Help me graduate

mit logoAs many of you know, I’m in the process of finishing my Ph.D. which happens to be about (you guessed it), weblogs. A large part of the analysis is dependent on gathering information about how people use their weblogs and their general communication behavior. For the next two weeks I’ll be gathering this data in the form of a survey:

http://blogsurvey.media.mit.edu

If you are a weblog author and have 15 minutes to spare, I can’t say how much it will help me if you fill out the survey. The larger my sample is, the bigger the impact, and the easier it will be for me to railroad my committee into signing the document.

So please, spread the word and help me graduate.

June 13, 2005 #
27 comments

26 Comments

  1. Anonymous
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 1:16 pm | Permalink

    The fact that you have to request a login key to participate in the survey kinda sucks for me. I was set to participate but decided not to.

  2. cameron
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 1:24 pm | Permalink

    I realize the inconvenience that it takes, but it’s the only way we can tell individual survey participants apart, and stop people from taking it twice, by accident or on purpose.

    We do not maintain your email address, so there’s no information that can be traced back to you in any way. Just an identifier that stops people from using the same email twice.

  3. Seth
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 1:33 pm | Permalink

    I took the survey (very brief) and then blogged about it. Hopefully others will be helping you out in a similar fashion.

  4. David
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 2:15 pm | Permalink

    I found you via Q Daily News. Happy to help, and I’ve blogged about the survey, too. Good luck!

  5. Vladimir
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 4:02 pm | Permalink

    Well, that was painless, and I’m glad I could help out. And yes, good luck!

  6. Bijou
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 4:57 pm | Permalink

    I saw a link to your survey on Waxy (that should give you a lot of exposure) and I took the survey. I don’t mind helping out another MITer.

    Good luck

  7. Dawn
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 5:17 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for the invitation to participate. Seemed like a cakewalk… what did I miss? As an experimental subject, I had expected a shock or a treat or something. At any rate, I posted a note about your research on my blog to promote volunteer participation in my little sphere of influence. Good luck with your thesis. I’m looking forward to reading the results of the study!

  8. JD
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 6:35 pm | Permalink

    Will do. Get that degree!

  9. dave bug
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 6:54 pm | Permalink

    FYI, your email thing doesn’t work if someone uses the optional + extension…

    ie, I should be able to put in:
    davebug+whatever@myemail.com

    It seems to just not get to my place. Not sure if you’re stripping out the +, or just not sending it or what.

    Anyway, I did it without the + and it worked fine.

  10. cameron
    Posted June 14, 2005 at 7:57 pm | Permalink

    Thanks for the tip Dave. I’m not stripping out anything, but the + sign definitely needs to be escaped when it’s being sent as a POST variable. Otherwise it’s converted into a space.

    Seems to be working fine now, sorry for the confusion.

  11. Abby
    Posted June 16, 2005 at 12:45 am | Permalink

    Well, darn. I was going to try to help you graduate, but I killed my blog a few months ago. I started the survey anyway, thinking it would just ask why I started a blog in the first place, etc., but then I saw the survey requires a link to the blog. Since the blog no longer exists, I had to quit. Sorry you have an incomplete survey to muddle your data. Hope I don’t keep you from graduating :)

  12. Bekka Jean
    Posted June 16, 2005 at 12:13 pm | Permalink

    Hey I took the survey hope it helps. Great site by the way.

  13. Diane
    Posted June 16, 2005 at 7:06 pm | Permalink

    Hey, I have a kid starting at MIT in the fall, and he’s planning to do UROPs in the Media Lab. I’ll go do the survey, annoying login key thing and all… got any advice for him in his new life?

  14. x5
    Posted June 17, 2005 at 12:51 am | Permalink

    :-p,I want you to know the most popular IM client in china is QQ,but I can’t find the choice.

  15. traumi
    Posted June 17, 2005 at 3:27 pm | Permalink

    hope you get your degree soon.
    all the best
    traumi

  16. NectaRSS
    Posted June 19, 2005 at 3:33 am | Permalink

    OK.
    Help to me also in the process of finishing my Ph.D.

    Try: http://www.neoyet.com

    JJS

  17. alex k
    Posted June 19, 2005 at 1:56 pm | Permalink

    cam, glad to help! i look forward to reading the magnum opus.

    meanwhile, consider coming to gss2005 at ucla; may be useful: http://www.ipam.ucla.edu/programs/gss2005/

  18. BlogCruiser
    Posted June 20, 2005 at 8:37 am | Permalink

    Well I got the key and then attempted to get to the page again but got a parsing error instead of the page. maybe your done I don’t know. I’ll check back if I get a chance. Good luck to you.

  19. K
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 5:57 pm | Permalink

    Looks possibly interesting, but I don’t appreciate sites that try to get me to “upgrade” to a browser I don’t like in order to see the content. There’s no reason Opera shouldn’t be supported.

  20. cameron
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 6:08 pm | Permalink

    I really apologize for the lack of Opera support, but I’ve invested over 6 hours now trying, and for the life of me I can’t get it to do an XMLHTTPRequest POST correctly. I’ve scoured the internet and found nothing that would suggest that this should be an issue, but it just doesn’t work.

    If you can find someone who can explain what’s wrong with my javascript, I’ll gladly add Opera support. Sorry!

  21. K
    Posted June 22, 2005 at 7:27 pm | Permalink

    Well, I’m glad to hear that you did try it at least. It wasn’t clear from the page that you’re shunted to that this was the case. A lot of times it’s just a result of laziness on the part of the people running the site (since often you can fiddle with the Opera settings and get in — and all works fine.)

    My real quibble is with the wording of the reject page, I guess, since I don’t really consider switching to those browsers an upgrade at all — tried them, just don’t like them as much.

    Thanks for the reply though! Maybe I will have to haul out IE and try this out.

  22. Josh
    Posted June 23, 2005 at 2:15 am | Permalink

    Does IRC count as “instant messaging”? If so, I should go back and change some of my answers.

  23. Kara
    Posted June 27, 2005 at 1:24 pm | Permalink

    Drat, I just found out about your survey today. I took it immediately and then went and posted about at every online community in which I’m a member. Maybe it will drum up some “last minute” business for you.

    As a fellow grad student, I have to say that the idea of completing your dis on weblogging is very cool. Best of luck with your defense!

  24. si
    Posted July 20, 2005 at 8:23 pm | Permalink

    i filled it out because i feel your graduate school pain. thanks for giving me something to procrastinate with!

  25. Matthias
    Posted July 23, 2005 at 8:02 pm | Permalink

    hope you get your degree…good luck..from Germany

  26. Edward
    Posted July 28, 2005 at 7:56 am | Permalink

    wish good luck in ypur degree!!!!!!!!!

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