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?

  • glaber
    2·
    2 years ago

    1. 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

    2. 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

    3. 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

    4. I have a Bachelor’s Degree! I like all subfields, but I think my favorite would be historical linguistics and semantics!

    5. As standalone posts I wouldn’t know what to tell you… Definitely news, though.