Patreon user survey! FOR ACTUAL SCIENCE

I unfortunately don't do well with long essay questions like the ones being asked. I'm glad to have left them behind after college. It would take me several hours to come up with anything worth writing and I don't have time/energy for that.

Jonathan Taves

Alas, I don't qualify either.

Rogers George

aww noooo.

Sian

Another one who couldn't answer the survey -- I thought I might qualify because I've been to some readings and book festivals, but honestly they weren't recent enough and I don't remember them strongly enough to participate. Thanks for the opportunity anyhow?

My wife and I were in the autograph line for Patrick Stewart and John DeLancie. What I _wanted_ to say was that I had admired Patrick Stewart for years, and that back in 1996 I had seen his live performance of A Christmas Carol in Los Angeles. He gave an amazing performance, but started to lose his voice. Rather than give up, he kept pushing to finish that show until it was actually starting to become really painful. After one last break, he came back on stage and gave a very heartfelt apology. All this seems simple enough, but I was a brand new Navy pilot back then, with all the over-the-top manliness mindset that goes along with it. Seeing him work so hard at his craft, throwing himself so much into it, really opened my eyes to what real dedication and hard work is; I never looked at the world the same... Which is what I wanted to explain. Instead, it came out, "I saw you back in '96 when you lost your voice!", and it sounded (to me) like I was whining. I even got the full, slow Picard face-palm.

David Days

On the first page, before you start the survey: "Who can take part in the research study: Adults who have attended an event, show, or festival involving narrative fantasy."

Bernhard

69 likes. nice

Milayna

I started taking the survey, but I could only draw from a local "convention" (really a meet-up) where there weren't any products for sale and no sponsors, so the part after the essay about what I experienced and learned I couldn't really answer... =(

Minzoku Bokumetsu

"Did you meet anyone famous?" Yeah. I met Jeph jacques and I bought one of his books.

Ooh, do tell the story.

Daryl Sawyer

I thought it was a well-made survey. I'm not a social sciences guy (software and machine learning, here), but the quality-control questions, as well as the personality/outlook cross tabs, should make up some very interesting results. I hope this helps. (I also had to include that I unintentionally embarrassed Patrick Stewart at a con...)

David Days

I started to get frustrated after the first 2 of those and purposely answered differently. Fuck you I wont do what you tell me

Chris Magnelli

I bailed before answering so as not to confuse them with a possible false positive/negative. The premise sounded interesing, pity I couldn't participate but thanks for the opportunity to, Jeph!

SpookyPenguin

Now I need to remember that I actually entered a legitimate draw for an Amazon card so that in the off chance that I do win, I don't discard it as "junk email."

Joseph Bonnar

Yeah, if that first answer is "no", they really ought to just say, "Thank you for your answer, here's the entry form for the drawing."

Daryl Sawyer

I have never attended a "narrative fantasy event", so I answered "No" to the first question. Then it wanted me to tell all about the event I'd never attended..? I was expecting something like "Thanks but you're not useful for this", not "We have totally ignored your first answer". So I bailed.

Richard

worked for me just now

Tom Boucher

Can't connect to the server - did we crash it?

Alex Borders

took it and was mostly just felt uncomfortable about checking strongly disagree with many of their question choices. I don't think I feel that strongly about most philosophical issues, and when a statement is prosed in strong emotions, my gut says I strongly disagree with your assumed question

Nicholas Sturm

It does sound interesting, but the privacy assurances are pretty weak. And they misspelled the name of their university in the instructions. Not a good sign.

Daryk Zirkle

still useful info! thanks for contributing :)

Jeph Jacques

trust me, this person understands what they're doing better than you do

Jeph Jacques

that's...not how surveys are supposed to work

Jeph Jacques

That got a little deep at the end.

That's how you get your results thrown out! (Which I guess doesn't harm you)

I just hope that what I entered will help better the understanding of the human mind and psyche.

