Do we know the author of this blog, i.e. his member identity here?
This particular comment struck me straight away..
"The Session is a free, public website. The content is open for everyone to see, and anyone can join by submitting a valid email address. Therefore I did not think it necessary to ask permission to conduct this study. "
Surely, courtesy (Asking Jeremy) ought to come into it?
Has the blogger ever introduced himself here and informed us about his project? It would be interesting to know.
There's also large portions of previous discussions quoted with many well known members involved. Surely this is somewhat unethical?
"By collecting such empirical evidence I hoped to develop an understanding of this online culture. The main area of visible interactivity between members is the discussion area, which is where I spent most of my time. "
If he doesn't own up who he is sharpish, he's due a good feckin kickin'
"Irishmuso has taken offence to a comment posted by llig leahchim, and a little flaming has occured. llig responds but doesn’t take the issue further."
I have several major issues with this "ethnography" but the computer just ate my post (forgot to copy it...oops) and I'm late somewhere. Will rant later today when back online.
My thoughts are
1 I think it is rude not to have asked Mr Jeremy
2 Having read the site I think these people should get a life , at least we have a purpose in playing tunes,not trying to be professional nosey parkers asking to get a degree maybe in being nosey .
3 Since' john' is based in Edinborugh I nominate Llig to sort him out as he lives there and has already offered to.
Or is this all a set up and the real experiment starts now with the responce to the obvious intrusion .
Lab rats revolt now!
John isn't based in Edinburgh any more (assuming I've read his blog correctly). He's working at the University of Melbourne in eLearning. He's originally from Limerick and is called "John S". Presumably someone knows him ...
I wonder about the ethics of this, since I'm doing ethnography myself. I have to answer to a Human Subjects Committee at my university, and they are very particular about informed consent and getting permission to use any information that might identify individuals. I'm not so sure that, just because it's posted on the internet, you can copy, paste, and publish as you wish. At least the author could have told us about this or removed or changed specific screen names or not posted profile descriptions at all.
And it is written (Matthew 26:52 I understand, but I'm an atheist, so I take it on advice):
"for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword".
And so it seems to have come to pass. Your commentaries have been commented upon. Such is life.
And consider the ethnographer as wildlife photographer. Are you going to get good images of the great apes' mating rituals if you keep announcing your presence? More likely to end up part of the action.
Many years back, when folkies started to take advantage of the Internet we take for granted today, I commented on it to a friend who was heavily into jazz. He was astonished, responding that jazz players would never reveal such detail about their sources, styles, techniques etc as folkies do. Competitive rather than co-operative seemed to be the message.
I don't know if his comments have any validity - he might well represent a jaundiced view of the jazz world. But perhaps his comments illustrate that our analyst is indeed on to something - we present as a community that could be of interest to the modern ethnographer.
I left a message on the site dont know if it will get past the moderation but worth a try I thought.
Not sure about the ethics am sure its rude though.
I think it was most rude not to ask permission to use the session.org . Its like you view us as a bunch of lab rats, running around for your own entertainment.
If the owner of the site gave permission or you published your paper in the discussions or talked with Jeremy who runs the site you would have discovered how wrong you were on several issues.
But hey ,who ever talks to the rats ?
"I didn’t find any evidence of whether members have been expelled for unsuitable behaviour or if any topics/posts have been deleted."
~ asking Jeremy and some correspondence would have given this scetchy introduction more substance. The answer is "YES!" Members have been suspended, expelled and sometimes made that decision them selves, and parts and whole threads have gone "POOF!" too. This writer didn't quite do sufficient research or homework, in my sense of it... The great thing about online content, like with Wikipedia, is it can evolved with, hopefully, increased understanding and appreciation... A good start would be to communicate with the webmaster, the original seed for this idea, and its master mechanic and moderator...
Someone could add a link to this thread in the 'comments' for that contribution...
Hi guys,
I am the author of the micro-ethnography in question and feel it is right for me to respond.
As part of my MSc, we were required to study an online culture. We submitted a short proposal indicating our choice- I thought that The Session was a great example of how a culture based around the love of irish music manifested itself online. My approach was to observe, interact a little and write a report. There were a number of reasons why I didn’t ask the groups permission (I did consider this initially)- the main one being that knowledge by members that they are being observed can tend to alter their actions, which would influence the study. We were also advised that we weren’t required to seek permission if the site’s content was publicly available (which the Sessions is) on the web. I can wholeheartedly understand your concerns- in retrospect I think I should have at least posted a link to my short study in the forum and ‘came out’ about it after it was written. I can also appreciate your concerns if you felt like you were being observed. I am not aware that there are any copyright infringements in what I have done. I can chase this up further with my tutors if necessary. I will also offer to take the post down if you like- I can just disable it in my blog.
I do apologise for any harm caused. As I said let me know what you’d like me to do.
Cheers
John
Just been reading some of the comments made while I was writing my last post- Terry you have a valid point about you guys representing a community that may be of interest to the modern ethnographer (I’m not a fulltime ethnographer!)- one thing that is apparent from the site is the passion that is shared for the tunes- if you break it down all the site consists of is text and some music files- but what has build up around that is an impressive and active community. (by the way the ‘micro’ referred to the mini report I did, rather than the size of your community )
Bazouki Dave- I take your point too- I think I should have ran my idea by Jeremy first and see what he thought- respect where it’s due. Would you like to expand on the issues where I was wrong- I would be interested to find out?
You remind me of those wildlife photogaphers who went to the arctic to film the famed lemming mass suicide. They hung around for a while and got bored. Then decided to round up a bunch of lemmings, push them over a cliff and film that.
How such behaviour can contribute to becoming a "Master of Science" is beyond me.
Welcome themush, love the alias. I'm glad you joined in here. I can't think anybody minds being 'observed', all of us have 'lurked' through threads we've never commented on. The rudeness, for me, has nothing to do with being observed, it is about having the courtesy to fill in some of the blanks by contacting the seed to this all, getting some background some omnipotent retrospectives ~ from our webmaster ~ Jeremy, the main mechanic that tends to all this madness. You might have gained a greater understanding of the dynamics here by starting there, and then by introducing a few well chosen topics for discussion? compared to other forums, this one has some unique characteristics, and much of that is down to our webmaster, whether or not it suits everyone. It's his baby, he started the ball rolling, he's our head referee.
Nothing is complete or just without an understanding and appreciation of its history...
You sir, I perceive, have effectively wandered about at a gathering in a pub, with your little notepad and tape recorder, collecting and analyzing and editing, and then publishing what you have garnered from the unknowing and, in some cases, unwilling.
They were not any of them asked in advance how they felt about it, nor about being quoted and named (as stated above).
How would you expect people to feel? Myself, I would be prepared for any sort of reaction and comments on my behavior. I would say you have already received a fair assortment above from greater minds than mine.
You sir, I perceive, have effectively wandered about at a gathering in a pub, with your little notepad and tape recorder, collecting and analyzing and editing, and then publishing what you have garnered from the unknowing and, in some cases, unwilling.
They were not any of them asked in advance how they felt about it, nor about being quoted and named (as stated above).
How would you expect people to feel? Myself, I would be prepared for any sort of reaction and comments on my behavior. I would say you have already received a fair assortment above from greater minds than mine.
Collecting and analyzing and editing is all very well. Basic science. But the amount of pure uneducated assumption is ridiculous. A fail. Must try harder.
For myself, it is neither here nor there. I am not concerned with being observed or quoted, being neither photogenic not eloquent enough to bear "quoting". But I would make the effort to be sensitive to the feelings of those who are (or think they are), and I can see where this project might have gone off a bit better.
And I am not suggesting that I would have aced it if I had tried to do it, either.
Disney wildlife films Nic . Lemmings never jump en mass . they are short sighted and cannot differentiate between short streams and lakes thus indeviduals drown singuly but get washed up as a group.
what's the difference? if you write a story and post it on the net without establishing copyright, and someone picks up your story and publishes it, I'd say you'd be hard pressed to have any grounds for objection or compensation. Same here isn't it?
Not everyone is an anonymous poster here and this is certainly not always the case elsewhere where real names are frequently used.
Yes, we are all aware that all our comments are available to view worldwide and ought to be prepared to justify particularly strong opinions. However, my main objection is that this research was carried out without the courtesy of advising the webmaster and, even if it was considered impractical to let us all know what he was doing at the time, we should have been informed after the project was completed.
Not to do so was rude and, as Ceolochan and others have noted, the results could have been much better if some initial approach had been made and advice sought.
I follow Rook in regarding things said here like a conversation at the bar in a pub. Not private but spoken within a community that deserves respect if they are repeated elsewhere. If you have made notes in a bar-room coversation you would not have included the real names of your subject in a public document.
Within this community the usernames have the same standing as real names in a real community. They carry the context of that users previous posts and the information in the users profile. Both of which are outside the scope of your report so you could have been less annoying by leaving the usernames out.
wouldn't matter even if the comments weren't anonymous, I would think, the commentary is in the public domain, there is no copyright I believe.
It might be a bit presumptive to use the comments without at least advising, but I don't think it is deliberate "rudeness", probably simply someone just operating on instructions they have been given. Academics in my experience are usually very acutely aware of accrediting source material, so I would think this had been considered already and an interpretation given.
No difference with the tunes either, is it? Those that are in the public domain are available for people to play, record or whatever, you don't have to advise anyone you are going to do that do you? No copyright.
Duij, we are talking about manners, not copyright.
And its a bit dubious themush not mentioning that he posted in one of the discussions he includes an extract from. The wildlife photographer may not always let on that they threw blood in the water to keep the feeding frenzy going but an academic should. And many wildlife and news photographers regard it as unethical.
I think there may be some distinctions to make here. First, the idea of asking permission has less to do with copyright and more to do with professional ethics in the social sciences, ethics that aim to, among other things, prevent research subjects from being exploited. Second, the degree to which one ethically (and possibly legally) needs informed consent is different, depending on what one does with the information gathered. If you and your tutors/professors are the only ones that see it, it's not a big deal. If you publish it, on the other hand (which the blog could be argued to do), you very much need informed consent.
I'm not clear to what degree the fact that this is taking place on a public internet forum changes things, but again, I think that erring on the side of informed consent, or at least informing in general would probably be the way to go.
At any rate, there's probably not much lasting harm done, just ruffled feathers and hurt feelings or something like that
.
On a lighter note...John, what subject are you studying for your degree? I would definitely like to hear about it.
Well, I guess talking about "manners" on this forum is appropriate, or at least topical.
There is an implication of propriety in this thread as well...I would think there is a very big difference between using accredited material from notes taken of conversations overheard in a bar room, and using a verbatim recording of those same conversations. What is posted here, anonymous or otherwise, is a verbatim record is it not? I don't think the guy has done anything particularly wrong or improper, except perhaps been a bit offhand, but I'm guessing he's operating on instructions from seasoned academics.
In any event he's apologised, which I am not sure he would be required to do - but he did - so fair play to him. That displays some grace and manners, in my view anyway.
Not to patronize anyone, nor state the obvious, or continue inflaming, but: I think the issue here is now that legal does not necessarily imply polite, or in good form.
At our local zebra crossings, I can leap off the curb at whim and force people to slam their brakes, and the law here IS on my side.
Politeness is one thing, granted, but there seems to be an implication of impropriety in this thread. Gee, I hope the guy doesn’t do a research thesis on ‘politeness’ using the yellowboards. God help us!
I’ve worked out an excellent way to get around having to come back to the computer to read and wade through posts. I am going to use a text to speech conversion software to create a midi file of each post which can then be routed through my mobile radio headphones so I can continue to walk around the house doing my chores and mowing my lawns – and while I am playing tunes, even! Is that ok with everyone?
Now what would you guys say if I told you all that I started this thread off to make note of the reactions of people finding out they've been observed previously without their permission?
And then what would you guys say if I told you all that it is part of MY thesis?
Yeah, the lemmings story is real. And the lesson is to be vigilant to confusing conclusion based on evidence with conclusion based on uniformed preconception. John S' little school project is, unfortunatly, packed with the latter.
Research on human subjects is quite clear: informed consent, nothing less. If you wish to "hide" the observation the only way you can do it is by admitting the observation but subtly--and not unfairly--shift the nature of the analysis.
"research" and "subjects" are problematic terms in this particular context, I'd suggest.
So, do you reckon that mushman is going to take up Irish trad music after this traumatic experience then?
He looked pretty positive there for a while.
Oh well, who's the next duck in the shooting gallery?
Wow! What can happen when one takes a break for tea...
Ditto the lemmings ~ and things less obvious and less subtle have been done to prove a point, or for dramatic effect... Hell, that's what cock and dog fights are all about, and bear baiting... Sad indeed...
Duij hits the nail on the head- I was operating on instructions for a particular mini-assignment- to spend some time ( a few hours in all) investigating an online culture. I did have to credit my source material (hence peoples’ names from posts). As I said, the reason I didn't ask permission was informed from my reading of different ethnography approaches-there is the whole question of tampering with the environment (I don't mean this language to inflame those of you who feel themselves to be 'subjects'- I'm just giving explaining my rationale)-I wanted to be 'invisible' to an extent. Of course there are ethical elements to this, and consequently, it was admittedly bad manners by me, but that’s the decision I took. Yes I did post a bit (and would like to in the future- I want to buy a banjo!), out of general interest rather than trying to illicit responses. To be honest I think if I suggested doing the study to the group beforehand I would have been told to feck off!! Look- I put my hands up- guilty! I've taken down the post- if you're interested anyway you guys were the only people to comment apart from classmates- don't think anybody else even read it. One thing that I am interested in is digital literacies- or lack thereof so far- that people develop. The ‘interest’ that this has caused has made me realise, if taken to extremes, the vulnerability of online presence- kids today (and you all in this forum) leave footprints (mostly permanent) when you are active online. This activity can be manipulated in any way, good or bad, by anyone, anywhere, (usually) without any consequences. Do people actually realise this?? (now there is a meaty thesis topic!) The internet comes from military origins- if people get their feathers ruffled by some eejit like me reproducing what they’ve said in a public forum on irish music, stop for a minute and think about monitoring on a broader scale- your mobile phone gives your live location to a few feet, everything you do digitally is recorded by your internet provider etc. etc....
Jasonb- I'm doing an MSc in e-Learning- the module I checked the session out for was Online Culture (http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/e-learning/)- some really fascinating stuff when you try to comprehend how technology permeates our lives in so many ways. For a laugh take a look at another mini-submission I did where an innocent islander is confronted by the internet- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apg15i0coeg
Cheers
John
Duij - I've just come to this, late the ball again, and yours is about the only sensible thing in this thread.
What a lot of whining can go on in a morning.... could you all please drink a cup of coffee before posting? I find it helps to get things in perspective. (yes, I know we're not all on the same time zone... I still think some of you should drink a cup of coffee before posting...)
mushman, I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you.
Hey, you're going to get a banjo! So, after this lot, you wanna take up Irish traditional music? (this is a research question)(you don't have to answer it if you don't want to.)
Wow, I teach a social sciences class based in ethnography, and I can tell you for certain that not gaining permission is very unethical and brings this ethnographer's credibility/ethos to an all time low. I would never accept that behavior from a student. Plus, this person can't be using quotes, etc. from the site without proper permission if he is going to publish this piece of "work".
yes duij- I want a banjo- I've been playing trad on the guitar for a while but fancy the banjo more- impossible nearly to get a second hand 4-string tenor in Oz though- they all have the american 5 strings here- if anybody knew someone selling one in Munster for a reasonable price I might be interested- I've got family coming over in a few months and they could bring it over. Really getting into the trad over the last few years- saw Mairtin O Connor, Seamie O Dowd and Cathal Hayden last week- jesus Seamie o Dowd is some singer- apart from the guitar work- been listening to their cd on repeat over the last few days.
Mush... part of ethnography is stepping in and stepping out... to gain both an outsider and insider perspective. Any "key" informants you plan on using in the paper, and posters/bloggers would probably fit into that category, should have been asked permission. For instance, a local bar might be a public place, but if I plan on using things people do and say, I have an ethical liability to ask their permission before I make my study public. If the essay remained only within the confines of your classroom (peer and instructor), that could have some wiggle room. But the fact that the study was "published" (online) to a certain extent makes you liable to those ethical sensibilities.
Fiddlechick
My work will not be 'published', apart from the now-deleted blog post.
have you conducted any online studies? It was a lively topic of conversation amongst us re:ethics and permission- but online content is a massive grey area- our advice from tutors was to defintely seek permission if your area was private, or included sensitive material etc.
there are some members here from oz who might have second hand tenor banjo for sale. Put up a post about it, someone will surely get back to you. There are some excellent makers in oz, I know of Bob D'oole in Melbourne, but they are all personally crafted by him, and new, so they are on the pricey side. Very good though.
I thought I detected that Australian politeness and honesty in your posts. Good man yourself.
Have heard of that banjo maker alright duij- but I don't want to spend that kind of money. I must have absorbed the Australian politeness and honesty in the last few years then as I'm a born and bred mucksavage Paddy
Must go to bed now- it's freakin' 1.20 am and I've work in the morning
Mush, I think you have completely misinterpreted what your tutor told you. What he said is that to OBSERVE a web community then write your own analysis of the behaviour you see doesn't require permission.
But everything on the interweb is covered by the same rules that apply elsewhere. You wouldn't be allowed to copy complete pages from a text book without permission, and y
And there is no 'grey area' - exactly the same laws apply to material on the internet as to any other medium. It may be that plagarism is harder to police on the internet, but that doesn't make it a 'grey area' - it is still unlawful.
This discussion is ripe for yet another analysis! It is an amazing example of how the observed are being affected by their observer…albeit a tad retroactive. hmmm, you may get a virtual stamp of ‘further research recommended’ on your virtual report, themush. Best of luck, as you well know, behavioural studies are fraught with confounding results.
a) In the first place - whaaat? Skreech, have you ever looked at the world-wide-whatsit? Cut-and-comment is the basis of the "blogosphere".
b) In any case, the snippets cited in the blog posting are all well within anybody's sense of fair use, even in the printed world. Short, contextualized quotes from material voluntarily submitted to a public forum, with attribution given - there's nothing to complain about here, any more than there would be if someone quoted your letter to the editor published in the local paper, or wrote a review of your book and cited passages.
While I'm at it, the bar analogy falls apart - in a bar, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The better analogy would be if the bunch of us were standing in a public park under a sign that said "open debate on Irish music, public welcome, no expectation of privacy, free video archive available of every comment made in this particular area of the park".
This is a public forum, everything you post here is open and available for discussion. When someone discusses it, you have no basis for complaint.
I don't mean any disrespect, but you are applying your own interpretation of plagiarism pretty stongly here. Plagiarism happens when one quotes or paraphrases from another source and does not site that source. Period. Using someone else's words or thoughts without giving them credit implies that one is taking credit for those words or thoughts. This is what plagiarism is meant to prevent.
Also, there is plenty of gray/grey area here. Not all countries/cultures view the concept of intellectual property the same. So, when you say it is unlawful, to which country's laws are you referring? Quoting directly from another source is a standard part of any research paper in any university in the United States, and has been for some time, and no permission is ever asked for. To help prevent students from being guilty of plagiarism, universities have clear guidelines about it that they make readily available to students, which makes it clear that what prevents one from engaging in plagiarism is to site one's sources. There is nothing about permission. If permission were an issue then 99% of all university research work would be unlawful.
Again, this is not meant disrespectfully, but I suggest you clarify a bit. I'm not expert on copyright law, but I'm pretty sure that there is a distinction between copyright infringement and plagiarism, at least according to most western legal disciplines. I may be mistaken.
Yes. ALL written material is copyrighted.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Codswallop...
I hereby declare to the greater good of mankind (and womankind too, if I may be presumptous) all that I write here. That good enough enough for you. Take your copyright and stick it ...
As I recall, all of the quotes in Mush's paper were identified by session.org screen names - in other words, he gave all the attribution the original poster provided. That's a citation.
Further, it could not have been any more clear that these were quotes to support or exemplify a position.
... he's not only a great singer, obviously a fantastic guitar player, he's a demon fiddle player as well. Not to mention a lovely chap.
Oh, and btw, SWFL, I read the blog, and the best bit was that almost all of the comments - taken out of context, of course - were from you! Heh heh heh.
Exactly right. There's a confusion between plagiarism and copyright infringement that's been introduced into the conversation. Plagiarism is a pretty easily definable and avoidable offense. Copyright infringement becomes far more complicated depending on the medium.
All of the comments I have made on this forum are in the public domain ~ no membership is required before reading my comments. If you care to respect my privacy, please ask before quoting my comments outside of this forum. I am well aware the majority does not agree & I respect them.
