AM on June 13, 2003


Huh. I wonder if FFF hung out on the same Citadel BBSes that I did...

Anyways, this is a really interesting read.
posted by eilatan at 7:10 AM on June 13, 2003


Yes, very interesting, squirrel. Good luck with your research.
posted by carter at 7:13 AM on June 13, 2003


Every time he writes "threaded" (as in "[MeFi is] a threaded discussion website"), I read "dreaded".

Otherwise, totally absorbing. Good show.
posted by gleuschk at 7:56 AM on June 13, 2003


I was using the FFFish name on Citadel, eilatan. I was on the Edmonton set of BBSes (but, alas, I've forgotten their names!). Other frequent users included Not Quite Cricket, Elim, Kiwi, Twist of Lime, Walrus, Samcat, Mr. Neutron, etcetera. We had quite a nice Very Amateur Baseball team at one time; hopeless batters and pitchers, further disabled by copious beer... thank goodness we never played anyone else!

The one thing I dislike about this study is that it makes a big deal out of very little. The DD/FFF exchange was a waste of time in the first place, and certainly not worth the introspection required by the study.

Still, the CMM stuff is cool. I especially like the "strange loop" re: religion and science. It took me a lot of thinking about that one to realize that a religionist could take offense to science that concludes the earth is more than 5k years old. (And I still don't quite grok that idea: how can one be offended by a fact?)
posted by five fresh fish at 10:54 AM on June 13, 2003


Yeah, I'm getting an error from the "cooltype.dll" that keeps crashing my Acrobat. The first ten pages printed, though.
posted by me3dia at 2:23 PM on June 13, 2003


rory - squirrel sent a link to everyone who took part in the thread, and suggested that if we cared to post it to Meta, he would not be put out in any way. I assumed, correctly I assume, that any other permissions to do so would have been aquired by him before the fact.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:09 PM on June 14, 2003


Or, what TCS said. Thanks, Thom.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:36 PM on June 14, 2003


Brilliant, squirrel. Over-analyzed, but brilliant. To me this is real praise, believe me. :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:43 PM on June 14, 2003


« Older Can't get this posted...   |   Bring back the via! Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments