Who are influential in this forum?

[Stellala]

Dear all, I am a graduate student at the University of Macau, China. I think this forum is a suitable site for my research, based on observation. I really need your help now!

Could you please nominate up to 3 participants who have the most influence on what the forum does, how it is done, or the way you engage in the forum?

You can nominate any participant of this forum, including yourself and forum administrator. 
Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Admin edit: Stellala has been in touch and asked if she could post this. I said she could. R.

[somethingfunny]

Roddy.  It's effectively a dictatorship.

[889]

Not a good idea. We try to keep personalities off here. The forum deals with Chinese language, not people.

[DavyJonesLocker]

59 minutes ago, somethingfunny said:

Roddy.  It's effectively a dictatorship

 

It is called Chinese forums after all 

[Wippen (inactive)]

2 hours ago, Stellala said:

this forum is a suitable site for my research, based on observation

What is the focus of your research; where is your hypothesis going? If you can be a bit clearer on your research objectives, you will get better quality suggstions.

 

A (fictitous) university research hypothesis may look like this: Do students of Chinese achieve better results in xyz if they have a support network like Chinese-Forums.com ? (you would then need a control group :-) but I am sure you already know how to do a research design.

[大块头]

Roddy, Imron, and Publius

[anonymoose]

4 hours ago, somethingfunny said:

Roddy.  It's effectively a dictatorship.

 

Don't forget henchman Imron.

[Xiao Kui]

Quote

Roddy, Imron, and Publius

I second this. Lu also seems to know what's what. 

[陳德聰]

I can’t see it on my mobile, but isn’t there a leaderboard of sorts at the bottom of the main page which gives a rough idea of well-received contributors? I suspect going through it and seeing who is still active will give you what you need.

[somethingfunny]

Good idea 陈德聪.  If you sort by most popular contributions in the last year you'll get a good idea of the big players.  I have to say, the results are fairly unsurprising.

 

The other thing for the OP to remember is that this board has a lot of different areas and people may only use some specific parts.  I'm sure there are some influential people in the CSC sub-forum, but I rarely go in there.

[HuayangAcademy]

abcdefg is great and helpful for anything especially to do with Kunming!

[roddy]

This might be useful. 

[Jim]

It's me actually, but like all the best master criminals I like to lurk in the shadows and operate through my cat's-paw, @Roddy.

[imron]

Look out for his unlucky uncle.

[Stellala]

Thank you all for your help and advice. I’m sorry for any offence that I’ve caused.

On 2018/3/8 at 6:53 PM, 889 said:

Not a good idea. We try to keep personalities off here. The forum deals with Chinese language, not peop

Thanks. This is just meant to find out those who you consider influential. 

I am interested in language usage of influential members. I believe that there is certain relationship between language usage and the influence people have over others and a community. Keywords of my research include linguistic behavior, leadership, and culture.

On 2018/3/9 at 4:39 PM, 陳德聰 said:

leaderboard of sorts

Thanks. I would combine the nomination with that list.  That's really useful.

One scholar (Yukl) has pointed out that "various leadership functions may be carried out by different people who influence what the group does, how it is done, and the way people in the groups related to each other". And this is the reason why I'm asking for your nomination.

[Lu]

1 hour ago, Stellala said:

I believe that there is certain relationship between language usage and the influence people have over others and a community.

Interesting question. I hope you come back to tell us about your results. I suspect that in this forum, the most influential members are either in an actual position of authority (Roddy, Imron) or are helpful because they know a lot about something specific and explain it well (Publius, Abcdefg), so there might not be as much of a linguistic component at work. So it'll be interesting to hear what you find.

[Wippen (inactive)]

4 hours ago, Stellala said:

believe that there is certain relationship between language usage and the influence people have over others and a community. Keywords of my research include linguistic behavior, leadership, and culture.

Your field of research is highly interesting. Thanks for these background details.

 

One question: how do you evaluate the fact  if people use a lot of "I" and personal pronouns related to themselves (me,my, mine), is that more likely to have an impact on others in terms of opinion leadership?

 

On Chinese-forums if someone continually provides intelligent input especially if it is a new perspective and surprises me with their input because I have not seen the point in question in that light before, that person has more clout (to me).

If said person furthermore writes in a neutral way ie will convey his point of view in a balanced and  non partisan way, I will be more likely to read all of his or her posts.

[Stellala]

@T∅sen Thanks for your opinion on leadership.

My current research is conducted from the pragmatic perspective. Sorry, I don't have answer to that question. That might be the future research direction.

online leadership researchers tend to believe that leadership is associated with individual community activity, social network position, and language use. In terms of language use, David Huffaker found that opinion leaders in online community show higher frequencies of talkativeness, linguistic diversity, assertive, and affect. Johnson et al. found that online leaders show higher frequencies of positive and concise posts with simple language familiar to other participants. In my opinion, the emergence of leadership also depends on particular situation of a community.

 

By the way, could you tell me who do you think are influential in this forum? 

 

 

[Christa]

I am the most influential person on the forum.

 

No-one else acknowledges this but that is the surest evidence that it is true.

 

Indeed, people will sometimes say that I ask pedantic, repetitive questions. But that's what influential people do.

 

I also have an extensive collection of sunglasses, which I think makes what I've said incontrovertible.

[Lu]

I gave you a 'thank you' but it's intended as a first prize. Because it's a cup, you see?