Personally, if it were me, I would first make a request from Jeremy. Also, I would not proceed without a clear response from Jeremy. Secondly I would post an annoucement in the *Discussions* section in advance of using any information. I would also post a link (in the *Links* section) to everything being placed on line regarding comments from thesession.org. The final part is the rub. & perhaps the reason I do not believe I would ever, even hypothetically, do something of this sort.
Any conversation or correspondence I have with another individual is primarily between her or him & myself. I always do my best not to, if I may use a figure of speech, go behind their back. Everyone with whom I speak (online discussions included) deserves the respect of knowing (1st hand) what I may say about them. This includes quoting from that individual.
Now, amongst ourselves we do talk about one another. Ideally this is done with the knowledge of the person mentioned. Fact is it is easy to miss things, each of us comes with our package of human fobiles & frailties. Important thing is to make the effort. And as we say, "To show all due respect" To a large extent the center of this tradition is respect.
Bottom line you have been outed. Now who is the one being examined?
Cheers,
Ben
conversely, I would have thought that if you had made comments privately, and someone posted them even duly accredited in an online forum, that might be a privacy issue; but when you yourself post comments here in the public domain, how is that establishing your right to privacy? I would have thought it is actually a relinquishment to at least the comments.
duij, if you are asking me, yes I stated, "All of the comments I have made on this forum are in the public domain". Having said this, I do not relinquish my privacy rights easily. Not saying I expect everyone to show me any due privacy, simply letting anyone know they have the opportunity to show respect for our forum at large. I am clear about my comments being in the public domain. Though I do not persume to speak for Jeremy or any of my mates. The respect of privacy is not a right at all, which is why I said *respect* rather than the right.
Everybody realizes how fuzzy all of this is, right? The only clear thing is the plagiarism aspect. That's pretty clear across all national/cultural boundaries: don't quote unless you credit the source. Easy enough. But we're also debating about copyright infringement and privacy and such. These are much more hazy, depending on the medium and the country. Why are we even talking about them? If the man cited his sources, he didn't plagiarize. Simple as that. If we want to talk about respect for privacy and such that's all well and good, but what's anybody going to do about it? The only one who can is Jeremy, who can choose to suspend or ban someone if he wishes. That's about it.
So, how about those reels and jigs. Clever little things, aren't they?
sounds to me more like you are asking for people to ask your permission to quote your comments, rather than a privacy issue.
I don't know that in either case though, one could fairly have an expectation in the public domain that the majority of the non-academic public online would come to a conclusion that they would or should either ask permission or alternatively not refer to the comment because of "privacy". If they don't, I wouldn't necessarily regard that as a lack of respect.
Strikes me as hilarious that anyone would post here under a presumption of privacy or proprietorship. Whaaaa? It's a public forum, on the (wait for it) WORLD WIDE WEB.
D'oh!
It's also laughable to assume that the researcher would've gotten a more accurate sense of what happens here if he'd asked Jeremy, or any of us, some questions. That's like asking for directions when driving around the boondocks. The natives are just as likely to (a) give you deliberately misleading information, (b) misinterpret your question and send you where you don't want to go, and/or (c) simply get their "facts" wrong.
Ethnography is full of studies where the subjects enjoyed misleading their observers.
But copyright infringement isn't that complicated. It is the same on the internet as it is anywhere else. If you cut and paste from a web page, it is exactly the same as copying from a book. If you put information onto a web page it is exactly the same as publishing it in a book.
In this case, had JohnS written his paper and emailed it to his tutor, his only 'crime' would have been failing to seek permission. Pretty trivial, but something that most academic faculties take very seriously these days.
But he went further than that, he published the paper on the internet. To take whole pages from one site and re-publish them within another site is a very clear copyright infringement, just as copying whole pages of someone else's book into your own would be.
OK, in this instance it's faily trivial, because there is no financial gain involved. But the principal remains. The information belongs to Jeremy, and JohnS took it without asking. To say that should be OK, because the information was on a public site is like saying it's OK to steal a bike if it's left unlocked.
I am perfectly aware that there are bloggers breaking the rules every day, but that doesn't mean the rules don't exist. And if JohnS produced that paper as a project towards his degree, the reason he would have been asked to do so is to prove that he is capable of undertaking research in a responsible manner. And that means making sure you are playing by the rules, no matter how trivial.
not everything on the net is copyright. In my understanding, there has to be a clearly stated claim to copyright on the material or on the site, otherwise there is no breach of copyright.
You have not claimed copyright on your comments, so if they get copied, you have no claim, in my understanding, for breach of copyright.
Back to my original point. If you are correct, then all college papers are in violation of a copyright, and all college students are subject to fine or imprisonment. Are you certain this is the case? I'm not going to take the time to research copyright law, because I just don't that that much time, but I'm pretty sure that quoting written material that is properly cited is perfectly legal, with or without permission. I believe there are limits, such as not quoting beyond a certain amount like entire paragraphs or chapters of a book, but quoting a sentence from a published book without permission, provided it is properly cited, is a very common practice, not just in universities. I am currently attending a Masters Business Law class. I will ask my instructor, who is a judge, about it tonight.
Unless we assign copyright to Jeremy when we become members, and IIRC we don't, then copyright of each individual post remains with its author unless the author assigns it in some way. Jeremy will have rights over the whole database, since its his sweat of brow that compiles it . I wonder if that means for two consecutive posts both the authors and Jeremy have rights. Maybe even one post, since it is a retrieval from Jeremy's database.
There were some posts a while back that were poems. My hunch is those count as complete works so shouldn't be quoted in full without permission of the author.
But are people touchy because these posts are part of a dialogue during which people (usually) give consideration to the others as they would in a general conversation in the pub and they feel that being asked before being quoted would be a matter of common courtesy ?
(I am crossing with duij but this post keeps getting eaten)
No, that's not right. In all countries that follow the Berne copyright convention (ie almost the entire Western World) anything produced after 1989 is automatically copyright protected, and should not be copied without permission unless the author has explicitly stated that it is in the public domain.
As an aside and speaking as a researcher in e-learning (my studies are mostly in more controlled environments), I don't think that posting a message saying "I'm going to observe you guys" would have influenced a thing.
For the ethics... Not informing the subjects is a bit of a no-no, particularly those whose true identities are only barely disguised. But everything that is quoted is publicly available on various internet archives anyway.
In a way, it's a bit like someone conducting a study of what gets pinned up on a message board. They're public statements, available to anyone who wants to read them.
The quotes are obviously copyright infringement, but could be argued to be fair use, or to be too short to be copyrighted.
For the quality... I havn't read it, but based on my own work back when I was a master's student, and many other reports I have read by master's students, I wouldn't expect much anyway :p
For politeness, you guys have obviously decided that what themush did was rude. I think it's a sure sign that you don't have your priorities straight. Why worry about that when google collects so much data about you anyway?
Okay, so, you are saying that the vast majority of college students in the USA and elsewhere are in violation of copyright law? I want to make sure that is what you are saying.
My last post was addressed to duij, but there was a bit of cross posting.
Jimmy B:
Why would all undergraduate papers be illegal? As you say, there are limits - a sentence or two (as a quote, with an attribution) might be acceptable. But if more is needed, then either you paraphrase (with citation), or refer the reader to the original work. Simply pasting a large section of someone else's work into a paper isn't normally acceptable from an academic point of view, never mind the legalities.
This thread is a cross-posting nightmare to be sure. However, it is an interesting diversion from the usual. Any reasonable person would probably agree that quoting with credit is okay, as long as it's not huge sections. So, agreed there totally, skreech. I just needed some clarification from you. I interpreted that you were taking a pretty hardline position that ANY quotation without permission constitutes copyright infringement, which I am unclear on. Like I said, I am going to address this in class tonight, which will certainly lean toward U.S. law, but part of the class concerns international law so my inquiry will be relevant. Besides, I think we're covering copyright law and intellectual property tonight anyway.
Oh, I see - you're taking a stretch of posts as " a large portion of someone else's work". Okay, that makes more sense.
I was looking at each as a single citation, and none of them were very large.
In any case, looking at the work as a whole, I saw nothing that would reasonably raise an eyebrow in terms of copyright or academic ethics, any more than commenting on a discussion of literary criticism would.
It's pretty funny that people assume this was the only paper done regarding the site that pops most frequently when "Irish Session Music" is run through Google. I'm sure there's more, with the data made somewhat more anonymous.
I was looking at it as reproducing sections of this website. If you take each post as an individual work that makes things worse, because he is then reproducing 'whole works'. It might not raise your eyebrows, but if someone submitted a paper to me, with video clips of a website, and starting with the assertion 'it's a public website, so I didn't see any reason to ask permission'. I'd through it straight back.
TaoCat
I don't think people do make that assumption - people know it happens, because generally those doing the research introduce themselves, or ask the site owner for permission.
skreech- There's all kinds of data collected about us all the time on the web. I recall that when I was a graduate student, you could observe people "in the field" and use data as long as it was anonymous without going into the grey area of ethics. Of course, that was in the era when the internet involved telnet...
Has anybody asked Jeremy if anybody has asked permission?
Good article. It made me smile, though. One of the first things they say in universities is NEVER use wikipedia as a source. I know, not your point, I just thought that was funny since college papers are a big part of this discussion.
Reproducing work? Did he take somebody's post and publish it as his own material? I'm not saying he didn't cross a line, but I am surprised at the vehemence his article (I didn't read it, gone before I looked) received. If you post something in a public space, I don't think you should be surprised or hurt that it shows up somewhere else without warning.
It is rather curious to not mind having a bar-room conversation that will be archived for who knows how long but take issue when someone quotes it with full attribution. I think it s the lab rat feeling
Jimmy B. When I started as a student I was shown the departmental library with the comment "trouble is, a lot of it is wrong"
He had c&Ped whole threads into his paper, plus video clips of him browsing the site.
I can only speak for myself, but the reason he rattled my cage has nothing to do with what he published, it was simply the arrogance of his assumption that there was no need to ask if it's alright To do so. Manners cost nothing.
Jaysus. Spend a day away from the computer and look what happens.
The issue here is not with copyright, since he cited his sources -- both the website and the individual posters. You can quote a website without permission of the site's owner, so long as you cite it. You can quote a whole bloody page from a book (or a website) if you want (as I will be doing of some primary sources in my thesis), so long as you have a reason for it and cite, cite, cite. I have, for example, a book where the author has included several pages of an Old Bailey courtroom transcript for the reader's edification. This is fine.
A more problematic issue with JohnS's study is informed consent. While it's true that anything we write here is publicly available, the researcher STILL should have erred on the side of caution and gotten permission from both Jeremy and from the sesh.org contributors. Ethics boards, in my experience, prefer you to be more conservative than not.
The "observer effects" complaint, JohnS's reasons for not informing us or Jeremy of what he was doing, is something social sciences researchers just have to deal with. I think the attitude of most Ethics Boards to that is "tough sh*t." Sometimes researchers come up with clever ways around it or they acknowledge it when they write up their conclusions. It's fairly common practice, for example, for research psychologists to tell participants (usually undergraduates) they are studying one thing but in fact be looking for something else. If you're doing this, you have to convince your Ethics Board that it is absolutely imperative to your study that the participants not know what exactly is being studied.
John, if your tutors said that it was fine for you to use these materials without informed consent, I'm going to disagree with them.
Ethnographers, like researchers in clinical settings, are required to get informed consent from their research participants. When sociologists and anthropologists conduct an ethnographic study, I'd say that the participants know what that researcher is doing there and know they are being studied. According to the American Anthropological Association, the researcher must "clearly [inform] participants about the purpose and procedures of the study, its potential risks and benefits, and plans for the use and protection of ethnographic materials gathered during the study." It is also standard practice for researchers to disguise the identities of participants in any data they may share. Instead of citing SWFL Fiddler and using his screenname for example, you should have changed his name, given him a number, done something to disguise him. Yes, I know he uses a pseudonym anyway (some people on this site don't), but from your information you can find his posts on his website and go to his bio and found out whatever information he put it in. This is just good practice.
I'd also add that most good ethnographic/participant observations studies I have read were complimented with interviews. So the participants knew damn well they were being studied. Because of this, the researcher was able to engage with the perceptions and experiences of the participants and thus more, not less, able to analyze their data. Basically a lot of sociology and anthropology these days has become a lot more humanistic and has realized, on a lot of levels, that "objectivity" is often an illusion anyway. The whole notion that your sociological/anthropological study will be "better" and "more objective" because you are observing people who don't know they are being observed has pretty much been thrown out the window. If you're observing it but NOT engaging with your participants, just drawing conclusions based on what you see, you'll not only be in an ethically questionable area, but you might make some totally erroneous conclusions (see the below paragraph). People are turning to methods from phenomenology and hermeneutics and reflexivity instead of pretending that they are "objective." That means, as you analyse your data, you indicate awareness of how your own presuppositions and experiences effect your analysis and also how it effects your research itself. I think it's a more honest way of doing anthropology and sociology (and psychology but it's not common practice in psych like it is an anthro and sociology) than hiding underneath a delusion of objectivity.
Secondly... you've taken down your blog so I'm going off memory, but I suggest, based on what I remember reading, that your paper would have been improved if you had been more open to us about your research. Any researcher has to be careful of jumping to conclusions based on their own limited perceptions of things (see reflexivity). For example, you concluded that people did not get barred from this website and posts do not get deleted because you did not observe it. The fact is posts do get deleted and people have been barred (some repeatedly ). If you had engaged more with your research participants, you would probably have found that out. You also would have been able to write up a more detailed, nuanced analysis of how people interact and use this website if you had asked us. As I said, a lot of modern anthropology and sociology are concerned with the experiences of participants, not just the perceptions of researchers, and to understand participants' experiences, you have to ask them!
I know as an Msc student you are just learning this stuff, so think of this shellacking you got as a learning experience.
Huh. I volunteered to help with psychology experiment. Asked to wait outside a room. No-one came so eventually I left. Was never sure if I had been a subject or not.
Interesting discussion. I wasn't actually able to read the original blog article before it disappeared. But I would like to have read it.
Without delving into the legal or ethical implications of this specific situation, I do think that it should be a bit of an eye-opener for some people.
A lot of people here seem to live in their own little worlds, and think of thesession.org as their own little private bubble of friends, without thinking of who might be reading it. For instance, a few times over the years, I have seen someone write a post here, criticizing some well known player, only to have that player chime into the discussion to defend themselves, even though nobody knew the player was a member here.
It's naive to think that people aren't observing and judging what goes on here - both people who are members of the site, and those who aren't. And it's naive to think that there aren't people who are trying to manipulate the discussions - whether it be the usual trolls, people who might have their own personal agenda of some sort, or people who just have no personal ethics about these things.
And I have definitely run into a number of players of Irish trad that think that this site is horrible for the music, but still lurk here, because it helps them learn who to try to avoid...
Just because the UK has completely crazy ethics commissions, that doesn't mean that is the only way to go about it, or that it is the right way.
I fail to see why informed consent is needed when the collected data is publicly available.
(I would, however, agree that it should be anonymised for publication).
(And completely agree about the point that observing "impartially" from the outside mostly doesn't work - and that that is something to be embraced - ethnography usually does, btw)
That is certainly up for debate, Tirno. I think in this particular case, he *should* have gotten the consent of at least Jeremy and let the board know what he was doing. Obviously it raised a lot of hackles that he didn't (note the length of this thread) so that tells you something about how people feel about being uninformed research participants. This is one of the reasons why informed consent exists and is a BIg Deal in research.
Pete, I am well aware that this site is read by a lot of folk who are not active members, including well known players. But I think the situation you describe is different from the one being discussed on this thread.
If Y slags X and X suddenly posts in defense of himself, Y had it coming. Oh well.
To me it's not about what you *can* do or who can read what because it's a public message board, but rather about maintaining standards of ethical research. Anyone can read this site and write or think what they like about it (and they do!) but if they are publishing that data in an academic capacity, as a research study, attaching it to a university (as John did) which gives it academic credentials, then they should uphold certain ethical standards. My two cents anyway.
Oh, and also, good ethnographic research. I reiterate that modern ethnography has moved past this antideluvian idea that the impartial, outside observer is better qualified to analyse his subjects than they are to discuss their own experiences, or that the quality of data will be improved if the subjects (note my use of this word... instead of "participants" which I used in earlier posts) was don't know what's going on.
I'd trust The SS, she uses big words and it makes me fel smurt wen I reeds it. (bad piping pun fully intended)
I love history and the best history I've found uses the first hand accounts of the folks who were there. I like how The SS brought that up, about how interaction with the subjects and discovering their feelings on the topic would be of more value than the researchers' perceptions of what their feelings might be.
We've seen that many times on here over the years, people posting research projects asking for input. I've clicked through to a few university websites and completed surveys myself.
I've posted on many forums in my time and every time you do it, you know you're casting your words into the public domain, regardless of the actual law. It's implicit in my understanding of what I'm doing, like Miss L says.
Also, as Reverend said, it's public, people read it and judge it, is this any different from what mush did? He just actually told us about it. Imagine if every lurker who pops on here, reads the funnies and makes up their minds spouted off about it in a paper of some sort. Would we take them all to task? Well, maybe some of us would.
Regardless, yes, people are reading, and that's why I try to convey in my persona here the same personable, eccentric, corny-joke loving, group hug giving, total goof-ball that I am in real life. Fancy a tune, a pint and some bad puns?
Finally, if you are quoting these people directly, and me in particular, please at least have the decency to click on my bio to cite my actual name from my Facebook page. Come on man, it's not rocket science.
As Silverspear and Fiddlechick have mentioned the issue here is the informed consent. When anthropologists or ethnographers study human cultures they proceed after obtaining informed consent. Regardless of how that might affect the research results, scientists have to work under those conditions.
When scientists study baboons or bonobo monkeys they don't try to get informed consent, although the subjects have often realized that they were being observed.
I think you can tell from the state of the ruffled feathers on this thread that there are several people who are objecting to being treated like the bonobo monkeys.
If you were wondering about the concept of the anonymity of posters dehumanizing them to the level of non human subjects then you also now have more data that would suggest otherwise.
I can't believe you just made me read (most) of that Emily! I would duck when next we meet if I was you - having said that your post that began:
"Jaysus. Spend a day away from the computer and look what happens"
was honestly the most interesting one in the entire thread - now if only you could use Plain English!
For what it is worth comments and threads do get deleted all the time on here, "themush". Indeed if you are quick enough you will catch TheSilverSpear's own new thread on sessions in Belfast which is due to vanish soon. Of course, as in the past she, and others, will keep on posting these type of threads again in the future, hoping for sufficient helpful info before the axe falls.
Were people annoyed because they had been observed, or because they had been written about ?
Would it have changed anyone's behaviour if themush had started a discussion saying he was going to do it ? That discussion may have developed like this one, but would it have changed what people posted in other discussions ?
Is this 'incident' going to change anyone's future behaviour ?
My behaviour on here is unlikely to change much - sorry! Having said that I never got to read the study and am now slightly curious about whether I was quoted in it.
I think it would have been curtious to let "the community" know before his blog went live and I think it would have been a better study if he had maybe annonymously observed for a bit before conducting the study properly with informed consent and interviews with willing participants.
I suspect though that if he had posted a thread on the subject I probably wouldn't have clicked on it in the first place. It is only down to "divine intervention" that I clicked on this one at all.
Nobody needs to ask permission to link to something on the web. Nobody needs to ask permission to write about something on the web. Nobody needs to ask permission to comment about something on the web.
themush, I'm very sorry that you felt pressured into deleting your blog post.
I'd just like to say that this seems to be the most rapidly expanding discussion I've yet seen here.
Boy, some people get riled !
I just step out of the house for a few hours work, and when I come back this mess is all over the carpet !
Jeremy's right. No one needs permission to comment on anything posted on the web.
If you had a blog and you posted something about this weird mustard coloured website about Irish music you found and quoted people's posts, that might annoy people, or not, but you would be perfectly within your rights. That's not my point.
BUT when you're doing academic research, even as a master's student, you should be held to those ethical standards. You should be cognizant of good research practice and of what constitutes sound empirical methods.
The consequences of not keeping rigorously to ethical standards in academic research can be severe, as a university professor in Europe found out last year - at the cost of his career.
F**ck aye, even as undergrads we were held to those rigorous ethical standards. I remember having to turn myself into a pretzel and then be eaten alive by the IRB panel. I think half the semester was spent on the ethics proposal and the other half on actual research once we finally got the study approved.
I honestly can’t believe where this has gone- the SS, nature programmes, copyright/plagiarism ignorance!!
