Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

So the Digital Ecologies Research Partnership was recently frontpaged. For those of you who don't know what it is, here's how it's described in the Guardian article I linked:

Academic researchers will be granted unprecedented access to the data of major social networks including Imgur, Reddit, and Twitch as part of a joint initiative: The Digital Ecologies Research Partnership (Derp).

Derp – and yes, that really is its name – will be offering data to universities including Harvard, MIT and McGill, to promote “open, publicly accessible, and ethical academic inquiry into the vibrant social dynamics of the web”.

I created this thread to open up the question of whether, how, and to what extent KYM should involve itself in this project. I do know that we get a fair number of academics making inquiries on this site: there has already been at least one thread on the topic, and the moderators have occasionally received the odd PM or email from researchers and grad students looking for additional information. Furthermore, KYM pages have been cited "several":www.wired.com/underwire/2009/11/will-auto-tune-ever-die-ask-know-your-meme-and-weird-al/ times by news sites looking for information on internet culture. It's fairly clear that KYM has something to offer people interested in researching this topic.

Does anyone have any objections? I would be particularly interested in hearing some of the admins chime in, since they would be the ones who'd actually have to implement this.

I think that, at least ideally, KYM should already be this: an analysis of internet culture. I don't think we have enough user generated content to really count as our own "ecology". We, instead, try to document what others do. This is what makes KYM of some (small) value to researchers already. Participating in documentation of a site that documents internet culture is just too recursive for my taste.

I don't see a reason why KYM shouldn't join in. If people are looking for more information on about how the web works than I say we should join in since we actually document just about every meme, event, and news that relates to the internet.

Also, we might stand to benefit as well – since I can imagine that a program like DERP would be very useful for putting together a meme entry.

"major social network"

well, it would definitely be cool, I don't know if they would consider kym a major social network though. We'd benefit more from them than them from us.

"We’d benefit more from them than them from us."

That's a "yes we should" then?

Sounds like it.