Survey saaays...

[elf]

A grad student at U of Tennessee is conducting a survey about the viability of ebook tech for people in their 50's.

He named it Kindle Questionnaire, which I think is annoying, but I still encourage ebook readers in their 50's to go fill out the survey. I'll see if I can get my husband to go through it.

Comments

[elf]

Every once in a while, I consider putting together a list of "20 ebook facts you should know before you make an ebook-related survey." Things like, "they didn't start with Kindles" and "There have been about a dozen different commercial, DRM'd ebook filetypes; several dozen more noncommercial types" and "ebook sources: not limited to paid stores & gutenberg."

Not sure I could put it together without pouring on the snark, though, which would likely discourage the people I'd want to use it.

[jumpuphigh]

Or even "20 ebook facts you should know before you talk about ebooks in a public setting so you don't look like an uneducated ass".

[elf]

Starting with, "nobody cares how much you love the smell of books."

Which is probably why I shouldn't put together such a list. Or I should make a list of 50 facts, and set aside the first 30 because those will mostly be getting the snark out of my system.

[jumpuphigh]

Just spent way too much time on MR. The more time I spend on MR, the crazier I think those people are. OMG

[elf]

It's ... different.

When new people show up, I sometimes try to warn them: here's your partial list of Instant Flamewar topics--piracy, drm, price-of-ebooks, geo-restrictions, amazon, pdf. Any thread centered on those--read all you like, make up your own mind; don't expect to persuade anyone of anything 'cos we have heard it *all* before and you're unlikely to find any new info to throw at us until you've read way too much random copyright wank.

Every once in a while, I bring up sexism in the thin hope that I'll see something other than five pages of "pseudonyms means you don't know what gender authors are, so how can you say there's any discrimination?" and "women dominate the romance industry; that means they get equal treatment as authors." I don't bring up racism or other forms of oppression.

What they do well is non-US-centrism, non-English-centrism. There are constant polite reminders that US copyright law isn't worldwide, and they welcome comments & questions about ebook/tech issues in countries that aren't the US.

They also manage to mostly not have factions--people can disagree vehemently on DRM rights and stand together on what's necessary for good ebook formatting; they can agree on Amazon's usefulness (or lack thereof) and disagree on best length of copyright. And the personal attacks really are kept to a minimum, with a nod to the fact that any 5-page or more thread about DRM is going to have some namecalling.