I don’t think I’ll come back to this thread, because I think it’s gone on too long as it is. I’ve admitted that I should have gotten Jeremys’ permission – if I were to do this type of thing again, I would. But Jeremy is happy with the way this has turned out, so I’m happy. I’ve had a few requests to put the blog back up, which I’m not going to do. I have copied the bits that people focussed on below. Granted the permission aspect- apart from that I don’t see too much harm. It’s strange that people kept referring to my ‘errors’- yes I didn’t know that posts could be taken off, because I didn’t consult anyone- fair enough, I know now. I don’t think that the comments I quoted were out of context? I am somewhat taken aback by the air of condescending arrogance displayed in some posts when referring to how crap my piece was- all in all I spend a few hours doing this, which was all that was required (a micro-ethnography study of about 1000 words). Isn’t it interesting that no-one really commented on what I actually concluded- how great the site is, and what a credit it is to its members in keeping the tradition alive (through 1’s and 0’s people- isn’t that amazing??). The bits I haven’t reproduced are basically some screenshots as well as banal descriptions of the underlying functionality of the site.
Adios,
Themush.
Examples of some discussions:
1. Searching for a recording of a tune
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
I've got Hannigan and Ledsam's Low Whistle book which has a tune called "Green Fields of America" and I'm having some trouble getting a feel for it...if anyone can point me to a recording I'd be grateful.Fiona A
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
Isn't that the air? Fair haired boy.
Your book may have a discography.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by Random_notes
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
I think Fiona means this reel: http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/695
...and not this song: http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiGRNFLDA3;ttGRNFLDA3.html
The reel is the middle tune on this set: http://comhaltas.ie/music/detail/comhaltaslive_213_1_ciaran_macfeidmhlimidh_on_uilleann_pipes/
Enjoy! I like playing this one myself.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
Fair play SWFL. Seems I remebered that particular book having a few airs.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by Random_notes
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
Sure, and they should too, they sound lovely on the low whistle.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
Fiona, let us know if you are able to suss this one out.
I have wondered about that transcription myself. I grabbed my copy of the book & it says the tune is from the playing of Liam O'Flynn. I am not sure where he may have recorded this tune.
But Liam is grand. I really enjoy "The Full Set" broadcast of him w/ Paddy Glackin; http://www.rte.ie/tv/thefullset/ep1.html
Fiona A is looking for a recording of a tune that she is having difficulty learning from a book. Random Notes suggests that the tune has another name by which it may be more popularly known. SWFL Fiddler suggests another tune that it may be, provides the link to it within the session, and also a link to a recording of the tune. The discussion continues briefly with another link to a recording being provided.
This is a typical request for information from other members which is promptly provided by a few different contributions. It highlights the camaraderie amongst members.
2. Musicians travelling to Ireland to learn music looking for contacts:
Exchange students from Sweden?
Me and my friends (we are 6 people) who deal with traditional swedish folk music on a swedish school are interested in making a visit to ireland for a week or two to learn some songs/dances and stuff.We will of course in exchange teach some swedish tunes/dances.It doesn't have to be a school, we just need some contacts who can teach us music and maybe place to live and stuff, but we would prefer it to be a school or something like the ballyfermot college in dublin, but similar schools in Dublin or other towns.
Do you have any contacts to share with me?
# Posted on October 31st 2009 by Patriarch K
Re: Exchange students from Sweden?
Cavan has the Nyah Trad Festival 10th 18th March ,we can keep you and share workshops
cavanmusiclive@gmail will get me .
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by Martin Donohoe
Patriarch K posts a request for contacts in Ireland for six travelling musicians wanting to learn ITM and share some of their own music. The first response offers information about a festival and an offer of accommodation.
3. Advice on a type of tune: full discussion here:'That Minor Feel'
This discussion revolves around a request for particular types of tunes- minor key reels. It begins with some help being given, before it is pointed out that the tunes are not actually in a minor key, but rather in the Dorian mode (a more technical explanation). The causes the discussion to take on more of an academic tone for a while while this technical point is being discussed, before there is some light-hearted joking relating to how academic the discussion has become, before the topic returns again to the original request with more assistance provided through external links to external examples. This example highlights both an element of self-regulation within the group, and an ability to not take itself too seriously, which is evident also in other threads. The conversation has strayed from the original topic, other relevent points are explored in a little detail, but it is noted that the request for help should be addressed and so the focus returns to the request. When the conversation gets a little technical there are also some light-hearted remarks pointing out how serious the tone has become.
The types and styles of writing and language vary enormously- seasoned players dispense advice to newcomers, there is academic-type discussion about minute details as well as fun discussions and 'in-jokes':
4. In-jokes
Re: the big hornpipes...
Oh for crying out loud. How many times do we have to say this?
It’s not the size of the hornpipe, it’s how you swing it.
# Posted on October 28th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: the big hornpipes...
If your hornpipe is that big it's hard to keep it in hand and safely in one thread.
5. Evidence of familiarity between members and their shared opinions:
Extract from Tony MacMahon memoir-in-progress http://journalofmusic.com/article/894
# Posted on November 6th 2009 by journalofmusic
Re: Extract from Tony MacMahon memoir-in-progress
Whatever we may think of his opinions on Irish music, he sure can write well...
# Posted on November 6th 2009 by amhrán
Re: Extract from Tony MacMahon memoir-in-progress
Indeed, a great writer. Thanks jom. That was a very insightful read.
# Posted on November 6th 2009 by 52Paddy
Re: Extract from Tony MacMahon memoir-in-progress
Yeah, quite a writer...
In this example it is insinuated that the opinions of Tony McMahon are not very much cared for by those posting comments- perhaps the contributors know eachother in real life or have shared similiar opinions in the past on discussion threads.
The 'mood' of the discussions is generally helpful- members share a common interest and like to talk about their shared love of ITM. Usually they are advising one another and are very open to new/inexperienced members (as is a trait of a real life 'session'), and the mood is generally light-hearted. I didn't find much evidence of a clique (which can develop amongst members in online discussions), just a few experienced members who would refer a newbie to previous conversations on a particular topic rather than repeat their thoughts/posts. The length of threads vary also from a few replies to a hundred or so. Threads are listed on the site chronologically, but with a search function. As a result activity in threads tends to lessen with time. Activity on a thread would usually go on for no more than a week.
Re: songs in sessions
llig leahcim sounds like you are a bloody idgit! how can you say that traditional songs are bloody aweful???? in the same breath you say that you play irish trad because it is the best.....sounds like you really dont know what the hell you are talking about and i bet your music sounds like it too!
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by irishmuso
Re: songs in sessions
You could be right. I wouldn't be the judge of that.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by llig leahcim
Irishmuso has taken offence to a comment posted by llig leahchim, and a little flaming has occured. llig responds but doesn't take the issue further.
Users' activity is generally bound by the functionality of the site, permitting them to upload/download files, or post to discussions. A mention of rules of behaviour is found in the FAQ section, stipulating that members 'Be civil. It's as simple as that', and 'foul language or aggressive behaviour will not be tolerated'.
Further, each member is only allowed one membership (a valid email address has to be supplied to receive a password)- anyone caught 'faking' a new membership will be expelled.
The community appears to successfully self-regulate as there are few incidents of flaming. The majority of members seem to be adults, and if any flaming occurs it is highlighted, acknowledged and the discussion continues. Having said this, I didn't find any evidence of whether members have been expelled for unsuitable behaviour or if any topics/posts have been deleted.
Generalisations/Conclusions
It is interesting to note an aspect relating to the general behaviour of members. As noted, discussion topics appear chronologically, with the most recent ten in view. This means that casual browsing will bring you to the most recent, so to go to a particular discussion you have to search for it. As a result, discussions tend to fade out when they don't appear within the most recent window (exceptions granted). These topics can deal with almost anything but still usually generate some discussion. I think two conclusions can be drawn from this phenomenon. Firstly, there is a certain kinship that regular users feel with the site and their fellow members, and they all simply enjoy passing time chatting with eachother. Secondly, it is also apparent that there is a genuine affection that members feel for ITM- the sheer volume of tunes in the database and topics in the discussion board is testament to this.
The existence of an online culture around ITM tends to replicate the real world culture- practising tunes, talking to others about music and keeping the tradition alive by helping others learn. A natural community of practise is therefore formed. All of this activity is mediated through flows of digital material. It has been said that locality is important in traditional music. It is 'the music of place.' An online community like The Session shows that a virtual place can be provided which allows the passing on of this tradition.
Instead of being vexed at people's reactions, take it on board as kind of "meta-research" of your research. Your little study got itself a 150+ post thread in a day! It's a fantastic wee example of the pitfalls and risks of research involving live human participants. Something you thought was a quick, two or three hour assignment for a class actually had ethical implications which spurred an emphatic, to say the least, reaction from your research participants. Even if you didn't think it was a big deal because it was just a 1000 word ethnography, it still raises the same issues since you're still dealing with human subjects.
I say give the person a chance. We are being offered a potentially more favorable deal than what the chimps at Gombe got. Themush, all the best to you.
Dear themush
I really do hope you don't take it so hard. It's an interesting paper and an interesting idea. Since you've been reading posts here for a while now you've seen issues get discussed and 'flamed' even and as you've observed fade away while people start discussing something else.
I think if you had announced in the discussion area what you were about you might have got a bit of reaction or possibly not. In 2 weeks I'm pretty sure no one would have remembered it and when they did find your paper they probably would have been interested.
In my opinion you should have asked, I know that is the procedure in anthropology and wanted you to know that for your sake as well as possible future subjects of study. Things have changed with the internet, and I may be wrong in terms of an internet study. Time will tell.
In the mean time, I take your apology to heart and hope you'll stick around and enjoy talking about tunes, banjo strings and whatever else is interesting to you.
Thanks for the post, mush. This looks like a lab exercise, and I
guess that I have been out of that arena so long that I read it as an interesting aside and not much else.
This board is so much more coherent than others that I frequent, so it is a natural for this sort of exercise.
Okay, everyone. Back to the interminable "name that tune" inquiries. SO much more interesting.
WTG, SWFL, you even got quoted with some typical adult innuendo!
Even though this was an extremely limited view of a slice of time on this board, I thought the conclusions where interesting. Yes, I agree that it might have been better if themush had added a layer of anonymity to the report, and sought explicit permission, to err on the side of caution.
But even still, it had some somewhat uncanny observations about how things work around here, highlighting the camaraderie, the generally helpful mood, and the way things get lightened up with humor when it gets too serious... And he even touched on some of the negative aspects of the interaction here, where people tend to get a bit testy about things that they care so much about, and unfortunately, tend to respond with a direct personal attack on another member who they probably have never met, and know nothing about.
I would congratualte the O.P. for some accurate observations! So enough with the academics... Now you can feel free to ask specific banjo questions
"And consider the ethnographer as wildlife photographer. Are you going to get good images of the great apes' mating rituals if you keep announcing your presence? More likely to end up part of the action."
is well borne out by the subsequent discussion. Had the researcher revealed his presence and intention, he would have irrevocably and unmeasurably altered that which he had set out to study. We would have spent more of our time arguing about whether such a study is ethical, desirable, possible, etc, than going about our lives doing the thing that made us worth studying.
It strikes me too that there is a level of hypocrisy involved - we have no trouble picking over the bones of professional musicians in our field, or slanging off at Comhaltas, or bodhran players or whatever, yet as soon as a researcher turns the microscope on us, even in a gentle and sympathetic way, we get all offended, and kick up spurious reasons why such intrusion (which we hadn't noticed happening) is an absolute abomination.
I think we are a community worthy of study. I was surprised to find out how many we are (unfortunately I've forgotten the figure, but it was large compared to many other communities of ethnographic interest). So I think it's great that ethnologists recognise the existence of on-line communities, and seek to understand them and set them in meaningful context.
Now, of course we just taking the researchers word for it that this ends the study and that he's been successfully run out of town. Supposing the objective set by his institution was actually to offend an on-line community and document the outcome? Heh heh, that seemed to work ....
Maybe we should all just sit back and enjoy the music?
Oh for goodness sake grow up. John is perfectly within his rights to do whatever kind of study he wants unless his ethics committee has a problem with it. Your opinion on his study is neither here nor there. It's your own ego as a community insider that you think is the only thing that matters. Pitiful if you ask me. If you had to do a study of, say, Indian culture, you wouldn't have to ask every single Indian in the whole world if it was alright by them, would you? Who draws the line? That's what ethics committees are for. This is NOT and intrusion into a cosy chat in a pub - it's an online PUBLIC forum. Contributors should be able to vouch for their own opinions and ultimately cede control of their comments on this kind of website. Pull your feckin heads out of your collective Rse before you turn yourselves inside out. And John, go ahead and get your MSc - good luck to you.
I want to say that the same goes for photos. If you post your pic somewhere online then you do that on the understanding that someone somewhere might cut & paste it elsewhere. If you take a holiday snap in India of a street scene bustling with people and then subsequently use it in a study, would you chase up every random person in the pic and ask their permission? No. It boils down to this: take responsibility for your own actions and quit pointing your finger at others and whinging. The world needs academic studies, ESPECIALLY in the field of online interaction. Flaming, trolling etc. are relatively new phenomena in the grand scheme of things, and they're not yet fully understood. Let them get on with it.
I agree Dow, I have no problem with him doing the survey. I did get a little narked when I didn't know who he was, but he quickly rectified that so it was OK. And the fact that his little survey was a pile of rubbish was of no consequence to his right to do it, including quoting me directly.
Whether his study was any good or not, and whether or not it reflects the reality and nitty-gritty of the interaction and context here is quite another matter. But his right to carry out the study stands, as you say llig.
My MSc will be about people's reactions to the comments about comments from somebody who has studied some people who made comments
The data you collected was not sufficient enough and you drew conclusions from assumptions. Like the wildlife photographer and the lemmings.
And I think The Silver Spear's comment was very good when she said about how ethnography has moved past the idea that the impartial, outside observer is better qualified to analyse his subjects than they are to discuss their own experiences. Any assumtion of objective impartiallity is, of course, an illusion that is damaging to the quality of your data.
So how would you disagree with my conclusions? Others seem to think that they were accurate enough. The two (basic) conclusions that I drew refer to kinship amongst members, and a genuine affection for their subject matter. So these are what you have a problem with?
My approach was set out from the start- that was the method I chose, and I stuck to it. As mentioned before, I did say that I would change my methodology if doing it again, which may give a more in-depth analysis, and broader conclusions. From the approach I took, and the short amount of time I spent in the site, I would stand by my work.
"a genuine affection for their subject "
You make it sound like flower arranging. It's not an "affection", it's not even an obsession, it's part of who we are. It's culture. It's high art.
"kinship amongst members"
Not at all. Many members here can't stand each other. Bristle with the mere mention of their monickers. Yet we persist because the "subject" (your word) is bigger than all of us. You just don't get passion like this with mere "affection".
Llig, a bit pedantic I think. Still think my conclusions were correct- you all love irish music, and this is a shared affinity -kinship- doesn't imply that you all love eachother, can mean that you all love the same thing
And I share that passion too.
But we don't all love the same thing, that's where the arguments start. Some people's music that they love is so far apart (I'd say inferior - and I only mention that because I make no pretence at impartiality) from what other love, that even having a conversation about it is utterly hopeless.
"kinship amongst members" This discussion is not the best example, but it does show a tendency to close ranks and set differences aside when faced with an 'intruder'. Like how arguments stop in a bar when an outsider enters. Early on higher up people were wondering if lemush had been behaving like a troll, which might have had that effect.
I wonder if this is all doomed as a meta-discussion.
I disagree. You make it sound tribal. It's not. It doesn't have that level of shared ownership and transferable allegance to higher tiers in the way, for example, football fans have. Like when Arsenal fans hate Man U fans, but when it's England agaist Germany, they're best buddies.
It looked tribal when jig was being run out of town, even though there was some 'moderates'. And people sometimes say nice things to 'enemies' when they mention real world troubles.
It's a difficult one: members of the community each have their subjective view of what it all means, and an outsider/new member/other interested party can have their own take on it from observations, but how do you distill that into general statements that people can agree on, without stating the obvious?
The really interesting thing is that each individual has their own "truth", which can conflict with other people's truths. Somehow all these truths add up to something that continues to work overall - something you can experience but can't quite put your finger on. A website like this is lots of individuals with all their baggage and chips on shoulders and interests and misconceptions and prejudices and character traits. But it's also a community as a whole which has developed its own distinct character over time, making it different from other communities.
It's an emergent system with agents that interact according to changing emotions, motives, external influences and interpersonal histories. Delve into that aspect of it and you'd start to scratch the surface. If you could be Rsed
themush... I think the problem here is in the whole mini-ethnography idea from your instructor. You can' t really do an ethnography in a couple of hours and expect to gain an understanding of the culture of anything. At the very least, a few months, but most ethnographers study the same group for a min. of one year. I don't blame you as a student following "directions", but rather the mentor who gave the assignment without fully explaining the dimensions.
Of course themush's study is rubbish--the little time he was allocated to spend on it wasn't near enough to begin to comprehend the nature of this site and it's participants' interactions. Hell, I've been here for 9 years and I don't have a clue.....
That is one finely crafted hornpipe innuendo, if I do say so myself.
"Finely crafted hornpipe" - (all together now) "That's what she said!"
themush, thanks for posting. Interesting stuff. After reading The SS and Dow's insightful remarks, your next paper should be a real monster!
...and I don't know, maybe it's a bit like football? He roots for the pure drop, she roots for Celto-jazz, but when it's time to play the Bluegrassers, we're all on the same team? Ha ha.
If it was 'just' an assignment on a course what is the fuss about. Won't it have been intended to learn from rather to get 100% on ? Maybe it should have had another name.
Is it just me who is wondering if the second two pargraphs of Dow's post are demonstrating what he says in his first. Too well stated to merit the description 'obvious' but it does sound like what happens in most communties. Or maybe a long running session.
I think it's less like doing a study of Indian culture, where of course you don't need the consent of every single Indian, and more like doing an ethnography of the culture of a mental hospital, where you do need consent.
If don't think your two main conclusions are wrong per se. I just think they are pretty obvious. Of course most posters here feel some affinity with Irish music (however they want to define that). It's an Irish music website. That said, this website has a distinct "culture." As Dow wrote above, it's "a community... which has developed its own distinct character over time, making it different from other communities." Someone should write a paper distilling the "distinct character" of thesession.org and offer some analysis on why it differs from other message boards.
"themush... I think the problem here is in the whole mini-ethnography idea from your instructor. You can' t really do an ethnography in a couple of hours and expect to gain an understanding of the culture of anything. At the very least, a few months, but most ethnographers study the same group for a min. of one year. I don't blame you as a student following "directions", but rather the mentor who gave the assignment without fully explaining the dimensions."
Yup. That too. Well said, Fiddlechick.
I don't imagine the lecturer giving this assignment imagined the "lab rats" would revolt once they found out they had been lab rats. The assumption that it's the internet, you can do what you like and people won't care because it's the internet, is a fallacy. Even though it is their digital, disembodied, cyber-presences being studied, it's apparent that people do care and react as if someone were studying their embodied presences.
I mean what you all three of you smart folks be saying and whatnots about the emerging of the unique ethnographologies, the whoosisis and whatchamacallems.
How does what themush was doing differ from, say, doing a study of the community represented by the letters page of the Times newspaper over the period 1880-1890 (I'm assuming it had one) ? Thats a question, I'm not suggesting its the same. [And TSS's last paragraph gives the main difference but I have only ready it after renewing my login]
He could have interacted with thesession.org, but he didn't really. He doesn't seem to have had much direct personal experience of what the community mainly talks about. But those wouldn't stop someone doing the Times study. And I suppose being criticised for not having fully researched the community that the correspondents represented.
He called it an ethnography, which to me implies and necessitates some degree of interaction. A study of letters in the Times from 1880 to 1890 isn't an ethnography.
And aye, if I was doing a study of those letters, I would research the community that those letters represent. Otherwise you have no context for understanding the letters.
Trying to understand this forum is futile without taking into account all the behind-the-scenes emails and networking and in-person sessions, etc., and the backhistories among people here.
Ben, the thing is, we've all been lab rats since the site was made public. One of Jeremy's interests is social interaction on the web. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that he's submitted papers or delivered talks at conferences about this forum.
One of this lab rat's posts that got eaten yesterday was wondering if the site would one day vanish with a 'so long and thanks for all the fish'. Looking at the Discussions page earlier today with Batlady's (now deleted) "Session as a Time machine" discussion showing -1 replies I wondered if it was happening.
Fair play Miss L. & I have always wished Jeremy would take off the lab coat, now & again, to play with we common folk. Are we the trophy? http://adactio.com/portfolio/thesession.php
~ I'm joking around. ;)
"I don’t think I’ll come back to this thread, because I think it’s gone on too long as it is."
