I'm very in favor of the project, but I think it has to be opt-in. I don't feel comfortable giving permission for anyone's posts to be used but my own.

Even if the posts will be anonymized, as in the example above? While our experiences are extremely unique, I haven't really seen them as unusual. Identifying individuals with the personal details of name and place stripped out seems pretty unlikely.

I do think we need a full proposal to be sure we can make an informed community decision, but so far I'm all for it, and thinking up words to seed future linguistics with even as I type.

Modigy, anyone?

Identifying individuals with the personal details of name and place stripped out seems pretty unlikely

I would agree with that, but there's one thing I'm not sure about: Will everything frm the board just be listed as being written by buffistas.org, or will it still be attributed to individual posters? If it's broken down by individual poster, I can see the privacy concern, simply because a mass of words makes it easier to identify someone than any single sentence does.

Oof. I'm... a little uncomfortable with the idea, which surprises me, since I am not one who thinks of myself as particularly anonymous online and I consciously watch what I say because of that.

Though thinking about it some more, it's just a few more lurkers, right? I mean, this isn't going to be Immortalized Publically For All Time, and I don't worry about the other three hundred random people I've never "met" reading this right now.

I think this is a fantuwondrous idea!

So long as we find a workingish strategery for optifying out, if individupersons so desire.

I vote affirmsolutely!

I heard back from one of the organizers, and it looks like there would need to be a specific opt-in. So I would say the board as a whole would have to approve the general idea (because we are, of course, a COMMUNITY, and the idea of somebody saying "I'm gonna take my posts and put them over here" all cowboy-like doesn't appeal to me), but then each individual person who wants their posts in the corpus would have to send me permission. Whether that means just an email or signing a form, I dunno yet.

For simplicity's sake, I would think people would have to say either a blanket yes or a blanket no to having their posts used. I don't know if I could deal with people who said okay for one thread but not another -- it could get really complicated, really fast.

I also said that I would do the pre-processing to remove the posts of people who didn't opt in, so that no NonBuffista eyes would ever see material that wasn't specifically okayed for inclusion. Let's hope my mad perl skillz are up to the challenge. (Luckily, the html on the threadsuck is really well done. Props to the Stompies!)

For simplicity's sake, I would think people would have to say either a blanket yes or a blanket no to having their posts used.

Sounds good to me, I love this idea.

Another question - is there a time period for this? Or more of a perpetuity thing?

Whether that means just an email or signing a form, I dunno yet.

I think all you would need is a "post" from each member who wishes to opt in, which would tend to authenticate that the poster who gave authority was the same poster who made the original post. If that made any sense.

And FTR, I think it's a great idea.

I also said that I would do the pre-processing to remove the posts of people who didn't opt in, so that no NonBuffista eyes would ever see material that wasn't specifically okayed for inclusion.

Woman, you rule.

So, should we take this discussion to Lightbulbs, so as to not clog up Bureaucracy?

I think all you would need is a "post" from each member who wishes to opt in, which would tend to authenticate that the poster who gave authority was the same poster who made the original post. If that made any sense

True. The advantage of email I can see is that it wouldn't clog up a thread. It might also be seen as more of a guarantee that the writer understood what s/he was signing up for if there was ever a question.