Bailey Tighe

Those were examples. I believe any sort of fan convention would qualify... been to a Star Trek convention? An anime con? A book signing at your local book store? (Aside from Comic-Con, I went to a Jim Butcher signing a few years ago, and since I was near the end of the line, we got to chat for a few minutes while he signed the last dozen or so books. That opportunity was pretty unique.) Of course, if you haven't ever attended any sort of convention or event, you probably won't meet the researcher's needs.

Tom wilson

Felt like it needed a lot of caveats since the specific 'narrative event' that I was answering questions about had vastly different answers than other ones. Heck, just picking two or three conventions (BlizzCon, GenCon, WonderCon e.g.) I'd have given very different answers, much less actual different event types.

Cerril

Would love to see the crosstab of people who deliberately misfilled the validity questions with the other answers. I’d also like to know at which point people, if at all, stopped answering those questions correctly.

Andrew W

I enjoyed it, but I hated when a question was *click this answer specifically* because don't tell me what to do. As I clicked what the didn't ask me to. The contrarian in me.

Raven Razor

I was kind of sorry that in the survey's questions about identity formation, they didn't provide any kind of free-form response... I found it hard to go too far toward agree or disagree on any of those, because I feel like it's accurate to say that you can't really change your core traits or pre-dispositions, but you have HUGE amounts of freedom in developing ways to express them, to control whether they produce good or ill in the world and the lives of the people around you.

Auros Harman

Interesting... for me, the most significant cons I've been to were WorldCon 2000 in Baltimore, and WorldCon 2002, in San Jose, both of which I was at as part of the staff of Strange Horizons ( http://strangehorizons.com/ ). I'd never been to a WorldCon previous to the 2000 one, and I learned a ton about the actual business of producing interesting prose fiction and non-fiction, and getting it in front of interested readers. Also made friends that I've kept to this day.

Auros Harman

Odd questions, frankly. I wonder very much what they're looking to find out.

It's legit, and kinda interesting. The only uninteresting part (to me) was the deep-thought existential stuff. I go to cons to have fun, not for a life-changing experience.

kind of a flawed survey, if you answer no you still get the same questions that only applied to a yes answer. I exited.

Ken Austin

Not bad, but the fact that the survey continues even if you say you haven't been to a con or "narrative fiction event" is a bad call. Your data on questions past that are going to be skewed.

I'm having the opposite problem... I've gone to dozens of conventions and events, maybe into the hundreds, and been on panels and volunteered for concoms. It's hard to answer "what thoughts and feelings did you have during the convention" in any kind of concise way. Like, do you want to know what it was like to be on a panel discussion with people I idolize, or do you want to know about the time I tried to impress Walter Koenig with my (extremely fake) English accent, or do you want to know about my friends getting handfasted in a conference room, or...

Asher Rose Fox

It was neat thinking back to the last event...I wouldn't necessarily say it was life-altering but it was cool nonetheless

Well you can define the event as you like more or less. This seems to be a qualitative survey more than a quantitative, and thus focus on your experience.

Daniel Rydberg

Don't think I've been to an event listed there so guess I don't qualify

Diana

It seems legit, if a little weird... I don't feel like I can do it justice. Graduate thesis type survey- they're looking for vivid recall of the last narrative fiction event you attended. My memory is crap, so I don't want to waste their time.

Supererogatory = moral extra credit

Seems to only apply to people who have attended one or more "events". [edit] I haven't been to any "events" - large, small, local, formal or informal. Unless you count a two sentence conversation with a friend. It seems strange to assume that people who read web comics would attend comic related events.

Beechwood Chip

I am really confused by a definition of "narrative fantasy" that appears to include graphic novels but exclude text novels.

Asher Rose Fox

If you are here in Patreon, the link is the box above the post.

lol it's not

Jeph Jacques

Some people are having trouble finding the link so I have edited it into the post as well :)

Jeph Jacques

I've seen similar messages before... This looks like someone hacked the patreon account and is posting a suspicious link. I'd be wary of clicking the survey.

BioYuGi

Sure. I would need a link to it tho.

Justin Cox

Where's the Survey?

Joel Bateman

Is this a regular update, or did a hacker get into the system?

Seidmadr

Oops! The link is at the top!

Jonah Eisenstock

Link?

Waya Ricker-Bell

Is there a link to the survey?