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?
Hi! I’m a curious enthousiast and I would expect general discussions about linguistics. I would love to see very specific papers and I wouldn’t mind basic grammar questions being posted here. Some can reveal deeper implications, maybe. No crack theories is good imo. No cross or crown: i guess culture and language are very intricate and one can explain the other but beyond that, judging ang proselytism should be forbidden.
Yup - and that’s the general basic idea behind the “almost”. Linguistics is intrinsically tied to those things, for example you’ll see Hindi and Urdu splitting and adopting different vocab influences basically due to religion, or the whole definition of a language being political in nature.
But at the same time I don’t want to see political fights here, like the ones I see in r/linguistics when two magic words (“Ukraine” and “Russia”) are mentioned. I don’t feel like it’s the right place to discuss it.
Thank you for your input!