Hi!

[Sand55]

Hi guys!

I've been a huge Fire Emblem fan for about ten years now! I started with Sacred Stones, and have been playing the other GBA games and some of the newer ones as well. I love these games and have visited this site before to read the forums. I didn't create an account here until recently, though. Anyhow, I'm in a college class in which we're studying online communities to figure out how they interact with one another and other online communities. We all got to choose a community to study, and the second they said we'd get to decide, I knew what website I wanted to study--this one!

However, the deal is that during the course of my research I might pull direct quotes from some posts to illustrate the terminology specific to this online community. For instance, in Fire Emblem RNG means both "Random Number Generator" and "Range". I would need to pull quotes from the forums on this site that are examples of people using these terms. I will send a PM to any user who I plan on quoting asking their permission before I quote them. If they're okay with me quoting them, I will also ask if they want me to leave their username undocumented. That way, it will not be apparent in my paper which user the quote belongs to.

However, with the power of modern search engines, any quote on a forum can be found easily just by typing it into the search bar, so it is possible that someone could see a quote in my paper, search it, and find the username that posted it. Luckily, the discussions on this website are not very sensitive because the rule is that they stay PG-13. However, it is considered ethical in research of any community to first ask the general community if they are okay with the research being carried out. Keep in mind that I am a fan of Fire Emblem and a member of this community, so I'm not making a paper on how weird or exotic this community is. I'm here to figure out what makes this community unique.

So I wanted to ask the general community what you think about it. Are you comfortable with me observing forums as a researcher, and occasionally pulling direct quotes for my paper (keep in mind I will PM you before I quote you asking permission)? Please let me know. I'd also love to hear from any moderators about what they think. If the response is generally negative, or a moderator tells me to buzz off, I will find another online community to study. I only want to do this if the community is comfortable with it.

Thanks guys!

[Ertrick36]

Welcome to our forest ヽﾉ

Honestly, given that there's always the possibility that someone's looking at what I'm saying and judging me - and that I myself tend to observe communities and discuss what I see with other people - I don't really have a problem with this.  Though knowing that, the quotes I'd feel okay with being sourced on will vary; I don't know if I'd feel comfortable with a college class/professor looking at some of my rants and being able to immediately attribute them to me (or rather, my username, but my username is the same as my email, so... yeah), plus there may be the off-chance that I might seek a job or promotion from one of those people and to see me complaining about frivolities or say stupid things might make things difficult.  Also, whether or not you'll record the date and time (particularly the latter) would matter as well, as I don't want a lot of people to know what freakish hours I'm staying up at.

So yeah, if there's any quote of mine you wish to use, go ahead and PM me.  I usually check in every day just to see what's going on, so I'll probably reply within 24 hours.

[Ycine]

Welcome to the Forest, Sand55!

I don't mind your study. 

7 hours ago, Sand55 said:

Keep in mind that I am a fan of Fire Emblem and a member of this community, so I'm not making a paper on how weird or exotic this community is.

But that's what we're the best at.

Anyway, have a nice day, good luck with your study and enjoy your stay!

[TheWildestCat]

Good look with the study. Also are one percent crits true RNG or not. >:(. I will gladly help. I love this franchise

Edited October 29, 2018 by TheWildestCat

[Sand55]

1 hour ago, TheWildestCat said:

Good look with the study. Also are one percent crits true RNG or not. >:(. I will gladly help. I love this franchise

Hey, thanks! Regrettably, I think one percent crits are true RNG :(. I can sympathize with how annoying it is to get hit by one of those. But yeah, I love this franchise too! It's become the game series I've devoted the most time to over the years, so I've gotten pretty attached to it. It's a great series!

[Sand55]

On 10/27/2018 at 6:45 AM, Ycine said:

Welcome to the Forest, Sand55!

I don't mind your study. 

But that's what we're the best at.

Anyway, have a nice day, good luck with your study and enjoy your stay!

Thanks Ycine! I've spent the last few days digging into the forums a bit and it's already interesting to look at the dynamics of this community, like the difference between how people interact with each other when talking about FE Heroes (a game that continues to actively interact with a changing audience after release) and the main series releases (games that are stagnant after release). Heroes is easy for fans to interact with because the devs continue to change and update it, but it's interesting to see how fans create interactivity for older titles that either were never updated or are no longer being updated. I had no idea that things like drafting and fan games were a thing on this site. It's been cool to discover how interaction with the old games still thrives because of things like that!

[eclipse]

FIRST.

This is the kind of thing you need to PM the mods about.  But given the nature of this, I'll leave this topic open in Introductions, even if it goes against the sticky.

SECOND.

Read the rules of this site, because you already broke one (albeit a minor one).

THIRD.

I suggest putting a blurb about what you're doing in your sig, and link back to this topic.  That way, people will be slightly less confused if they receive a random PM from you.

The fact that you've managed to go against the rules of this subforum and the forum rules isn't encouraging, but I'll let it slide for now.  If you have any questions, PM me.  I might not be around as often as I'd like to, but I'll do my best to answer when I'm able.