Posted on March 25th 2010 by themush
You are new around here, aren't you? Welcome to what we affectionately refer to as an interface to a virtual land with its' limited palette of subdued colours, subtle browns and yellows ~ mustard for short.
David-it is interesting that you saw the Time Machine thread. I got an error when I sent it off into the ether and never saw the post. But what was really disconcerting was that all I could see in the discussion section was a thread congratulating Jeremy on the spiffy new website. Very weird. I wondered if someone was doing some mind-control experiment on us all, spiriting our screens back to 2001 and seeing how we build community.
See, mush, now we've all gone paranoid. "my god!! Is this REAL?" It was hard enough figuring out who was real and who was just winding up the board. Now we wonder if we have been picked up by our virtual tail and dropped into the maze.
Batlady I missed your thread. I think I may have enjoyed it.
Considering we do not need to ask permission to link to anything on the internet I doubt there will be an objection to this handy link; http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.thesession.org
~ might want to place a bookmark just in case.
In the time I have been here I have noticed there has been some cross referencing between thesession ~ chiff&fipple ~ abcusers . . . now I see the virtual world is connecting more & more. John's blog about The Session was brought up on Sarah's blog. Which leads me back to the roots of this thread;
The University of Edinburgh
MSC in E-learning http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/e-learning/contact.htm
I am LOLing at how precious Miss Lonelyhearts and llig leahcim are being about this whole business.
"You make it sound like flower arranging. It's not an "affection", it's not even an obsession, it's part of who we are. It's culture. It's high art." - llig
"Trying to understand this forum is futile without taking into account all the behind-the-scenes emails and networking and in-person sessions, etc., and the backhistories among people here." - Miss L
There are levels of complexity. You can still do a physics experiment -- and write it up and do it well, and draw good conclusions from it -- even if you're not yet at the absolute cutting edge of contemporary physics.
Joe, you're repeatedly revealing a knack for misinterpreting fairly obvious posts and missing the point (maybe because you've decided you don't like the people making the point). In this case the point is that themush ***didn't*** do his study well or draw good conclusions from it.
I tend to think he was hamstrung by the professor's poor job of setting up the assignment in the first place. And I'm glad that themuse has this thread to reflect on--good and bad--because without it, I doubt he would've learned much of anything from this assignment.
In my comment that you quote, I wasn't at all suggesting that themuse should have researched emails and yellow boarders who meet in real life. All I was saying is that these discussion threads are just the surface of all the interaction here. Even those of us who've been here from the beginning and *do* participate in a lot of behind-the-scenes emails and meatspace meetings can't begin to comprehend the social dynamics of this forum. It's likely impossible.
So Joe, please think about having a thought before your next snarky post. You're glibly assigning ulterior motives to llig and I (as in the La Nua thread) and you're utterly off the mark. And it makes you look petty.
You don't draw conclusions from physics experiments. The physics world has long since learned is lesson on that one. The sun moves across the sky, ergo the sun moves round the earth. Physicists instead present hypotheses based on ALL available evidence.
When you do a high school physics experiment, and "write it up and do it well", you are only doing well in the eyes of your teacher who set you the experiment. You are only doing well within the parameters set and therefore, your "conclusions" will always be compromised by those parameters. What temperature does water boil?
Stick a bunson under a beaker of water and suspend a thermometer in the water. "conclusion" = 100 degees centigrade. But next year, the kid gets given a barometer to go with his more accurate thermometer ... and on it goes.
... and Will's point about Joe repeatedly revealing a knack for misinterpreting fairly obvious posts and missing the point is not pedantry. re this thread:
To do well with the physics experiment you have, amongst other things, to distinguish between results and conclusions. themush was not doing an experiment he was observing. I'm not sure if the experts saying that an ethnographer should interact are saying an ethnographer should experiment. That would make results and conclusions easier to separate.
He uses the phrase "I didn't find any evidence of.." a few times. And each time it is used, it is with reference to things that there is plenty of evidence for.
Llig's post leads nicely to a mate of mines favourite example of a hypothesis. That "all crows are black". It can be tested by examining more crows but you can't be sure until you have seen all crows.
Logically, that's correct. However, practical science puts a cap on the pure logic of it. The daft fundamentalists say that just because a fossil of a human has never been found in a layer of strata underneath the strata where fossils of dinosaurs are found, doesn't mean that one will never be found.
Useful science has a degree of pragmatism about it. You describe a carrion crow as being a black bird, even though they are actually very dark blue. True black being something that reflects no light at all. And hooded crows, which are really a race of carrion crow, not a different species, are mostly grey: http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/hooded%20crow_300_tcm9-139930.jpg
And I saw an albino carrion crow once. That was a sight.
And yet I'd still describe a carrion crow as being a black bird.
Actually, and this is a good axample of an out of date hypothesis. My RSPB guide book, which is maybe 40 years old, lists the hooded crow as a race of carrion crow. But looking now at the rspb websie:
I knew that would happen. So does my mate. If he wants to get into that stuff he starts with "all black-blacked gulls are black on top"
It was to help explain what as a hypothesis was. OK ? Nothing more. Themush's conclusion could have been that his evidence led him to propose the hypothesis that...
Re crows, I came across the interesting old Irish word, 'baidbe' or 'badb', recently. Seems to have differing meanings in varying contexts. But sometimes interpreted literally as a 'scald crow'. A scald crow in Ireland is the hooded crow or Royston crow.
While we're on the subject of student assigments etc., this Dutch chap spent a year investigating this one word!
Ah, but black backed gulls ... are we talking greater or lesser?
Interbreeding used to be a measure in defining the term "species" but with dna testing, it's got more complicated. It used to be that if the offspring of two animals was fertile itself, then a species was defined. But if the offspring was a mule, i.e. infertile, then interbreeding has taken place.
However, the lesser blacked backed gull has an interesting relationship to the herring gull. They are what's termed a "ring species". In western Europe, the two birds do not interbreed. But as you travel west, or east, the lesser blacked backed gull's back gets progressively lighter and the herring gull's back gets progressively darker, and they do begin to interbreed, but produce mules. Go further east and west and they begin to produce fertile offspring. And when you get to the other side of the globe, they are the same species.
In the west of Ireland, jigs and slides are certainly different species. But by the time you get to Dublin they interbreed in the same sets. Then by the time you get to England, they are indistinguishable.
Llig, you assume I was calling Miss Lonelyhearts pedantic because of what she'd just said, but actually I was just insulting her generally for the sake of it because I know she can take it like a man.
And all the crows I saw in Egypt were hooded ones.
The crows here in Australia have white eyes and make a sound like they're being strangled to death.
I'm not sure we ever got to the bottom of that one, llig. I think I remember agreeing with you wholeheartedly. But couldn't you argue that the semantic domain of the word "roll" changed with the advent of free-reed instruments in Irish music? Taken to its extreme, you could say that the word "roll" should never be used in the music because that word means something entirely different - a bap. Well no, that's silly, but I suppose my point is: how long do people have to misuse a word before it ceases to be "incorrect". If we were the only two people in the world who disagreed with its current usage, would it still be incorrect?
>In the west of Ireland, jigs and slides are certainly different >species. But by the time you get to Dublin they interbreed in >the same sets. Then by the time you get to England, they are >indistinguishable.
haha I like the comparison between jigs& slides on the one hand, to bb/h gulls on the other. Just about redeemed this thoroughly depressing thread.
I didn't want to comment, but now that I've started typing in response to Llig's appealing slides post, well what the heck:
My main thought is "get a life guys". Yes perhaps it would have been nice to have been asked (& no it wouldn't have biased observation as there was no reason not to just use older discussions instead of current discussions).
But really this doesn't stand alongside a western scientist abusing an aboriginal population by secretly observing them. Everything posted here is willingly placed into the public domain unless that post itself quotes from a private message or similar. Session.orgers are not some deprived ethnic group being exploited here, just folks with a shared interest.
Nor is there to my mind any comparison to taping or filming conversations in the pub or street where people may have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
I'd like to feel dirty, I find it one of life's greates tpleasures, I wish I did feel a little dirty. But no matter how hard I try to make myself feel used by the blog/study in question I just can't .
>ramblingpitchfork, I hope you messaged llig to ask his >permission to quote him in your post
Oh fek it, he's in edinburgh, what's he going to do to me ?
(Oh wait, I'm goingt rhough there tonight )
I really hope Llig got permission from the gulls, not to mention the West-Ireland, Dublin and English musicians who's playing of slides he observed. I won't tell those guys if llig lets me off: deal?
What I want to know is: what was llig's sample of musicians in his observations of slide players in the different areas? Can he REALLY make those statements without supporting evidence?
Dow again:
"I'm not sure we ever got to the bottom of that one, llig. I think I remember agreeing with you wholeheartedly. But couldn't you argue that the semantic domain of the word "roll" changed with the advent of free-reed instruments in Irish music? Taken to its extreme, you could say that the word "roll" should never be used in the music because that word means something entirely different - a bap. Well no, that's silly, but I suppose my point is: how long do people have to misuse a word before it ceases to be "incorrect". If we were the only two people in the world who disagreed with its current usage, would it still be incorrect?"
I think this is a very good point.
When Instruments such as free reeds and fretted strings were introduced, in fact enthusiastically adopted as they became available, methods mirroring the old flute/pipes ornaments were developed. The same thing had effectively happened on the fiddle. The grace notes in a roll are not needed to articulate three separate notes on fiddle as they are on pipes. They are used on the fiddle to keep in the style as much as possible. Of course fiddle can copy the pipes or flute better than fixed reeds or plucked strings. But the motivation is the same: to play a tune in a style consistent with the older tradition using the newer tools of box and pick.
The ornamamentation/articulation/diddly bit whatever you want to call it is used out of taste rather than necessity. And the meaning of roll etc has expanded.
The view that only flute/whistle/pipes/fiddle can truely play this music appropraitely is a valid one, and the arguement is worth being aware of. But the fact that thousands of practitioners of the music have over many decades chosen to use other instrumentation as a vehicle for playing the music to my mind makes the case for the broader point of view.
- chris (I seem to have lost the thread somewhat, sorry. I suddenly remembered something I'd left switched ona nd had to run off in the middle)
Llig, L. (2010). Lost the plot: a chronic analysis of a bunch of muppets. In Dow, M. & Lonelyhearts W. (Eds.) (2010) A psycho approach to micro-ethnographical studies. Somewhereonline: Thesession.
It is morning here & I picked up reading where I left off. Almost immediately began reading a former screen name which I used a few years back. I would like to set the record straight: the current screen name of the original poster is
themush.
Humbly,
Ben
Technically it should be referenced as an internet source, not a published book. Anyway, let's stop being pedantic and get back to the music. Ummmm.... [he said, trying to think of something that hasn't been said before]...
My biggest worry at the moment is that my dad might read this and worry that I'm really bored with my life at the moment.
Oh don't be cruel, llig, my birthday's coming up. I'm earning a wage but I'm only doing him a favour - I can invest his pension much more wisely than he can.
Time Machine thread Random? The board had one of its funny turns. The latest Comments tab showed the first comments in 2001 when the board started, but not many of those, then blank posts (IIRC just "# posted on by ") and the same in all the discussions I checked ! Batlady's thread had no posts and was showing -1 replies, which guess is one less than the number of posts.
All you missed was of a lot of nothing. The resource looked empty !
Dow - your Dad tells me that you have invested enough of his income over the years without attacking his pension too.
llig - his father plays better than that.
I'm sure I'm being stupid, but can someone provide more specific directions to the youtube video under discussion with posts from zina & rolls? I can't seem to find the relevant video
ramblingpitchfork, it appears the author of the YouTube video {Concertina Medley} has blocked a couple of text comments. There was a bit of innuendo regarding the positioning of the camera/instrument/etc. . . it's disappeared into the ether of internet moderation ~ wow, am I back on topic?
BTW, John a.k.a. themush. I don't think the comments, of this thread, should have resulted in your feeling pressure to remove your blog posts. IMHO it amounts to self censorship. I offered my personal critique & while appreciating any & all responses, from yourself, I think keeping the posts online would be more helpful than removing everything.
Now, back to the question about the YouTube . . . back to when SWFL Fiddler asked, "Random, do you think the motion Zina commented on helps the rolls?" That question, as innocent as it is, goes back to a slew of discussions. For anyone not familiar with the history, it goes back to a demonstration of rolls being played, or not being played, on concertina. That demonstration once was posted on SoundLantern ~ which is no more. If I remember correctly this was shortly followed by a YouTube post of concertina rolls ~ which I think may have been removed by the author (someone correct me if I'm wrong) In any case there has also been a series of threads on thesession regarding playing articulations on concertina. Below are links to a few of these discussions.
"Concertina Rolls technique - an invitation"
Posted on January 10th 2008 by Fliúiteadóir http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/16335#comment338664
Re: "I need some help. I'm getting curious about these "concertina" things...."
Posted on September 26th 2008 by llig leahcim http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/19212/comments#comment401405
"12 Step meeting for concertina players- Ennistymon"
Posted on September 26th 2008 by concertinaplayer http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/19215#comment401420
"slow rolls and articulation on the concertina"
Posted on October 22nd 2008 by anon http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/19506/comments#comment407802
I always got the impression that Jeremy wanted threads about music, not threads about the website. This thread, which is about comments on comments on comments on observations on thoughts about comments on comments on the website, disappeared into its own navel about 100 posts ago!
The bit deleted earlier was a comment about the enormity of discussion posts trumping the desire for quality discussions about music. Happy April 1st mates.
;)
‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Came across this blog. What do you think of it?
http://digitalculture-ed.net/johns/2009/11/07/the-session-a-micro-ethnography
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by I ♥ Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Do we know the author of this blog, i.e. his member identity here?
This particular comment struck me straight away..
"The Session is a free, public website. The content is open for everyone to see, and anyone can join by submitting a valid email address. Therefore I did not think it necessary to ask permission to conduct this study. "
Surely, courtesy (Asking Jeremy) ought to come into it?
Has the blogger ever introduced himself here and informed us about his project? It would be interesting to know.
There's also large portions of previous discussions quoted with many well known members involved. Surely this is somewhat unethical?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Johnny Jay
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I'm just glad he didn't find the bit where I was selling my influence with the government for £5000 an hour.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by nicholas
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Reading the description, I felt I was in a zoo being observed. But then, I have been to a few sessions where it has felt the same !
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by southsider
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
"By collecting such empirical evidence I hoped to develop an understanding of this online culture. The main area of visible interactivity between members is the discussion area, which is where I spent most of my time. "
If he doesn't own up who he is sharpish, he's due a good feckin kickin'
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Quote
"Irishmuso has taken offence to a comment posted by llig leahchim, and a little flaming has occured. llig responds but doesn’t take the issue further."
That makes a change.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Johnny Jay
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I've just read that thread again. Someone betted that my music sounded like I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. (?)
How much further could you take that?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
....Thats me in that pic.
Thats weird.
Banjo and pipes...weeeee...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Hugo Chavez
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I have several major issues with this "ethnography" but the computer just ate my post (forgot to copy it...oops) and I'm late somewhere. Will rant later today when back online.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
My thoughts are
1 I think it is rude not to have asked Mr Jeremy
2 Having read the site I think these people should get a life , at least we have a purpose in playing tunes,not trying to be professional nosey parkers asking to get a degree maybe in being nosey .
3 Since' john' is based in Edinborugh I nominate Llig to sort him out as he lives there and has already offered to.
Or is this all a set up and the real experiment starts now with the responce to the obvious intrusion .
Lab rats revolt now!
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by bazouki dave
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
John isn't based in Edinburgh any more (assuming I've read his blog correctly). He's working at the University of Melbourne in eLearning. He's originally from Limerick and is called "John S". Presumably someone knows him ...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I wonder about the ethics of this, since I'm doing ethnography myself. I have to answer to a Human Subjects Committee at my university, and they are very particular about informed consent and getting permission to use any information that might identify individuals. I'm not so sure that, just because it's posted on the internet, you can copy, paste, and publish as you wish. At least the author could have told us about this or removed or changed specific screen names or not posted profile descriptions at all.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by jasonb
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I suppose it may be a gray area, but I would think that one ought to err on the side of informed consent.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by jasonb
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Heh heh ....
And it is written (Matthew 26:52 I understand, but I'm an atheist, so I take it on advice):
"for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword".
And so it seems to have come to pass. Your commentaries have been commented upon. Such is life.
And consider the ethnographer as wildlife photographer. Are you going to get good images of the great apes' mating rituals if you keep announcing your presence? More likely to end up part of the action.
Many years back, when folkies started to take advantage of the Internet we take for granted today, I commented on it to a friend who was heavily into jazz. He was astonished, responding that jazz players would never reveal such detail about their sources, styles, techniques etc as folkies do. Competitive rather than co-operative seemed to be the message.
I don't know if his comments have any validity - he might well represent a jaundiced view of the jazz world. But perhaps his comments illustrate that our analyst is indeed on to something - we present as a community that could be of interest to the modern ethnographer.
Not so sure about Micro however ....
Terry
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Terry McGee
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I left a message on the site dont know if it will get past the moderation but worth a try I thought.
Not sure about the ethics am sure its rude though.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by bazouki dave
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I have a suspicion that John S is gonna have his work cut out for him when he wakes up.
You can feel the Ouroboros tightening
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
This is the message I left on the site
I think it was most rude not to ask permission to use the session.org . Its like you view us as a bunch of lab rats, running around for your own entertainment.
If the owner of the site gave permission or you published your paper in the discussions or talked with Jeremy who runs the site you would have discovered how wrong you were on several issues.
But hey ,who ever talks to the rats ?
A proud doer and maker ,not just a sad watcher
Bazouki Dave
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by bazouki dave
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
This is the message I left:
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/24145
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ...
~ part of the MSc in E-learning at the University of Edinburgh
http://digitalculture-ed.net/
E-learning and Digital Cultures
"I didn’t find any evidence of whether members have been expelled for unsuitable behaviour or if any topics/posts have been deleted."
~ asking Jeremy and some correspondence would have given this scetchy introduction more substance. The answer is "YES!" Members have been suspended, expelled and sometimes made that decision them selves, and parts and whole threads have gone "POOF!" too. This writer didn't quite do sufficient research or homework, in my sense of it... The great thing about online content, like with Wikipedia, is it can evolved with, hopefully, increased understanding and appreciation... A good start would be to communicate with the webmaster, the original seed for this idea, and its master mechanic and moderator...
Someone could add a link to this thread in the 'comments' for that contribution...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ceolachan
Llig, you beat me to it...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ceolachan
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Hi guys,
I am the author of the micro-ethnography in question and feel it is right for me to respond.
As part of my MSc, we were required to study an online culture. We submitted a short proposal indicating our choice- I thought that The Session was a great example of how a culture based around the love of irish music manifested itself online. My approach was to observe, interact a little and write a report. There were a number of reasons why I didn’t ask the groups permission (I did consider this initially)- the main one being that knowledge by members that they are being observed can tend to alter their actions, which would influence the study. We were also advised that we weren’t required to seek permission if the site’s content was publicly available (which the Sessions is) on the web. I can wholeheartedly understand your concerns- in retrospect I think I should have at least posted a link to my short study in the forum and ‘came out’ about it after it was written. I can also appreciate your concerns if you felt like you were being observed. I am not aware that there are any copyright infringements in what I have done. I can chase this up further with my tutors if necessary. I will also offer to take the post down if you like- I can just disable it in my blog.
I do apologise for any harm caused. As I said let me know what you’d like me to do.
Cheers
John
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
You are very rude.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by gam
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Just been reading some of the comments made while I was writing my last post- Terry you have a valid point about you guys representing a community that may be of interest to the modern ethnographer (I’m not a fulltime ethnographer!)- one thing that is apparent from the site is the passion that is shared for the tunes- if you break it down all the site consists of is text and some music files- but what has build up around that is an impressive and active community. (by the way the ‘micro’ referred to the mini report I did, rather than the size of your community )
Bazouki Dave- I take your point too- I think I should have ran my idea by Jeremy first and see what he thought- respect where it’s due. Would you like to expand on the issues where I was wrong- I would be interested to find out?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Yes, you are very rude. But at least you've saved yourself from the kickin'. (though I'm sure there's more "virtual" kickin to come)
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Hauke- I've just credited your pic too- apologies.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
You remind me of those wildlife photogaphers who went to the arctic to film the famed lemming mass suicide. They hung around for a while and got bored. Then decided to round up a bunch of lemmings, push them over a cliff and film that.
