[Corpora-List] how many subscribers are there on corpora-list?

[Moneesha Mehta]

Hi all,

I avidly read many posts, but I rarely post anything myself. I would never have thought of using Facebook to collaborate on or to find out info regarding linguistics/corpora/ etc., nor am I very likely to google the archives, since I usually save anything that interests me. Of course, if I have a question or topic I want to learn about, I will likely google it before I do anything else, and it's possible that my search may lead me to the corpora list archives. 

If inquiring about membership numbers is purely to find a way to reach a
 whole bunch of people, then the standard practice to post everywhere 
with the same "Apologies for cross-postings" disclaimer at the top of
 the email/post. I'm on three mathematics mailers and conferences often 
get advertised on all three, always with the same disclaimer. At least 
the conf organizers know that they are reaching as many people as 
possible.

From my point of view, I don't care how many people are on this mailer, I am just happy to follow the threads, keep up with current trends in research, and know that if and when I have a question, there are experts on this list who can either answer it or point me in the right direction. I can imagine that knowing the number of subscribers could be interesting, though knowing how the corpora membership intersects with the Facebook group membership and memberships of other related mailers would be much more interesting and useful (if you're imagining Venn diagrams, as I am, then I apologize for overloading the term "membership"!). Like Miles O, I can see why this information is not made public.

To Miles O: I would strongly disagree with your assumption that because "...the numbers of postings hasn't dramatically 
increased over time, .. the numbers of 
subscribers is fairly constant..." As more and more students go through related academic programs, I imagine that many of them - possibly a hundred or more a year - would be subscribing to this and other academic lists without contributing posts. The number of conferences, the major cause of posts, doesn't go up much - we have annual conferences for the most part. My guess is that the number of non-conference posts goes up year-over-year, but since the number of topics that one could justifiably include under the umbrella of "corpora" may remain rather static (my guess is that applications of NLP to bioengineering, although discussed occasionally here, are likely discussed more thoroughly on completely different mailers and fora), the number of posts regarding those topics may not increase too much. I would expect that the ratio of subscribers to posts would be going up greatly year-over-year (although now that Ramesh K has mentioned Facebook, I'm
 thinking that mailers in general may be on a decline).

To Trevor J: I would submit, though, that in any academic field, the membership of a mailer and the readership of it are pretty close to the same thing. Just because anyone CAN read the archives, it's highly unlikely that they WILL, unless they're very interested in the subject, in which case, I expect they are either already on the list, or about to subscribe. "Membership" is well-defined - there is no ambiguity - every email address that is subscribed is a member, regardless of whether the owner of the email address even remembers he HAS that email address! "Readership" is obviously a bit more fluid. 

The numbers may not have a lot of meaning, but if gathering them is easy, then, why not? If nothing else, the change in number of subscribers over time might be interesting. In this age of information, where data collection is relatively simple, we are acquiring the habit of collecting it! You never know when you might want it, and it's sometimes, if not often, the case that data you thought would be useless may prove vital to some piece of research or other.

My 2 cents!

Moneesha




 


________________________________
 From: "Krishnamurthy, Ramesh" <r.krishnamurthy at aston.ac.uk>
To: "corpora at uib.no" <corpora at uib.no> 
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2013 6:42:35 AM
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] how many subscribers are there on corpora-list?
 

Hi all

I asked this question because someone asked a question
on the Corpus Linguistics group page in Facebook, and I
suggested that they might reach a greater number of
potential respondents if they posted it on corpora-list
instead... I was then asked if i knew the number of
subscribers to corpora-list...

The Facebook group gives its number of MEMBERS as 962,
so I won dered if there was an easy way to find out how
many people SUBSCRIBE to corpora-list, just as a general
indication. If there is a massive difference in the numbers,
as i suspect, then I will continue to advise people to
post here if they do not get a satisfying answer on
Facebook.

I don't know enough about the technologies involved in
Facebook or corpora-list to know how easy or difficult
it is for non-members/subscribers to access their contents.
If it is easier to access material on corpora-list, then in
a sense that answers my question in another way? :)

I do know that members/subscribers are numbers
we can get hold of, even if they are only very rough
indicators of anything else. Many members/subscribers
do not seem to be active posters, either on Facebook or
on corpora-list, but who knows, they may be avidly reading
every post...

Meanwhile I, and a few other 'usual suspects' will no doubt
continue to

best
Ramesh






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