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?
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).
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.
Thank you! I hope that more people reply, so I can get a good grasp of it.
Noted. One way I can implement this is by a simple “keep on-topic” rule, but enforce it a bit harsher for subjects bound to bring divisions outside Linguistics into the table.