How such behaviour can contribute to becoming a "Master of Science" is beyond me.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Welcome themush, love the alias. I'm glad you joined in here. I can't think anybody minds being 'observed', all of us have 'lurked' through threads we've never commented on. The rudeness, for me, has nothing to do with being observed, it is about having the courtesy to fill in some of the blanks by contacting the seed to this all, getting some background some omnipotent retrospectives ~ from our webmaster ~ Jeremy, the main mechanic that tends to all this madness. You might have gained a greater understanding of the dynamics here by starting there, and then by introducing a few well chosen topics for discussion? compared to other forums, this one has some unique characteristics, and much of that is down to our webmaster, whether or not it suits everyone. It's his baby, he started the ball rolling, he's our head referee.
Nothing is complete or just without an understanding and appreciation of its history...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ceolachan
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
For what it's worth, Mush:
You sir, I perceive, have effectively wandered about at a gathering in a pub, with your little notepad and tape recorder, collecting and analyzing and editing, and then publishing what you have garnered from the unknowing and, in some cases, unwilling.
They were not any of them asked in advance how they felt about it, nor about being quoted and named (as stated above).
How would you expect people to feel? Myself, I would be prepared for any sort of reaction and comments on my behavior. I would say you have already received a fair assortment above from greater minds than mine.
Good day, sir.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Piece
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
For what it is worth:
You sir, I perceive, have effectively wandered about at a gathering in a pub, with your little notepad and tape recorder, collecting and analyzing and editing, and then publishing what you have garnered from the unknowing and, in some cases, unwilling.
They were not any of them asked in advance how they felt about it, nor about being quoted and named (as stated above).
How would you expect people to feel? Myself, I would be prepared for any sort of reaction and comments on my behavior. I would say you have already received a fair assortment above from greater minds than mine.
Good day, sir.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Piece
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I'd say what's written here is fair game for John and he has had the decency to respond and offer to ameloriate any offence possibly caused.
But what offence can there be? If you write something here, you may be prepared to stand over it - otherwise it's meaningless drivel..
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by the wounded hussar
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Collecting and analyzing and editing is all very well. Basic science. But the amount of pure uneducated assumption is ridiculous. A fail. Must try harder.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
"Mush" .. cockney slang as in
""Oy mush ! Move yer harris. .. "
.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gphMgG3v3Y8
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Johnny Jay
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Frankly Mush I think you can write your own disseration
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by bazouki dave
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
God, that lemming story's sick.
Is it actually true?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by nicholas
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
For myself, it is neither here nor there. I am not concerned with being observed or quoted, being neither photogenic not eloquent enough to bear "quoting". But I would make the effort to be sensitive to the feelings of those who are (or think they are), and I can see where this project might have gone off a bit better.
And I am not suggesting that I would have aced it if I had tried to do it, either.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Piece
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
stuff posted anonymously in public domain needs to be accredited or posters asked for permission to collect and analyse the comments?! don't think so.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Disney wildlife films Nic . Lemmings never jump en mass . they are short sighted and cannot differentiate between short streams and lakes thus indeviduals drown singuly but get washed up as a group.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by bazouki dave
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
what's the difference? if you write a story and post it on the net without establishing copyright, and someone picks up your story and publishes it, I'd say you'd be hard pressed to have any grounds for objection or compensation. Same here isn't it?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Not everyone is an anonymous poster here and this is certainly not always the case elsewhere where real names are frequently used.
Yes, we are all aware that all our comments are available to view worldwide and ought to be prepared to justify particularly strong opinions. However, my main objection is that this research was carried out without the courtesy of advising the webmaster and, even if it was considered impractical to let us all know what he was doing at the time, we should have been informed after the project was completed.
Not to do so was rude and, as Ceolochan and others have noted, the results could have been much better if some initial approach had been made and advice sought.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Johnny Jay
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I follow Rook in regarding things said here like a conversation at the bar in a pub. Not private but spoken within a community that deserves respect if they are repeated elsewhere. If you have made notes in a bar-room coversation you would not have included the real names of your subject in a public document.
Within this community the usernames have the same standing as real names in a real community. They carry the context of that users previous posts and the information in the users profile. Both of which are outside the scope of your report so you could have been less annoying by leaving the usernames out.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
wouldn't matter even if the comments weren't anonymous, I would think, the commentary is in the public domain, there is no copyright I believe.
It might be a bit presumptive to use the comments without at least advising, but I don't think it is deliberate "rudeness", probably simply someone just operating on instructions they have been given. Academics in my experience are usually very acutely aware of accrediting source material, so I would think this had been considered already and an interpretation given.
No difference with the tunes either, is it? Those that are in the public domain are available for people to play, record or whatever, you don't have to advise anyone you are going to do that do you? No copyright.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Duij, we are talking about manners, not copyright.
And its a bit dubious themush not mentioning that he posted in one of the discussions he includes an extract from. The wildlife photographer may not always let on that they threw blood in the water to keep the feeding frenzy going but an academic should. And many wildlife and news photographers regard it as unethical.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I think there may be some distinctions to make here. First, the idea of asking permission has less to do with copyright and more to do with professional ethics in the social sciences, ethics that aim to, among other things, prevent research subjects from being exploited. Second, the degree to which one ethically (and possibly legally) needs informed consent is different, depending on what one does with the information gathered. If you and your tutors/professors are the only ones that see it, it's not a big deal. If you publish it, on the other hand (which the blog could be argued to do), you very much need informed consent.
I'm not clear to what degree the fact that this is taking place on a public internet forum changes things, but again, I think that erring on the side of informed consent, or at least informing in general would probably be the way to go.
At any rate, there's probably not much lasting harm done, just ruffled feathers and hurt feelings or something like that
.
On a lighter note...John, what subject are you studying for your degree? I would definitely like to hear about it.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by jasonb
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
crosspost!
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by jasonb
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Well, I guess talking about "manners" on this forum is appropriate, or at least topical.
There is an implication of propriety in this thread as well...I would think there is a very big difference between using accredited material from notes taken of conversations overheard in a bar room, and using a verbatim recording of those same conversations. What is posted here, anonymous or otherwise, is a verbatim record is it not? I don't think the guy has done anything particularly wrong or improper, except perhaps been a bit offhand, but I'm guessing he's operating on instructions from seasoned academics.
In any event he's apologised, which I am not sure he would be required to do - but he did - so fair play to him. That displays some grace and manners, in my view anyway.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Not to patronize anyone, nor state the obvious, or continue inflaming, but: I think the issue here is now that legal does not necessarily imply polite, or in good form.
At our local zebra crossings, I can leap off the curb at whim and force people to slam their brakes, and the law here IS on my side.
Not very nice, though, is it?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Piece
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I didn't know posters here were "research subjects"; I don't think they are, are they?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Crossed a bit, sorry.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Piece
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Politeness is one thing, granted, but there seems to be an implication of impropriety in this thread. Gee, I hope the guy doesn’t do a research thesis on ‘politeness’ using the yellowboards. God help us!
I’ve worked out an excellent way to get around having to come back to the computer to read and wade through posts. I am going to use a text to speech conversion software to create a midi file of each post which can then be routed through my mobile radio headphones so I can continue to walk around the house doing my chores and mowing my lawns – and while I am playing tunes, even! Is that ok with everyone?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I see the blog has now been removed....
Sess.org member power?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Johnny Jay
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
nah, probably just politeness.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Now what would you guys say if I told you all that I started this thread off to make note of the reactions of people finding out they've been observed previously without their permission?
And then what would you guys say if I told you all that it is part of MY thesis?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by I ♥ Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Yeah, the lemmings story is real. And the lesson is to be vigilant to confusing conclusion based on evidence with conclusion based on uniformed preconception. John S' little school project is, unfortunatly, packed with the latter.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
you mean you want to make notes without permission or that you have observed previous comments without permission.
*big difference*.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I mean both
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by I ♥ Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
llig, that is a whole lot of twaddleisation.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
You mean both?!! Then you're in really serious trouble boy. You better say sorry.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Research on human subjects is quite clear: informed consent, nothing less. If you wish to "hide" the observation the only way you can do it is by admitting the observation but subtly--and not unfairly--shift the nature of the analysis.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by nfldbox
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
DJF as you can see from my first comments I would not be surprised
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by bazouki dave
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
"research" and "subjects" are problematic terms in this particular context, I'd suggest.
So, do you reckon that mushman is going to take up Irish trad music after this traumatic experience then?
He looked pretty positive there for a while.
Oh well, who's the next duck in the shooting gallery?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Wow! What can happen when one takes a break for tea...
Ditto the lemmings ~ and things less obvious and less subtle have been done to prove a point, or for dramatic effect... Hell, that's what cock and dog fights are all about, and bear baiting... Sad indeed...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ceolachan
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Duij hits the nail on the head- I was operating on instructions for a particular mini-assignment- to spend some time ( a few hours in all) investigating an online culture. I did have to credit my source material (hence peoples’ names from posts). As I said, the reason I didn't ask permission was informed from my reading of different ethnography approaches-there is the whole question of tampering with the environment (I don't mean this language to inflame those of you who feel themselves to be 'subjects'- I'm just giving explaining my rationale)-I wanted to be 'invisible' to an extent. Of course there are ethical elements to this, and consequently, it was admittedly bad manners by me, but that’s the decision I took. Yes I did post a bit (and would like to in the future- I want to buy a banjo!), out of general interest rather than trying to illicit responses. To be honest I think if I suggested doing the study to the group beforehand I would have been told to feck off!! Look- I put my hands up- guilty! I've taken down the post- if you're interested anyway you guys were the only people to comment apart from classmates- don't think anybody else even read it. One thing that I am interested in is digital literacies- or lack thereof so far- that people develop. The ‘interest’ that this has caused has made me realise, if taken to extremes, the vulnerability of online presence- kids today (and you all in this forum) leave footprints (mostly permanent) when you are active online. This activity can be manipulated in any way, good or bad, by anyone, anywhere, (usually) without any consequences. Do people actually realise this?? (now there is a meaty thesis topic!) The internet comes from military origins- if people get their feathers ruffled by some eejit like me reproducing what they’ve said in a public forum on irish music, stop for a minute and think about monitoring on a broader scale- your mobile phone gives your live location to a few feet, everything you do digitally is recorded by your internet provider etc. etc....
Jasonb- I'm doing an MSc in e-Learning- the module I checked the session out for was Online Culture (http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/e-learning/)- some really fascinating stuff when you try to comprehend how technology permeates our lives in so many ways. For a laugh take a look at another mini-submission I did where an innocent islander is confronted by the internet- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apg15i0coeg
Cheers
John
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Duij - I've just come to this, late the ball again, and yours is about the only sensible thing in this thread.
What a lot of whining can go on in a morning.... could you all please drink a cup of coffee before posting? I find it helps to get things in perspective. (yes, I know we're not all on the same time zone... I still think some of you should drink a cup of coffee before posting...)
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
mushman, I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you.
Hey, you're going to get a banjo! So, after this lot, you wanna take up Irish traditional music? (this is a research question)(you don't have to answer it if you don't want to.)
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Wow, I teach a social sciences class based in ethnography, and I can tell you for certain that not gaining permission is very unethical and brings this ethnographer's credibility/ethos to an all time low. I would never accept that behavior from a student. Plus, this person can't be using quotes, etc. from the site without proper permission if he is going to publish this piece of "work".
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Fiddlechick7
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
yes duij- I want a banjo- I've been playing trad on the guitar for a while but fancy the banjo more- impossible nearly to get a second hand 4-string tenor in Oz though- they all have the american 5 strings here- if anybody knew someone selling one in Munster for a reasonable price I might be interested- I've got family coming over in a few months and they could bring it over. Really getting into the trad over the last few years- saw Mairtin O Connor, Seamie O Dowd and Cathal Hayden last week- jesus Seamie o Dowd is some singer- apart from the guitar work- been listening to their cd on repeat over the last few days.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Mush... part of ethnography is stepping in and stepping out... to gain both an outsider and insider perspective. Any "key" informants you plan on using in the paper, and posters/bloggers would probably fit into that category, should have been asked permission. For instance, a local bar might be a public place, but if I plan on using things people do and say, I have an ethical liability to ask their permission before I make my study public. If the essay remained only within the confines of your classroom (peer and instructor), that could have some wiggle room. But the fact that the study was "published" (online) to a certain extent makes you liable to those ethical sensibilities.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Fiddlechick7
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Fiddlechick
My work will not be 'published', apart from the now-deleted blog post.
have you conducted any online studies? It was a lively topic of conversation amongst us re:ethics and permission- but online content is a massive grey area- our advice from tutors was to defintely seek permission if your area was private, or included sensitive material etc.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
there are some members here from oz who might have second hand tenor banjo for sale. Put up a post about it, someone will surely get back to you. There are some excellent makers in oz, I know of Bob D'oole in Melbourne, but they are all personally crafted by him, and new, so they are on the pricey side. Very good though.
I thought I detected that Australian politeness and honesty in your posts. Good man yourself.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Ooh, lookee over there, what MAGNIFICENT specimens of TradPlayers!!
(Might even have found ourselves a new sub-species, eh, mates?)
Quietly now...
(crunch crunch crunch)
We'll move us in for a closer look, see if they want to shake hands -
(crunch crunch crunch)
Whoops, looks like we've moved a bit TOO close, better back off before
WHOA, they're CHARGIN" US!!
Quick , back to the Rover before we get ourselves et!!
CRIKEY!!
IT'S BANJOES!!
HEEEEEELP!!!!!
Ah, there's my coffee.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Piece
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
it's all a lot of cobblers, mush. You were acting under instructions anyway.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Have heard of that banjo maker alright duij- but I don't want to spend that kind of money. I must have absorbed the Australian politeness and honesty in the last few years then as I'm a born and bred mucksavage Paddy
Must go to bed now- it's freakin' 1.20 am and I've work in the morning
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Mush, I think you have completely misinterpreted what your tutor told you. What he said is that to OBSERVE a web community then write your own analysis of the behaviour you see doesn't require permission.
But everything on the interweb is covered by the same rules that apply elsewhere. You wouldn't be allowed to copy complete pages from a text book without permission, and y
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
you can't copy from websites without permission.
If yout tutor is worth his salt, he will reject your paper.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
whose permission? Is session.org copyrighted?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
And there is no 'grey area' - exactly the same laws apply to material on the internet as to any other medium. It may be that plagarism is harder to police on the internet, but that doesn't make it a 'grey area' - it is still unlawful.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
whose permission? Is session.org copyrighted?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by duij
The site owner's permission.
Yes. ALL written material is copyrighted.
The site layout is copyrighted.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
so mush, you are Irish *and* Australian. Exxxcellent! You will be particularly resilient then, as well as polite.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
This discussion is ripe for yet another analysis! It is an amazing example of how the observed are being affected by their observer…albeit a tad retroactive. hmmm, you may get a virtual stamp of ‘further research recommended’ on your virtual report, themush. Best of luck, as you well know, behavioural studies are fraught with confounding results.
Good luck with the banjo!
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by trad2nz
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
very self-reflexive, yes.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
You know what's really rude?
Taking the thing down before the latecomers get a chance to read it and get all upset. I feel robbed.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
It's been copied, swiv, for sure.
...and there you go, despite all this, the guy is STILL going to take up Irish trad, and you know what...he's going to use a BANJO!
How's that for resilience!
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
"you can't copy from websites without permission"
Hrmm?
a) In the first place - whaaat? Skreech, have you ever looked at the world-wide-whatsit? Cut-and-comment is the basis of the "blogosphere".
b) In any case, the snippets cited in the blog posting are all well within anybody's sense of fair use, even in the printed world. Short, contextualized quotes from material voluntarily submitted to a public forum, with attribution given - there's nothing to complain about here, any more than there would be if someone quoted your letter to the editor published in the local paper, or wrote a review of your book and cited passages.
While I'm at it, the bar analogy falls apart - in a bar, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The better analogy would be if the bunch of us were standing in a public park under a sign that said "open debate on Irish music, public welcome, no expectation of privacy, free video archive available of every comment made in this particular area of the park".
This is a public forum, everything you post here is open and available for discussion. When someone discusses it, you have no basis for complaint.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
skreech -
I don't mean any disrespect, but you are applying your own interpretation of plagiarism pretty stongly here. Plagiarism happens when one quotes or paraphrases from another source and does not site that source. Period. Using someone else's words or thoughts without giving them credit implies that one is taking credit for those words or thoughts. This is what plagiarism is meant to prevent.
Also, there is plenty of gray/grey area here. Not all countries/cultures view the concept of intellectual property the same. So, when you say it is unlawful, to which country's laws are you referring? Quoting directly from another source is a standard part of any research paper in any university in the United States, and has been for some time, and no permission is ever asked for. To help prevent students from being guilty of plagiarism, universities have clear guidelines about it that they make readily available to students, which makes it clear that what prevents one from engaging in plagiarism is to site one's sources. There is nothing about permission. If permission were an issue then 99% of all university research work would be unlawful.
Again, this is not meant disrespectfully, but I suggest you clarify a bit. I'm not expert on copyright law, but I'm pretty sure that there is a distinction between copyright infringement and plagiarism, at least according to most western legal disciplines. I may be mistaken.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jimmy B
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I would have thought plagiarism is where you *don't* give the citation or source, which is exactly what mushman didn't do.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Yes. ALL written material is copyrighted.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Codswallop...
I hereby declare to the greater good of mankind (and womankind too, if I may be presumptous) all that I write here. That good enough enough for you. Take your copyright and stick it ...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by the wounded hussar
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
No luck duij, unless my Google-Fu is failing me.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
As I recall, all of the quotes in Mush's paper were identified by session.org screen names - in other words, he gave all the attribution the original poster provided. That's a citation.
Further, it could not have been any more clear that these were quotes to support or exemplify a position.
It's not plagiarism.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
And since Seamie was mentioned ...
... he's not only a great singer, obviously a fantastic guitar player, he's a demon fiddle player as well. Not to mention a lovely chap.
Oh, and btw, SWFL, I read the blog, and the best bit was that almost all of the comments - taken out of context, of course - were from you! Heh heh heh.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Jon -
Exactly right. There's a confusion between plagiarism and copyright infringement that's been introduced into the conversation. Plagiarism is a pretty easily definable and avoidable offense. Copyright infringement becomes far more complicated depending on the medium.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jimmy B
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I wonder, mush, can that blog be put back up, some people have missed it.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
@ ethical: I KNEW IT!
Call my agent! Get the lawyer on the phone! Where's my wig glue?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
All of the comments I have made on this forum are in the public domain ~ no membership is required before reading my comments. If you care to respect my privacy, please ask before quoting my comments outside of this forum. I am well aware the majority does not agree & I respect them.
Personally, if it were me, I would first make a request from Jeremy. Also, I would not proceed without a clear response from Jeremy. Secondly I would post an annoucement in the *Discussions* section in advance of using any information. I would also post a link (in the *Links* section) to everything being placed on line regarding comments from thesession.org. The final part is the rub. & perhaps the reason I do not believe I would ever, even hypothetically, do something of this sort.
Any conversation or correspondence I have with another individual is primarily between her or him & myself. I always do my best not to, if I may use a figure of speech, go behind their back. Everyone with whom I speak (online discussions included) deserves the respect of knowing (1st hand) what I may say about them. This includes quoting from that individual.
Now, amongst ourselves we do talk about one another. Ideally this is done with the knowledge of the person mentioned. Fact is it is easy to miss things, each of us comes with our package of human fobiles & frailties. Important thing is to make the effort. And as we say, "To show all due respect" To a large extent the center of this tradition is respect.
Bottom line you have been outed. Now who is the one being examined?
Cheers,
Ben
just spell my name correctly ;)
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
conversely, I would have thought that if you had made comments privately, and someone posted them even duly accredited in an online forum, that might be a privacy issue; but when you yourself post comments here in the public domain, how is that establishing your right to privacy? I would have thought it is actually a relinquishment to at least the comments.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Thesession.org/revealed
I always wanted someone to start a website with everything which has been edited out.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
duij, if you are asking me, yes I stated, "All of the comments I have made on this forum are in the public domain". Having said this, I do not relinquish my privacy rights easily. Not saying I expect everyone to show me any due privacy, simply letting anyone know they have the opportunity to show respect for our forum at large. I am clear about my comments being in the public domain. Though I do not persume to speak for Jeremy or any of my mates. The respect of privacy is not a right at all, which is why I said *respect* rather than the right.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Everybody realizes how fuzzy all of this is, right? The only clear thing is the plagiarism aspect. That's pretty clear across all national/cultural boundaries: don't quote unless you credit the source. Easy enough. But we're also debating about copyright infringement and privacy and such. These are much more hazy, depending on the medium and the country. Why are we even talking about them? If the man cited his sources, he didn't plagiarize. Simple as that. If we want to talk about respect for privacy and such that's all well and good, but what's anybody going to do about it? The only one who can is Jeremy, who can choose to suspend or ban someone if he wishes. That's about it.
