Heh. I just thought it could be complicated to distinguish between the times it's a name and the times it's all other sort of parts of a sentence.

Not so bad, if it's a search and replace kind of thing, in context.

Corpus linguists have special name-as-name and name-as-word sensors, so no worries there. And I'm only half-joking about that.

I think that we would choose a date on which to threadsuck and no posts would be taken after that date. However, if the last 1000 posts on that date were FOAMY! FOAMY! FOAMY! the linguists might get a tad annoyed. Just FYI.

I will get more info and try to post a complete summary by next Tuesday. Sound okay? I'll also try to answer questions from Lightbulb in the interim, if the discussion is moving there. Should an announcement be made in Press that this discussion is going on? I'd like to hear from lots of folks so I make sure I answer everyone's questions.

As far as emailing vs posting opt-in goes, could we modify the voting email form to be an opt-in form?

I should be able to easily modify that form to automagically send an email to erinaceous and a "receipt" email to the poster. In fact, it should be easier than setting up a ballot.

"automagically". Heh. I want that in the dictionary.

I'd suggest that we do a formal vote with discussion in lightbulbs, etc., to determine if The Buffistas want to do this. Then erinaceous can let us know what makes the most sense for her as far as opt-in goes.

Seconded.

I think erinaceous should make the formal proposal.

Here's a draft proposal, which I think we need before we can second and move to Lightbulbs:

Proposed: That the Buffistas as a community agree to have writings from this site used as part of linguistics research by mumblemumble dictionary. Individual opt-ins will be required for anyone whose writings are included in the sample.

This proposal will be modified to reflect specifics of this opt-in and other facets of the research as more information become available.

Edited to add: Sorry, Jon -- X-post. I agree the formal proposal is erinaceous's to make, but it seemed to make sense to get some language out there.

I'll second or third or whatever that we open it to a vote.

However, if the last 1000 posts on that date were FOAMY! FOAMY! FOAMY! the linguists might get a tad annoyed. Just FYI.

Right, it's really only useful when we use words like "foamy" correctly in a sentence, right erin?

I second any proposal to discuss this further, but I think we should wait for the formal proposal to "toll" the running of the discussion and the vote until erinaceous has all the information.