So, how about those reels and jigs. Clever little things, aren't they?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jimmy B
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
sounds to me more like you are asking for people to ask your permission to quote your comments, rather than a privacy issue.
I don't know that in either case though, one could fairly have an expectation in the public domain that the majority of the non-academic public online would come to a conclusion that they would or should either ask permission or alternatively not refer to the comment because of "privacy". If they don't, I wouldn't necessarily regard that as a lack of respect.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Strikes me as hilarious that anyone would post here under a presumption of privacy or proprietorship. Whaaaa? It's a public forum, on the (wait for it) WORLD WIDE WEB.
D'oh!
It's also laughable to assume that the researcher would've gotten a more accurate sense of what happens here if he'd asked Jeremy, or any of us, some questions. That's like asking for directions when driving around the boondocks. The natives are just as likely to (a) give you deliberately misleading information, (b) misinterpret your question and send you where you don't want to go, and/or (c) simply get their "facts" wrong.
Ethnography is full of studies where the subjects enjoyed misleading their observers.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Jimmy B
Sorry, my fault. Plagiarism was the wrong word.
But copyright infringement isn't that complicated. It is the same on the internet as it is anywhere else. If you cut and paste from a web page, it is exactly the same as copying from a book. If you put information onto a web page it is exactly the same as publishing it in a book.
In this case, had JohnS written his paper and emailed it to his tutor, his only 'crime' would have been failing to seek permission. Pretty trivial, but something that most academic faculties take very seriously these days.
But he went further than that, he published the paper on the internet. To take whole pages from one site and re-publish them within another site is a very clear copyright infringement, just as copying whole pages of someone else's book into your own would be.
OK, in this instance it's faily trivial, because there is no financial gain involved. But the principal remains. The information belongs to Jeremy, and JohnS took it without asking. To say that should be OK, because the information was on a public site is like saying it's OK to steal a bike if it's left unlocked.
I am perfectly aware that there are bloggers breaking the rules every day, but that doesn't mean the rules don't exist. And if JohnS produced that paper as a project towards his degree, the reason he would have been asked to do so is to prove that he is capable of undertaking research in a responsible manner. And that means making sure you are playing by the rules, no matter how trivial.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
not everything on the net is copyright. In my understanding, there has to be a clearly stated claim to copyright on the material or on the site, otherwise there is no breach of copyright.
You have not claimed copyright on your comments, so if they get copied, you have no claim, in my understanding, for breach of copyright.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
skreech -
Back to my original point. If you are correct, then all college papers are in violation of a copyright, and all college students are subject to fine or imprisonment. Are you certain this is the case? I'm not going to take the time to research copyright law, because I just don't that that much time, but I'm pretty sure that quoting written material that is properly cited is perfectly legal, with or without permission. I believe there are limits, such as not quoting beyond a certain amount like entire paragraphs or chapters of a book, but quoting a sentence from a published book without permission, provided it is properly cited, is a very common practice, not just in universities. I am currently attending a Masters Business Law class. I will ask my instructor, who is a judge, about it tonight.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jimmy B
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Unless we assign copyright to Jeremy when we become members, and IIRC we don't, then copyright of each individual post remains with its author unless the author assigns it in some way. Jeremy will have rights over the whole database, since its his sweat of brow that compiles it . I wonder if that means for two consecutive posts both the authors and Jeremy have rights. Maybe even one post, since it is a retrieval from Jeremy's database.
There were some posts a while back that were poems. My hunch is those count as complete works so shouldn't be quoted in full without permission of the author.
But are people touchy because these posts are part of a dialogue during which people (usually) give consideration to the others as they would in a general conversation in the pub and they feel that being asked before being quoted would be a matter of common courtesy ?
(I am crossing with duij but this post keeps getting eaten)
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
No, that's not right. In all countries that follow the Berne copyright convention (ie almost the entire Western World) anything produced after 1989 is automatically copyright protected, and should not be copied without permission unless the author has explicitly stated that it is in the public domain.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Nice molehill you guys have got going here.
As an aside and speaking as a researcher in e-learning (my studies are mostly in more controlled environments), I don't think that posting a message saying "I'm going to observe you guys" would have influenced a thing.
For the ethics... Not informing the subjects is a bit of a no-no, particularly those whose true identities are only barely disguised. But everything that is quoted is publicly available on various internet archives anyway.
In a way, it's a bit like someone conducting a study of what gets pinned up on a message board. They're public statements, available to anyone who wants to read them.
The quotes are obviously copyright infringement, but could be argued to be fair use, or to be too short to be copyrighted.
For the quality... I havn't read it, but based on my own work back when I was a master's student, and many other reports I have read by master's students, I wouldn't expect much anyway :p
For politeness, you guys have obviously decided that what themush did was rude. I think it's a sure sign that you don't have your priorities straight. Why worry about that when google collects so much data about you anyway?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Tirno
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Okay, so, you are saying that the vast majority of college students in the USA and elsewhere are in violation of copyright law? I want to make sure that is what you are saying.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jimmy B
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I'm assuming that screech's post was to Jimmy B not me, because what schreech says is how I understand it as well.
I think that in the USA what is interpreted as 'fair use' goes wider than in Europe.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
My last post was addressed to duij, but there was a bit of cross posting.
Jimmy B:
Why would all undergraduate papers be illegal? As you say, there are limits - a sentence or two (as a quote, with an attribution) might be acceptable. But if more is needed, then either you paraphrase (with citation), or refer the reader to the original work. Simply pasting a large section of someone else's work into a paper isn't normally acceptable from an academic point of view, never mind the legalities.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Right. And he didn't do that. So where's the copyright issue?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Yes he did, he quoted groups of consecutive posts. It may have been within 'fair use' it may not.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
This thread is a cross-posting nightmare to be sure. However, it is an interesting diversion from the usual. Any reasonable person would probably agree that quoting with credit is okay, as long as it's not huge sections. So, agreed there totally, skreech. I just needed some clarification from you. I interpreted that you were taking a pretty hardline position that ANY quotation without permission constitutes copyright infringement, which I am unclear on. Like I said, I am going to address this in class tonight, which will certainly lean toward U.S. law, but part of the class concerns international law so my inquiry will be relevant. Besides, I think we're covering copyright law and intellectual property tonight anyway.
Cheers.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jimmy B
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Oh, I see - you're taking a stretch of posts as " a large portion of someone else's work". Okay, that makes more sense.
I was looking at each as a single citation, and none of them were very large.
In any case, looking at the work as a whole, I saw nothing that would reasonably raise an eyebrow in terms of copyright or academic ethics, any more than commenting on a discussion of literary criticism would.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
It's pretty funny that people assume this was the only paper done regarding the site that pops most frequently when "Irish Session Music" is run through Google. I'm sure there's more, with the data made somewhat more anonymous.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by TaoCat
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Jon,
I was looking at it as reproducing sections of this website. If you take each post as an individual work that makes things worse, because he is then reproducing 'whole works'. It might not raise your eyebrows, but if someone submitted a paper to me, with video clips of a website, and starting with the assertion 'it's a public website, so I didn't see any reason to ask permission'. I'd through it straight back.
TaoCat
I don't think people do make that assumption - people know it happens, because generally those doing the research introduce themselves, or ask the site owner for permission.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Jimmy. Probably something relevant in here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing
I'm not going to read it now !
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
skreech- There's all kinds of data collected about us all the time on the web. I recall that when I was a graduate student, you could observe people "in the field" and use data as long as it was anonymous without going into the grey area of ethics. Of course, that was in the era when the internet involved telnet...
Has anybody asked Jeremy if anybody has asked permission?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by TaoCat
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
There is a huge difference between collecting data and reproducing work.
And JohnS stated at the start of his paper that he hadn't sought Jeremy's permission.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
david_h -
Good article. It made me smile, though. One of the first things they say in universities is NEVER use wikipedia as a source. I know, not your point, I just thought that was funny since college papers are a big part of this discussion.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Jimmy B
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Reproducing work? Did he take somebody's post and publish it as his own material? I'm not saying he didn't cross a line, but I am surprised at the vehemence his article (I didn't read it, gone before I looked) received. If you post something in a public space, I don't think you should be surprised or hurt that it shows up somewhere else without warning.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by TaoCat
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
It is rather curious to not mind having a bar-room conversation that will be archived for who knows how long but take issue when someone quotes it with full attribution. I think it s the lab rat feeling
Jimmy B. When I started as a student I was shown the departmental library with the comment "trouble is, a lot of it is wrong"
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
He had c&Ped whole threads into his paper, plus video clips of him browsing the site.
I can only speak for myself, but the reason he rattled my cage has nothing to do with what he published, it was simply the arrogance of his assumption that there was no need to ask if it's alright To do so. Manners cost nothing.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by skreech
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
He was quick enough to introduce himself, explain and make an apology though.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Jaysus. Spend a day away from the computer and look what happens.
). If you had engaged more with your research participants, you would probably have found that out. You also would have been able to write up a more detailed, nuanced analysis of how people interact and use this website if you had asked us. As I said, a lot of modern anthropology and sociology are concerned with the experiences of participants, not just the perceptions of researchers, and to understand participants' experiences, you have to ask them!
The issue here is not with copyright, since he cited his sources -- both the website and the individual posters. You can quote a website without permission of the site's owner, so long as you cite it. You can quote a whole bloody page from a book (or a website) if you want (as I will be doing of some primary sources in my thesis), so long as you have a reason for it and cite, cite, cite. I have, for example, a book where the author has included several pages of an Old Bailey courtroom transcript for the reader's edification. This is fine.
A more problematic issue with JohnS's study is informed consent. While it's true that anything we write here is publicly available, the researcher STILL should have erred on the side of caution and gotten permission from both Jeremy and from the sesh.org contributors. Ethics boards, in my experience, prefer you to be more conservative than not.
The "observer effects" complaint, JohnS's reasons for not informing us or Jeremy of what he was doing, is something social sciences researchers just have to deal with. I think the attitude of most Ethics Boards to that is "tough sh*t." Sometimes researchers come up with clever ways around it or they acknowledge it when they write up their conclusions. It's fairly common practice, for example, for research psychologists to tell participants (usually undergraduates) they are studying one thing but in fact be looking for something else. If you're doing this, you have to convince your Ethics Board that it is absolutely imperative to your study that the participants not know what exactly is being studied.
John, if your tutors said that it was fine for you to use these materials without informed consent, I'm going to disagree with them.
Ethnographers, like researchers in clinical settings, are required to get informed consent from their research participants. When sociologists and anthropologists conduct an ethnographic study, I'd say that the participants know what that researcher is doing there and know they are being studied. According to the American Anthropological Association, the researcher must "clearly [inform] participants about the purpose and procedures of the study, its potential risks and benefits, and plans for the use and protection of ethnographic materials gathered during the study." It is also standard practice for researchers to disguise the identities of participants in any data they may share. Instead of citing SWFL Fiddler and using his screenname for example, you should have changed his name, given him a number, done something to disguise him. Yes, I know he uses a pseudonym anyway (some people on this site don't), but from your information you can find his posts on his website and go to his bio and found out whatever information he put it in. This is just good practice.
I'd also add that most good ethnographic/participant observations studies I have read were complimented with interviews. So the participants knew damn well they were being studied. Because of this, the researcher was able to engage with the perceptions and experiences of the participants and thus more, not less, able to analyze their data. Basically a lot of sociology and anthropology these days has become a lot more humanistic and has realized, on a lot of levels, that "objectivity" is often an illusion anyway. The whole notion that your sociological/anthropological study will be "better" and "more objective" because you are observing people who don't know they are being observed has pretty much been thrown out the window. If you're observing it but NOT engaging with your participants, just drawing conclusions based on what you see, you'll not only be in an ethically questionable area, but you might make some totally erroneous conclusions (see the below paragraph). People are turning to methods from phenomenology and hermeneutics and reflexivity instead of pretending that they are "objective." That means, as you analyse your data, you indicate awareness of how your own presuppositions and experiences effect your analysis and also how it effects your research itself. I think it's a more honest way of doing anthropology and sociology (and psychology but it's not common practice in psych like it is an anthro and sociology) than hiding underneath a delusion of objectivity.
Secondly... you've taken down your blog so I'm going off memory, but I suggest, based on what I remember reading, that your paper would have been improved if you had been more open to us about your research. Any researcher has to be careful of jumping to conclusions based on their own limited perceptions of things (see reflexivity). For example, you concluded that people did not get barred from this website and posts do not get deleted because you did not observe it. The fact is posts do get deleted and people have been barred (some repeatedly
I know as an Msc student you are just learning this stuff, so think of this shellacking you got as a learning experience.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Huh. I volunteered to help with psychology experiment. Asked to wait outside a room. No-one came so eventually I left. Was never sure if I had been a subject or not.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Hmmm, yes, I did that one, David. Um ... you don't know if anyone's left a key round here do you? Everyone seems to have gone home ...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by ethical blend
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Well, Mush, you certainly put the pigeon amongst the cats. I hope you learned something.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by gam
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
All ready for the next essay/dissertation then mush ?
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Interesting discussion. I wasn't actually able to read the original blog article before it disappeared. But I would like to have read it.
Without delving into the legal or ethical implications of this specific situation, I do think that it should be a bit of an eye-opener for some people.
A lot of people here seem to live in their own little worlds, and think of thesession.org as their own little private bubble of friends, without thinking of who might be reading it. For instance, a few times over the years, I have seen someone write a post here, criticizing some well known player, only to have that player chime into the discussion to defend themselves, even though nobody knew the player was a member here.
It's naive to think that people aren't observing and judging what goes on here - both people who are members of the site, and those who aren't. And it's naive to think that there aren't people who are trying to manipulate the discussions - whether it be the usual trolls, people who might have their own personal agenda of some sort, or people who just have no personal ethics about these things.
And I have definitely run into a number of players of Irish trad that think that this site is horrible for the music, but still lurk here, because it helps them learn who to try to avoid...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Reverend
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
@thesilverspear
Just because the UK has completely crazy ethics commissions, that doesn't mean that is the only way to go about it, or that it is the right way.
I fail to see why informed consent is needed when the collected data is publicly available.
(I would, however, agree that it should be anonymised for publication).
(And completely agree about the point that observing "impartially" from the outside mostly doesn't work - and that that is something to be embraced - ethnography usually does, btw)
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Tirno
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
That is certainly up for debate, Tirno. I think in this particular case, he *should* have gotten the consent of at least Jeremy and let the board know what he was doing. Obviously it raised a lot of hackles that he didn't (note the length of this thread) so that tells you something about how people feel about being uninformed research participants. This is one of the reasons why informed consent exists and is a BIg Deal in research.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Pete, I am well aware that this site is read by a lot of folk who are not active members, including well known players. But I think the situation you describe is different from the one being discussed on this thread.
If Y slags X and X suddenly posts in defense of himself, Y had it coming. Oh well.
To me it's not about what you *can* do or who can read what because it's a public message board, but rather about maintaining standards of ethical research. Anyone can read this site and write or think what they like about it (and they do!) but if they are publishing that data in an academic capacity, as a research study, attaching it to a university (as John did) which gives it academic credentials, then they should uphold certain ethical standards. My two cents anyway.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Oh, and also, good ethnographic research. I reiterate that modern ethnography has moved past this antideluvian idea that the impartial, outside observer is better qualified to analyse his subjects than they are to discuss their own experiences, or that the quality of data will be improved if the subjects (note my use of this word... instead of "participants" which I used in earlier posts) was don't know what's going on.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Whew! Nice molehill indeed!
I'd trust The SS, she uses big words and it makes me fel smurt wen I reeds it. (bad piping pun fully intended)
I love history and the best history I've found uses the first hand accounts of the folks who were there. I like how The SS brought that up, about how interaction with the subjects and discovering their feelings on the topic would be of more value than the researchers' perceptions of what their feelings might be.
We've seen that many times on here over the years, people posting research projects asking for input. I've clicked through to a few university websites and completed surveys myself.
I've posted on many forums in my time and every time you do it, you know you're casting your words into the public domain, regardless of the actual law. It's implicit in my understanding of what I'm doing, like Miss L says.
Also, as Reverend said, it's public, people read it and judge it, is this any different from what mush did? He just actually told us about it. Imagine if every lurker who pops on here, reads the funnies and makes up their minds spouted off about it in a paper of some sort. Would we take them all to task? Well, maybe some of us would.
Regardless, yes, people are reading, and that's why I try to convey in my persona here the same personable, eccentric, corny-joke loving, group hug giving, total goof-ball that I am in real life. Fancy a tune, a pint and some bad puns?
Finally, if you are quoting these people directly, and me in particular, please at least have the decency to click on my bio to cite my actual name from my Facebook page. Come on man, it's not rocket science.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
He hasn't mentioned me, has he? (panics)
... that could be a genuine reaction from some members here.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
As Silverspear and Fiddlechick have mentioned the issue here is the informed consent. When anthropologists or ethnographers study human cultures they proceed after obtaining informed consent. Regardless of how that might affect the research results, scientists have to work under those conditions.
When scientists study baboons or bonobo monkeys they don't try to get informed consent, although the subjects have often realized that they were being observed.
I think you can tell from the state of the ruffled feathers on this thread that there are several people who are objecting to being treated like the bonobo monkeys.
If you were wondering about the concept of the anonymity of posters dehumanizing them to the level of non human subjects then you also now have more data that would suggest otherwise.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by Twisty
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I can't believe you just made me read (most) of that Emily! I would duck when next we meet if I was you - having said that your post that began:
"Jaysus. Spend a day away from the computer and look what happens"
was honestly the most interesting one in the entire thread - now if only you could use Plain English!
For what it is worth comments and threads do get deleted all the time on here, "themush". Indeed if you are quick enough you will catch TheSilverSpear's own new thread on sessions in Belfast which is due to vanish soon. Of course, as in the past she, and others, will keep on posting these type of threads again in the future, hoping for sufficient helpful info before the axe falls.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Were people annoyed because they had been observed, or because they had been written about ?
Would it have changed anyone's behaviour if themush had started a discussion saying he was going to do it ? That discussion may have developed like this one, but would it have changed what people posted in other discussions ?
Is this 'incident' going to change anyone's future behaviour ?
What is themush's supervisor working on...
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
My behaviour on here is unlikely to change much - sorry! Having said that I never got to read the study and am now slightly curious about whether I was quoted in it.
I think it would have been curtious to let "the community" know before his blog went live and I think it would have been a better study if he had maybe annonymously observed for a bit before conducting the study properly with informed consent and interviews with willing participants.
I suspect though that if he had posted a thread on the subject I probably wouldn't have clicked on it in the first place. It is only down to "divine intervention" that I clicked on this one at all.
# Posted on March 24th 2010 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I've been on holiday for a wee- I come back and its all gone to mush. : )
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Eòsaph
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
"week"
I don't have that sort of bladder control. But what a weird ethnoculture that would be ...not for the Saga folk maybe
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Eòsaph
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Nobody needs to ask permission to link to something on the web. Nobody needs to ask permission to write about something on the web. Nobody needs to ask permission to comment about something on the web.
themush, I'm very sorry that you felt pressured into deleting your blog post.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Jeremy
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
The master has spoken.....
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by I ♥ Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
So mush would you put it back for those of us who missed it!
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by piobagusfidil
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I'd just like to say that this seems to be the most rapidly expanding discussion I've yet seen here.
Boy, some people get riled !
I just step out of the house for a few hours work, and when I come back this mess is all over the carpet !
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Guernsey Pete
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
This could be an opportunity for one or two members here to start up their own reveal-all blogs. No names no pack drill
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Jeremy's right. No one needs permission to comment on anything posted on the web.
If you had a blog and you posted something about this weird mustard coloured website about Irish music you found and quoted people's posts, that might annoy people, or not, but you would be perfectly within your rights. That's not my point.
BUT when you're doing academic research, even as a master's student, you should be held to those ethical standards. You should be cognizant of good research practice and of what constitutes sound empirical methods.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
BTW, you were not quoted, Ali.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Boo! Rejected!
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by No Cause For Alarm
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
The consequences of not keeping rigorously to ethical standards in academic research can be severe, as a university professor in Europe found out last year - at the cost of his career.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Trevor Jennings
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
F**ck aye, even as undergrads we were held to those rigorous ethical standards. I remember having to turn myself into a pretzel and then be eaten alive by the IRB panel. I think half the semester was spent on the ethics proposal and the other half on actual research once we finally got the study approved.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I honestly can’t believe where this has gone- the SS, nature programmes, copyright/plagiarism ignorance!!
I don’t think I’ll come back to this thread, because I think it’s gone on too long as it is. I’ve admitted that I should have gotten Jeremys’ permission – if I were to do this type of thing again, I would. But Jeremy is happy with the way this has turned out, so I’m happy. I’ve had a few requests to put the blog back up, which I’m not going to do. I have copied the bits that people focussed on below. Granted the permission aspect- apart from that I don’t see too much harm. It’s strange that people kept referring to my ‘errors’- yes I didn’t know that posts could be taken off, because I didn’t consult anyone- fair enough, I know now. I don’t think that the comments I quoted were out of context? I am somewhat taken aback by the air of condescending arrogance displayed in some posts when referring to how crap my piece was- all in all I spend a few hours doing this, which was all that was required (a micro-ethnography study of about 1000 words). Isn’t it interesting that no-one really commented on what I actually concluded- how great the site is, and what a credit it is to its members in keeping the tradition alive (through 1’s and 0’s people- isn’t that amazing??). The bits I haven’t reproduced are basically some screenshots as well as banal descriptions of the underlying functionality of the site.
Adios,
Themush.
Examples of some discussions:
1. Searching for a recording of a tune
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
I've got Hannigan and Ledsam's Low Whistle book which has a tune called "Green Fields of America" and I'm having some trouble getting a feel for it...if anyone can point me to a recording I'd be grateful.Fiona A
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
Isn't that the air? Fair haired boy.
Your book may have a discography.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by Random_notes
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
I think Fiona means this reel:
http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display/695
...and not this song:
http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiGRNFLDA3;ttGRNFLDA3.html
The reel is the middle tune on this set:
http://comhaltas.ie/music/detail/comhaltaslive_213_1_ciaran_macfeidmhlimidh_on_uilleann_pipes/
Enjoy! I like playing this one myself.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
Fair play SWFL. Seems I remebered that particular book having a few airs.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by Random_notes
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
Sure, and they should too, they sound lovely on the low whistle.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: I've got the dots, but what I really want is a recording
Fiona, let us know if you are able to suss this one out.
I have wondered about that transcription myself. I grabbed my copy of the book & it says the tune is from the playing of Liam O'Flynn. I am not sure where he may have recorded this tune.
But Liam is grand. I really enjoy "The Full Set" broadcast of him w/ Paddy Glackin;
http://www.rte.ie/tv/thefullset/ep1.html
Fiona A is looking for a recording of a tune that she is having difficulty learning from a book. Random Notes suggests that the tune has another name by which it may be more popularly known. SWFL Fiddler suggests another tune that it may be, provides the link to it within the session, and also a link to a recording of the tune. The discussion continues briefly with another link to a recording being provided.
This is a typical request for information from other members which is promptly provided by a few different contributions. It highlights the camaraderie amongst members.
2. Musicians travelling to Ireland to learn music looking for contacts:
Exchange students from Sweden?
Me and my friends (we are 6 people) who deal with traditional swedish folk music on a swedish school are interested in making a visit to ireland for a week or two to learn some songs/dances and stuff.We will of course in exchange teach some swedish tunes/dances.It doesn't have to be a school, we just need some contacts who can teach us music and maybe place to live and stuff, but we would prefer it to be a school or something like the ballyfermot college in dublin, but similar schools in Dublin or other towns.
Do you have any contacts to share with me?
# Posted on October 31st 2009 by Patriarch K
Re: Exchange students from Sweden?
Cavan has the Nyah Trad Festival 10th 18th March ,we can keep you and share workshops
cavanmusiclive@gmail will get me .
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by Martin Donohoe
Patriarch K posts a request for contacts in Ireland for six travelling musicians wanting to learn ITM and share some of their own music. The first response offers information about a festival and an offer of accommodation.
3. Advice on a type of tune: full discussion here:'That Minor Feel'
This discussion revolves around a request for particular types of tunes- minor key reels. It begins with some help being given, before it is pointed out that the tunes are not actually in a minor key, but rather in the Dorian mode (a more technical explanation). The causes the discussion to take on more of an academic tone for a while while this technical point is being discussed, before there is some light-hearted joking relating to how academic the discussion has become, before the topic returns again to the original request with more assistance provided through external links to external examples. This example highlights both an element of self-regulation within the group, and an ability to not take itself too seriously, which is evident also in other threads. The conversation has strayed from the original topic, other relevent points are explored in a little detail, but it is noted that the request for help should be addressed and so the focus returns to the request. When the conversation gets a little technical there are also some light-hearted remarks pointing out how serious the tone has become.
The types and styles of writing and language vary enormously- seasoned players dispense advice to newcomers, there is academic-type discussion about minute details as well as fun discussions and 'in-jokes':
4. In-jokes
Re: the big hornpipes...
Oh for crying out loud. How many times do we have to say this?
It’s not the size of the hornpipe, it’s how you swing it.
# Posted on October 28th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: the big hornpipes...
If your hornpipe is that big it's hard to keep it in hand and safely in one thread.
5. Evidence of familiarity between members and their shared opinions:
Extract from Tony MacMahon memoir-in-progress
http://journalofmusic.com/article/894
# Posted on November 6th 2009 by journalofmusic
Re: Extract from Tony MacMahon memoir-in-progress
Whatever we may think of his opinions on Irish music, he sure can write well...
# Posted on November 6th 2009 by amhrán
Re: Extract from Tony MacMahon memoir-in-progress
Indeed, a great writer. Thanks jom. That was a very insightful read.
# Posted on November 6th 2009 by 52Paddy
Re: Extract from Tony MacMahon memoir-in-progress
Yeah, quite a writer...
In this example it is insinuated that the opinions of Tony McMahon are not very much cared for by those posting comments- perhaps the contributors know eachother in real life or have shared similiar opinions in the past on discussion threads.
The 'mood' of the discussions is generally helpful- members share a common interest and like to talk about their shared love of ITM. Usually they are advising one another and are very open to new/inexperienced members (as is a trait of a real life 'session'), and the mood is generally light-hearted. I didn't find much evidence of a clique (which can develop amongst members in online discussions), just a few experienced members who would refer a newbie to previous conversations on a particular topic rather than repeat their thoughts/posts. The length of threads vary also from a few replies to a hundred or so. Threads are listed on the site chronologically, but with a search function. As a result activity in threads tends to lessen with time. Activity on a thread would usually go on for no more than a week.
Re: songs in sessions
llig leahcim sounds like you are a bloody idgit! how can you say that traditional songs are bloody aweful???? in the same breath you say that you play irish trad because it is the best.....sounds like you really dont know what the hell you are talking about and i bet your music sounds like it too!
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by irishmuso
Re: songs in sessions
You could be right. I wouldn't be the judge of that.
# Posted on November 2nd 2009 by llig leahcim
Irishmuso has taken offence to a comment posted by llig leahchim, and a little flaming has occured. llig responds but doesn't take the issue further.
Users' activity is generally bound by the functionality of the site, permitting them to upload/download files, or post to discussions. A mention of rules of behaviour is found in the FAQ section, stipulating that members 'Be civil. It's as simple as that', and 'foul language or aggressive behaviour will not be tolerated'.
Further, each member is only allowed one membership (a valid email address has to be supplied to receive a password)- anyone caught 'faking' a new membership will be expelled.
The community appears to successfully self-regulate as there are few incidents of flaming. The majority of members seem to be adults, and if any flaming occurs it is highlighted, acknowledged and the discussion continues. Having said this, I didn't find any evidence of whether members have been expelled for unsuitable behaviour or if any topics/posts have been deleted.
Generalisations/Conclusions
It is interesting to note an aspect relating to the general behaviour of members. As noted, discussion topics appear chronologically, with the most recent ten in view. This means that casual browsing will bring you to the most recent, so to go to a particular discussion you have to search for it. As a result, discussions tend to fade out when they don't appear within the most recent window (exceptions granted). These topics can deal with almost anything but still usually generate some discussion. I think two conclusions can be drawn from this phenomenon. Firstly, there is a certain kinship that regular users feel with the site and their fellow members, and they all simply enjoy passing time chatting with eachother. Secondly, it is also apparent that there is a genuine affection that members feel for ITM- the sheer volume of tunes in the database and topics in the discussion board is testament to this.
The existence of an online culture around ITM tends to replicate the real world culture- practising tunes, talking to others about music and keeping the tradition alive by helping others learn. A natural community of practise is therefore formed. All of this activity is mediated through flows of digital material. It has been said that locality is important in traditional music. It is 'the music of place.' An online community like The Session shows that a virtual place can be provided which allows the passing on of this tradition.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Instead of being vexed at people's reactions, take it on board as kind of "meta-research" of your research. Your little study got itself a 150+ post thread in a day! It's a fantastic wee example of the pitfalls and risks of research involving live human participants. Something you thought was a quick, two or three hour assignment for a class actually had ethical implications which spurred an emphatic, to say the least, reaction from your research participants. Even if you didn't think it was a big deal because it was just a 1000 word ethnography, it still raises the same issues since you're still dealing with human subjects.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I say give the person a chance. We are being offered a potentially more favorable deal than what the chimps at Gombe got. Themush, all the best to you.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Atahualpa Quigley
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Dear themush
I really do hope you don't take it so hard. It's an interesting paper and an interesting idea. Since you've been reading posts here for a while now you've seen issues get discussed and 'flamed' even and as you've observed fade away while people start discussing something else.
I think if you had announced in the discussion area what you were about you might have got a bit of reaction or possibly not. In 2 weeks I'm pretty sure no one would have remembered it and when they did find your paper they probably would have been interested.
In my opinion you should have asked, I know that is the procedure in anthropology and wanted you to know that for your sake as well as possible future subjects of study. Things have changed with the internet, and I may be wrong in terms of an internet study. Time will tell.
In the mean time, I take your apology to heart and hope you'll stick around and enjoy talking about tunes, banjo strings and whatever else is interesting to you.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Twisty
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Thanks for the post, mush. This looks like a lab exercise, and I
guess that I have been out of that arena so long that I read it as an interesting aside and not much else.
This board is so much more coherent than others that I frequent, so it is a natural for this sort of exercise.
Okay, everyone. Back to the interminable "name that tune" inquiries. SO much more interesting.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Michele Sims
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
WTG, SWFL, you even got quoted with some typical adult innuendo!
Even though this was an extremely limited view of a slice of time on this board, I thought the conclusions where interesting. Yes, I agree that it might have been better if themush had added a layer of anonymity to the report, and sought explicit permission, to err on the side of caution.
But even still, it had some somewhat uncanny observations about how things work around here, highlighting the camaraderie, the generally helpful mood, and the way things get lightened up with humor when it gets too serious... And he even touched on some of the negative aspects of the interaction here, where people tend to get a bit testy about things that they care so much about, and unfortunately, tend to respond with a direct personal attack on another member who they probably have never met, and know nothing about.
I would congratualte the O.P. for some accurate observations! So enough with the academics... Now you can feel free to ask specific banjo questions
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Reverend
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Heh heh, I think the point I made above:
"And consider the ethnographer as wildlife photographer. Are you going to get good images of the great apes' mating rituals if you keep announcing your presence? More likely to end up part of the action."
is well borne out by the subsequent discussion. Had the researcher revealed his presence and intention, he would have irrevocably and unmeasurably altered that which he had set out to study. We would have spent more of our time arguing about whether such a study is ethical, desirable, possible, etc, than going about our lives doing the thing that made us worth studying.
It strikes me too that there is a level of hypocrisy involved - we have no trouble picking over the bones of professional musicians in our field, or slanging off at Comhaltas, or bodhran players or whatever, yet as soon as a researcher turns the microscope on us, even in a gentle and sympathetic way, we get all offended, and kick up spurious reasons why such intrusion (which we hadn't noticed happening) is an absolute abomination.
I think we are a community worthy of study. I was surprised to find out how many we are (unfortunately I've forgotten the figure, but it was large compared to many other communities of ethnographic interest). So I think it's great that ethnologists recognise the existence of on-line communities, and seek to understand them and set them in meaningful context.
Now, of course we just taking the researchers word for it that this ends the study and that he's been successfully run out of town. Supposing the objective set by his institution was actually to offend an on-line community and document the outcome? Heh heh, that seemed to work ....
Maybe we should all just sit back and enjoy the music?
Terry
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Terry McGee
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
... and the ouroboros continues to tighten.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Oh for goodness sake grow up. John is perfectly within his rights to do whatever kind of study he wants unless his ethics committee has a problem with it. Your opinion on his study is neither here nor there. It's your own ego as a community insider that you think is the only thing that matters. Pitiful if you ask me. If you had to do a study of, say, Indian culture, you wouldn't have to ask every single Indian in the whole world if it was alright by them, would you? Who draws the line? That's what ethics committees are for. This is NOT and intrusion into a cosy chat in a pub - it's an online PUBLIC forum. Contributors should be able to vouch for their own opinions and ultimately cede control of their comments on this kind of website. Pull your feckin heads out of your collective Rse before you turn yourselves inside out. And John, go ahead and get your MSc - good luck to you.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Ach, it's almost been like the "good old days" around here lately.
Perhaps, Themush should have studied some of the threads a few years back and he'd have seen us all at our best and worst?
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Johnny Jay
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Lol @ John.
I want to say that the same goes for photos. If you post your pic somewhere online then you do that on the understanding that someone somewhere might cut & paste it elsewhere. If you take a holiday snap in India of a street scene bustling with people and then subsequently use it in a study, would you chase up every random person in the pic and ask their permission? No. It boils down to this: take responsibility for your own actions and quit pointing your finger at others and whinging. The world needs academic studies, ESPECIALLY in the field of online interaction. Flaming, trolling etc. are relatively new phenomena in the grand scheme of things, and they're not yet fully understood. Let them get on with it.
There, I've said it
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I agree Dow, I have no problem with him doing the survey. I did get a little narked when I didn't know who he was, but he quickly rectified that so it was OK. And the fact that his little survey was a pile of rubbish was of no consequence to his right to do it, including quoting me directly.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Whether his study was any good or not, and whether or not it reflects the reality and nitty-gritty of the interaction and context here is quite another matter. But his right to carry out the study stands, as you say llig.
My MSc will be about people's reactions to the comments about comments from somebody who has studied some people who made comments
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I now have this image of an ouroborus interlocked with something similar with its head where Dow suggested.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
llig- I'd be interested to know why you thought my 'little' survey was a pile of rubbish?
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
The data you collected was not sufficient enough and you drew conclusions from assumptions. Like the wildlife photographer and the lemmings.
And I think The Silver Spear's comment was very good when she said about how ethnography has moved past the idea that the impartial, outside observer is better qualified to analyse his subjects than they are to discuss their own experiences. Any assumtion of objective impartiallity is, of course, an illusion that is damaging to the quality of your data.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
So how would you disagree with my conclusions? Others seem to think that they were accurate enough. The two (basic) conclusions that I drew refer to kinship amongst members, and a genuine affection for their subject matter. So these are what you have a problem with?
My approach was set out from the start- that was the method I chose, and I stuck to it. As mentioned before, I did say that I would change my methodology if doing it again, which may give a more in-depth analysis, and broader conclusions. From the approach I took, and the short amount of time I spent in the site, I would stand by my work.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
"a genuine affection for their subject "
You make it sound like flower arranging. It's not an "affection", it's not even an obsession, it's part of who we are. It's culture. It's high art.
"kinship amongst members"
Not at all. Many members here can't stand each other. Bristle with the mere mention of their monickers. Yet we persist because the "subject" (your word) is bigger than all of us. You just don't get passion like this with mere "affection".
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Llig, a bit pedantic I think. Still think my conclusions were correct- you all love irish music, and this is a shared affinity -kinship- doesn't imply that you all love eachother, can mean that you all love the same thing
And I share that passion too.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by themush
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
But we don't all love the same thing, that's where the arguments start. Some people's music that they love is so far apart (I'd say inferior - and I only mention that because I make no pretence at impartiality) from what other love, that even having a conversation about it is utterly hopeless.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
"kinship amongst members" This discussion is not the best example, but it does show a tendency to close ranks and set differences aside when faced with an 'intruder'. Like how arguments stop in a bar when an outsider enters. Early on higher up people were wondering if lemush had been behaving like a troll, which might have had that effect.
I wonder if this is all doomed as a meta-discussion.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I disagree. You make it sound tribal. It's not. It doesn't have that level of shared ownership and transferable allegance to higher tiers in the way, for example, football fans have. Like when Arsenal fans hate Man U fans, but when it's England agaist Germany, they're best buddies.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
It looked tribal when jig was being run out of town, even though there was some 'moderates'. And people sometimes say nice things to 'enemies' when they mention real world troubles.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
We are a village of fishermen.
We do not all like each other, but we are occasionally obliged to work the same nets, and we pick what we like from what we haul in.
And are occasionally bitten.
Best of luck, mush.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Piece
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
It's a difficult one: members of the community each have their subjective view of what it all means, and an outsider/new member/other interested party can have their own take on it from observations, but how do you distill that into general statements that people can agree on, without stating the obvious?
The really interesting thing is that each individual has their own "truth", which can conflict with other people's truths. Somehow all these truths add up to something that continues to work overall - something you can experience but can't quite put your finger on. A website like this is lots of individuals with all their baggage and chips on shoulders and interests and misconceptions and prejudices and character traits. But it's also a community as a whole which has developed its own distinct character over time, making it different from other communities.
It's an emergent system with agents that interact according to changing emotions, motives, external influences and interpersonal histories. Delve into that aspect of it and you'd start to scratch the surface. If you could be Rsed
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Can we all come to your don rag, mush? Please? We'll just sit in the back and not make a scene.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Michele Sims
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
themush... I think the problem here is in the whole mini-ethnography idea from your instructor. You can' t really do an ethnography in a couple of hours and expect to gain an understanding of the culture of anything. At the very least, a few months, but most ethnographers study the same group for a min. of one year. I don't blame you as a student following "directions", but rather the mentor who gave the assignment without fully explaining the dimensions.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Fiddlechick7
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Of course themush's study is rubbish--the little time he was allocated to spend on it wasn't near enough to begin to comprehend the nature of this site and it's participants' interactions. Hell, I've been here for 9 years and I don't have a clue.....
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Ah, a revealing cross post. Well said Fiddlechick.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
That is one finely crafted hornpipe innuendo, if I do say so myself.
"Finely crafted hornpipe" - (all together now) "That's what she said!"
themush, thanks for posting. Interesting stuff. After reading The SS and Dow's insightful remarks, your next paper should be a real monster!
...and I don't know, maybe it's a bit like football? He roots for the pure drop, she roots for Celto-jazz, but when it's time to play the Bluegrassers, we're all on the same team? Ha ha.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
If it was 'just' an assignment on a course what is the fuss about. Won't it have been intended to learn from rather to get 100% on ? Maybe it should have had another name.
Is it just me who is wondering if the second two pargraphs of Dow's post are demonstrating what he says in his first. Too well stated to merit the description 'obvious' but it does sound like what happens in most communties. Or maybe a long running session.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I think it's less like doing a study of Indian culture, where of course you don't need the consent of every single Indian, and more like doing an ethnography of the culture of a mental hospital, where you do need consent.
If don't think your two main conclusions are wrong per se. I just think they are pretty obvious. Of course most posters here feel some affinity with Irish music (however they want to define that). It's an Irish music website. That said, this website has a distinct "culture." As Dow wrote above, it's "a community... which has developed its own distinct character over time, making it different from other communities." Someone should write a paper distilling the "distinct character" of thesession.org and offer some analysis on why it differs from other message boards.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
"themush... I think the problem here is in the whole mini-ethnography idea from your instructor. You can' t really do an ethnography in a couple of hours and expect to gain an understanding of the culture of anything. At the very least, a few months, but most ethnographers study the same group for a min. of one year. I don't blame you as a student following "directions", but rather the mentor who gave the assignment without fully explaining the dimensions."
Yup. That too. Well said, Fiddlechick.
I don't imagine the lecturer giving this assignment imagined the "lab rats" would revolt once they found out they had been lab rats. The assumption that it's the internet, you can do what you like and people won't care because it's the internet, is a fallacy. Even though it is their digital, disembodied, cyber-presences being studied, it's apparent that people do care and react as if someone were studying their embodied presences.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
There you go, that's what it needs. I bet that would get an 'A'!
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I mean what you all three of you smart folks be saying and whatnots about the emerging of the unique ethnographologies, the whoosisis and whatchamacallems.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
How does what themush was doing differ from, say, doing a study of the community represented by the letters page of the Times newspaper over the period 1880-1890 (I'm assuming it had one) ? Thats a question, I'm not suggesting its the same. [And TSS's last paragraph gives the main difference but I have only ready it after renewing my login]
He could have interacted with thesession.org, but he didn't really. He doesn't seem to have had much direct personal experience of what the community mainly talks about. But those wouldn't stop someone doing the Times study. And I suppose being criticised for not having fully researched the community that the correspondents represented.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
He called it an ethnography, which to me implies and necessitates some degree of interaction. A study of letters in the Times from 1880 to 1890 isn't an ethnography.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
And aye, if I was doing a study of those letters, I would research the community that those letters represent. Otherwise you have no context for understanding the letters.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by DrSilverSpear
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Fine, thanks SS
I have never considered people here as "disembodied, cyber-presences" though.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Trying to understand this forum is futile without taking into account all the behind-the-scenes emails and networking and in-person sessions, etc., and the backhistories among people here.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I cannot believe how aloof is the master.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Ben, the thing is, we've all been lab rats since the site was made public. One of Jeremy's interests is social interaction on the web. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that he's submitted papers or delivered talks at conferences about this forum.
The smoked cheese colored background was a hint.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
One of this lab rat's posts that got eaten yesterday was wondering if the site would one day vanish with a 'so long and thanks for all the fish'. Looking at the Discussions page earlier today with Batlady's (now deleted) "Session as a Time machine" discussion showing -1 replies I wondered if it was happening.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Fair play Miss L. & I have always wished Jeremy would take off the lab coat, now & again, to play with we common folk. Are we the trophy?
http://adactio.com/portfolio/thesession.php
~ I'm joking around. ;)
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Ben Steen
. . .
that would be, "we common rats (animals)"
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Ben Steen
My name is R_h & I post
"I don’t think I’ll come back to this thread, because I think it’s gone on too long as it is."
Posted on March 25th 2010 by themush
You are new around here, aren't you? Welcome to what we affectionately refer to as an interface to a virtual land with its' limited palette of subdued colours, subtle browns and yellows ~ mustard for short.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
David-it is interesting that you saw the Time Machine thread. I got an error when I sent it off into the ether and never saw the post. But what was really disconcerting was that all I could see in the discussion section was a thread congratulating Jeremy on the spiffy new website. Very weird. I wondered if someone was doing some mind-control experiment on us all, spiriting our screens back to 2001 and seeing how we build community.
See, mush, now we've all gone paranoid. "my god!! Is this REAL?" It was hard enough figuring out who was real and who was just winding up the board. Now we wonder if we have been picked up by our virtual tail and dropped into the maze.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Michele Sims
Archives & Dustbins
Batlady I missed your thread. I think I may have enjoyed it.
Considering we do not need to ask permission to link to anything on the internet I doubt there will be an objection to this handy link;
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.thesession.org
~ might want to place a bookmark just in case.
# Posted on March 25th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
In the time I have been here I have noticed there has been some cross referencing between thesession ~ chiff&fipple ~ abcusers . . . now I see the virtual world is connecting more & more. John's blog about The Session was brought up on Sarah's blog. Which leads me back to the roots of this thread;
The University of Edinburgh
MSC in E-learning
http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/e-learning/contact.htm
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Additional reading
all the ethnographies
In alphabetical order:
http://digitalculture-ed.net/?page_id=556
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
here is the bit on ethical issues;
http://digitalculture-ed.net/?page_id=517
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I am LOLing at how precious Miss Lonelyhearts and llig leahcim are being about this whole business.
"You make it sound like flower arranging. It's not an "affection", it's not even an obsession, it's part of who we are. It's culture. It's high art." - llig
"Trying to understand this forum is futile without taking into account all the behind-the-scenes emails and networking and in-person sessions, etc., and the backhistories among people here." - Miss L
There are levels of complexity. You can still do a physics experiment -- and write it up and do it well, and draw good conclusions from it -- even if you're not yet at the absolute cutting edge of contemporary physics.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Joe CSS
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Lol... It should have been titled - 'The Session dot Org': A Micro- ophiology
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Phantom Button
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Joe, you're repeatedly revealing a knack for misinterpreting fairly obvious posts and missing the point (maybe because you've decided you don't like the people making the point). In this case the point is that themush ***didn't*** do his study well or draw good conclusions from it.
I tend to think he was hamstrung by the professor's poor job of setting up the assignment in the first place. And I'm glad that themuse has this thread to reflect on--good and bad--because without it, I doubt he would've learned much of anything from this assignment.
In my comment that you quote, I wasn't at all suggesting that themuse should have researched emails and yellow boarders who meet in real life. All I was saying is that these discussion threads are just the surface of all the interaction here. Even those of us who've been here from the beginning and *do* participate in a lot of behind-the-scenes emails and meatspace meetings can't begin to comprehend the social dynamics of this forum. It's likely impossible.
So Joe, please think about having a thought before your next snarky post. You're glibly assigning ulterior motives to llig and I (as in the La Nua thread) and you're utterly off the mark. And it makes you look petty.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Honestly, Miss Lonelyhearts, you're so pedantic.
By the way that should be "llig and me". You hyper-corrected.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
You don't draw conclusions from physics experiments. The physics world has long since learned is lesson on that one. The sun moves across the sky, ergo the sun moves round the earth. Physicists instead present hypotheses based on ALL available evidence.
When you do a high school physics experiment, and "write it up and do it well", you are only doing well in the eyes of your teacher who set you the experiment. You are only doing well within the parameters set and therefore, your "conclusions" will always be compromised by those parameters. What temperature does water boil?
Stick a bunson under a beaker of water and suspend a thermometer in the water. "conclusion" = 100 degees centigrade. But next year, the kid gets given a barometer to go with his more accurate thermometer ... and on it goes.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
... and Will's point about Joe repeatedly revealing a knack for misinterpreting fairly obvious posts and missing the point is not pedantry. re this thread:
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/24144
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
To do well with the physics experiment you have, amongst other things, to distinguish between results and conclusions. themush was not doing an experiment he was observing. I'm not sure if the experts saying that an ethnographer should interact are saying an ethnographer should experiment. That would make results and conclusions easier to separate.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
He uses the phrase "I didn't find any evidence of.." a few times. And each time it is used, it is with reference to things that there is plenty of evidence for.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
in your opinion.
"evidence" can quite subjective, and arrayed in a hierarchy of significance.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Llig's post leads nicely to a mate of mines favourite example of a hypothesis. That "all crows are black". It can be tested by examining more crows but you can't be sure until you have seen all crows.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I wonder if a survey of the topics that have received the most posts would reveal that they are also the most incidental to the music?
Terry
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Terry McGee
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Logically, that's correct. However, practical science puts a cap on the pure logic of it. The daft fundamentalists say that just because a fossil of a human has never been found in a layer of strata underneath the strata where fossils of dinosaurs are found, doesn't mean that one will never be found.
Useful science has a degree of pragmatism about it. You describe a carrion crow as being a black bird, even though they are actually very dark blue. True black being something that reflects no light at all. And hooded crows, which are really a race of carrion crow, not a different species, are mostly grey:
http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/hooded%20crow_300_tcm9-139930.jpg
And I saw an albino carrion crow once. That was a sight.
And yet I'd still describe a carrion crow as being a black bird.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Actually, and this is a good axample of an out of date hypothesis. My RSPB guide book, which is maybe 40 years old, lists the hooded crow as a race of carrion crow. But looking now at the rspb websie:
"The hooded crow is closely related to the carrion crow, which until recently was regarded as the same species. In areas where the two species overlap there may be some interbreeding with hybrids."
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/h/hoodedcrow/index.aspx
So there you go.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
they must share enough of the same DNA to be able to interbreed - "annealment" - probably above 99%, so ther you go
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Rudall the time
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I knew that would happen. So does my mate. If he wants to get into that stuff he starts with "all black-blacked gulls are black on top"
It was to help explain what as a hypothesis was. OK ? Nothing more. Themush's conclusion could have been that his evidence led him to propose the hypothesis that...
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Re crows, I came across the interesting old Irish word, 'baidbe' or 'badb', recently. Seems to have differing meanings in varying contexts. But sometimes interpreted literally as a 'scald crow'. A scald crow in Ireland is the hooded crow or Royston crow.
While we're on the subject of student assigments etc., this Dutch chap spent a year investigating this one word!
http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/student-theses/2007-0620-200703/Kopie%20van%20War-goddesses,%20scald%20crows%20and%20furies.%20The%20use%20of%20the%20word%20badb%20in%20early%20Irish%20literature..doc
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by the wounded hussar
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Lesser black backs.
The daft fundamentalists, in saying "its only a hypothesis" could do well the look at the OED definitions:
"a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation."
"a proposition made as a basis for reasoning."
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Ah, but black backed gulls ... are we talking greater or lesser?
Interbreeding used to be a measure in defining the term "species" but with dna testing, it's got more complicated. It used to be that if the offspring of two animals was fertile itself, then a species was defined. But if the offspring was a mule, i.e. infertile, then interbreeding has taken place.
However, the lesser blacked backed gull has an interesting relationship to the herring gull. They are what's termed a "ring species". In western Europe, the two birds do not interbreed. But as you travel west, or east, the lesser blacked backed gull's back gets progressively lighter and the herring gull's back gets progressively darker, and they do begin to interbreed, but produce mules. Go further east and west and they begin to produce fertile offspring. And when you get to the other side of the globe, they are the same species.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Larry Adler speaks to me every night from beyond the grave in Klingon.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Krick Stahlschwanz
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Thats what I meant, and why I clarified "Lesser" (after an onlne check because I couldn't remember which) in the next post.
The well-decribed "Larus gull ring cline" is used as a warning to palaeontologists.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I wonder if there is a tune or type of tune that does that.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Strathspeys are maybe on the way.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Good morning, Sessioneers. Here we all still are, I see.
The mice will see you now.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Piece
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
In the west of Ireland, jigs and slides are certainly different species. But by the time you get to Dublin they interbreed in the same sets. Then by the time you get to England, they are indistinguishable.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Llig, you assume I was calling Miss Lonelyhearts pedantic because of what she'd just said, but actually I was just insulting her generally for the sake of it because I know she can take it like a man.
And all the crows I saw in Egypt were hooded ones.
The crows here in Australia have white eyes and make a sound like they're being strangled to death.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Don't get you corvids mixed up with your carrions.
And yes, she can take. Lying down I hear.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
depends how you look at Australian crows; someone famously said they sound like they're saying 'faaark" as in "i'm outa here". They don't go though.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Skull Duggeraigh Dubh
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Can't you hear when you're standing up?
Do you think themush has enough data to be getting on with or do I have to flame Miss Lonelyhearts or start talking about "Zeens"?
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
we could slag rolls on the concertina if you'd like
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I'm not sure we ever got to the bottom of that one, llig. I think I remember agreeing with you wholeheartedly. But couldn't you argue that the semantic domain of the word "roll" changed with the advent of free-reed instruments in Irish music? Taken to its extreme, you could say that the word "roll" should never be used in the music because that word means something entirely different - a bap. Well no, that's silly, but I suppose my point is: how long do people have to misuse a word before it ceases to be "incorrect". If we were the only two people in the world who disagreed with its current usage, would it still be incorrect?
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
>In the west of Ireland, jigs and slides are certainly different >species. But by the time you get to Dublin they interbreed in >the same sets. Then by the time you get to England, they are >indistinguishable.
haha I like the comparison between jigs& slides on the one hand, to bb/h gulls on the other. Just about redeemed this thoroughly depressing thread.
I didn't want to comment, but now that I've started typing in response to Llig's appealing slides post, well what the heck:
My main thought is "get a life guys". Yes perhaps it would have been nice to have been asked (& no it wouldn't have biased observation as there was no reason not to just use older discussions instead of current discussions).
But really this doesn't stand alongside a western scientist abusing an aboriginal population by secretly observing them. Everything posted here is willingly placed into the public domain unless that post itself quotes from a private message or similar. Session.orgers are not some deprived ethnic group being exploited here, just folks with a shared interest.
Nor is there to my mind any comparison to taping or filming conversations in the pub or street where people may have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
I'd like to feel dirty, I find it one of life's greates tpleasures, I wish I did feel a little dirty. But no matter how hard I try to make myself feel used by the blog/study in question I just can't .
- chris
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ramblingpitchfork
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
ramblingpitchfork, I hope you messaged llig to ask his permission to quote him in your post.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
More concertina rolls and Miss L flaming! Woo hoo!
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I know. We could all try really hard to think of a Irish music-related topic that's never been talked about in the discussions before. Hmmmmm.....
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
>ramblingpitchfork, I hope you messaged llig to ask his >permission to quote him in your post
)
Oh fek it, he's in edinburgh, what's he going to do to me ?
(Oh wait, I'm goingt rhough there tonight
I really hope Llig got permission from the gulls, not to mention the West-Ireland, Dublin and English musicians who's playing of slides he observed. I won't tell those guys if llig lets me off: deal?
- chris
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ramblingpitchfork
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
What I want to know is: what was llig's sample of musicians in his observations of slide players in the different areas? Can he REALLY make those statements without supporting evidence?
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
And how should I cite him in my forthcoming publication about jigs/slides? "Llig 2010 (pers. comm.)"?
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. llig's just another fundamentalist.
Dow, it's good to have you back. No, "good" is the wrong word. "Salubrious" perhaps....
(BTW, I take *everything* lying down. But you shouldn't insinuate such things about a young lass such as myself, you sickos).
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Dow again:
"I'm not sure we ever got to the bottom of that one, llig. I think I remember agreeing with you wholeheartedly. But couldn't you argue that the semantic domain of the word "roll" changed with the advent of free-reed instruments in Irish music? Taken to its extreme, you could say that the word "roll" should never be used in the music because that word means something entirely different - a bap. Well no, that's silly, but I suppose my point is: how long do people have to misuse a word before it ceases to be "incorrect". If we were the only two people in the world who disagreed with its current usage, would it still be incorrect?"
I think this is a very good point.
When Instruments such as free reeds and fretted strings were introduced, in fact enthusiastically adopted as they became available, methods mirroring the old flute/pipes ornaments were developed. The same thing had effectively happened on the fiddle. The grace notes in a roll are not needed to articulate three separate notes on fiddle as they are on pipes. They are used on the fiddle to keep in the style as much as possible. Of course fiddle can copy the pipes or flute better than fixed reeds or plucked strings. But the motivation is the same: to play a tune in a style consistent with the older tradition using the newer tools of box and pick.
The ornamamentation/articulation/diddly bit whatever you want to call it is used out of taste rather than necessity. And the meaning of roll etc has expanded.
The view that only flute/whistle/pipes/fiddle can truely play this music appropraitely is a valid one, and the arguement is worth being aware of. But the fact that thousands of practitioners of the music have over many decades chosen to use other instrumentation as a vehicle for playing the music to my mind makes the case for the broader point of view.
- chris (I seem to have lost the thread somewhat, sorry. I suddenly remembered something I'd left switched ona nd had to run off in the middle)
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ramblingpitchfork
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
>And how should I cite him in my forthcoming publication >about jigs/slides? "Llig 2010 (pers. comm.)"?
"Llig (inpub. observation 2010)?
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ramblingpitchfork
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Llig, L. (2010). Lost the plot: a chronic analysis of a bunch of muppets. In Dow, M. & Lonelyhearts W. (Eds.) (2010) A psycho approach to micro-ethnographical studies. Somewhereonline: Thesession.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Former alias
It is morning here & I picked up reading where I left off. Almost immediately began reading a former screen name which I used a few years back. I would like to set the record straight: the current screen name of the original poster is
themush.
Humbly,
Ben
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
LOL, Dow, I think Jeremy is the editor. You and I are merely proofreaders.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Will Harmon
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Slicing and dicing is not editing. Technically, Jeremy is the publisher.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
He is the Wonderful Wizard of Us
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Technically it should be referenced as an internet source, not a published book. Anyway, let's stop being pedantic and get back to the music. Ummmm.... [he said, trying to think of something that hasn't been said before]...
My biggest worry at the moment is that my dad might read this and worry that I'm really bored with my life at the moment.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
He must be really bored if he is reading this.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Hopefully he'll get so bored he decides to take a trip down to the bank in the car and put some money into my UK account.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
If he read this he'll be of the opinion that it's about time you went out and earned your own bloody money
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
let me guess, Llig is Dow's uncle. . . godfather . . . publisher. . . evil twin?
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
There is no *try* only Dow.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Being a traditionalist, I prefer the old favorites, so my request for more concertina rolls and Miss L flaming was actually quite sincere.
Now if Zina would just show up I could sit back and lurk on all of you, just like old times. Ah nostalgia.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Oh don't be cruel, llig, my birthday's coming up. I'm earning a wage but I'm only doing him a favour - I can invest his pension much more wisely than he can.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Dr. Dow
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
So what was the Time Machine thread about & why was it edited?
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Now I know why your Dad might want to be reading.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Happy birthday Dow. Remember your last year's birthday? I posted a video of you here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzkRnEHUL2I
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Better than your dad anyway
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrt6Xkkq-co
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
SWFL, you got your wish. ZinaLee made a funny comment on the last YouTube.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Time Machine thread Random? The board had one of its funny turns. The latest Comments tab showed the first comments in 2001 when the board started, but not many of those, then blank posts (IIRC just "# posted on by ") and the same in all the discussions I checked ! Batlady's thread had no posts and was showing -1 replies, which guess is one less than the number of posts.
All you missed was of a lot of nothing. The resource looked empty !
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by David50
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Random, do you think the motion Zina commented on helps the rolls?
...and Happy Birthday Dow! Nice technique on the video too. I've often thought of wearing a diaper to sessions.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I always love Zina's comments. Sadly though, those "rolls" are beyond help. Happy birthday, Mark. Thank your father. ;)
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Why does the Llig/Dow debate remind me of this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nCKYEM8qRc
And for those who don't get the 'M. Khan' reference - http://everything2.com/title/M.+Khan+Is+Bent.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by MacCruiskeen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Dow - your Dad tells me that you have invested enough of his income over the years without attacking his pension too.
llig - his father plays better than that.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by hotspur
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Thank you, Floss, for the links. That is exactly how I imagine Llig and Dow.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by Michele Sims
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Ha, I never noticed that posting from Zina on that youtube vid. Made me laugh that. And I tell you what, it takes a lot for Zina to be disingenuous.
# Posted on March 26th 2010 by ...
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I'm sure I'm being stupid, but can someone provide more specific directions to the youtube video under discussion with posts from zina & rolls? I can't seem to find the relevant video
- chris
# Posted on March 27th 2010 by ramblingpitchfork
Just now getting round to Re:Micro-ethnography
ramblingpitchfork, it appears the author of the YouTube video {Concertina Medley} has blocked a couple of text comments. There was a bit of innuendo regarding the positioning of the camera/instrument/etc. . . it's disappeared into the ether of internet moderation ~ wow, am I back on topic?
BTW, John a.k.a. themush. I don't think the comments, of this thread, should have resulted in your feeling pressure to remove your blog posts. IMHO it amounts to self censorship. I offered my personal critique & while appreciating any & all responses, from yourself, I think keeping the posts online would be more helpful than removing everything.
Now, back to the question about the YouTube . . . back to when SWFL Fiddler asked, "Random, do you think the motion Zina commented on helps the rolls?" That question, as innocent as it is, goes back to a slew of discussions. For anyone not familiar with the history, it goes back to a demonstration of rolls being played, or not being played, on concertina. That demonstration once was posted on SoundLantern ~ which is no more. If I remember correctly this was shortly followed by a YouTube post of concertina rolls ~ which I think may have been removed by the author (someone correct me if I'm wrong) In any case there has also been a series of threads on thesession regarding playing articulations on concertina. Below are links to a few of these discussions.
"Concertina Rolls technique - an invitation"
Posted on January 10th 2008 by Fliúiteadóir
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/16335#comment338664
Re: "I need some help. I'm getting curious about these "concertina" things...."
Posted on September 26th 2008 by llig leahcim
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/19212/comments#comment401405
"12 Step meeting for concertina players- Ennistymon"
Posted on September 26th 2008 by concertinaplayer
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/19215#comment401420
"slow rolls and articulation on the concertina"
Posted on October 22nd 2008 by anon
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/19506/comments#comment407802
# Posted on March 27th 2010 by Ben Steen
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
I always got the impression that Jeremy wanted threads about music, not threads about the website. This thread, which is about comments on comments on comments on observations on thoughts about comments on comments on the website, disappeared into its own navel about 100 posts ago!
# Posted on March 28th 2010 by AlBrown
Re: ‘The Session dot Org’: A Micro-ethnography
Hi Jeremy. ;)
# Posted on March 28th 2010 by Ben Steen
The latest silencing
what was it this time?
# Posted on March 28th 2010 by Ben Steen
* footnote:
The bit deleted earlier was a comment about the enormity of discussion posts trumping the desire for quality discussions about music. Happy April 1st mates.
;)
# Posted on April 1st 2010 by Ben Steen