World of Warcraft®

A research team at the Pennsylvania State University is studying the complexities and possibilities of roleplayers' text-based communication in World of Warcraft. We would like to invite the roleplayers of Sisters of Elune to participate.

Participation in this study is voluntary, and all responses will be confidential. Although you may not benefit personally from the study, the results will help shed light on the unique forms of social interaction that roleplay adds to MMORPGS such as WoW and that are often overlooked by non-gamers.

The study consists of an analysis of text chat logs (in and out of character) volunteered by roleplayers.

If you would like to volunteer chat logs, please submit them in .txt format (yourcharactername.txt) to this secure Box at Penn State link: https://sites.psu.edu/narratingplay/chat-log-submissions/
As many chat logs as possible is preferred, but any and all are appreciated.

**The chat logs will not be shared, and any personally identifying information in them will be removed prior to analysis. (Character names will be replaced with codes.) Please feel free to delete any IRL identifiers and/or search and replace names with codes before submitting the chat logs.**

The deadline for chat log submissions is July 23rd. The Sisters of Elune roleplay community's collaboration will be acknowledged in any publications that result from the study.

The Bednar Digital Humanities research team at Penn State appreciates your consideration. Please reply to this post or email us with any questions you may have.

Best wishes,

Benwick
Bednar Digital Humanities Research Team
The Pennsylvania State University
bednardigitalhumanities@psu.edu
sites.psu.edu/narratingplay

07/03/2015 07:23 PMPosted by Nayadri

I attend Penn State and the site we use for researchs studies is located here http://www.research.psu.edu/volunteer
^ This is part of the OFFICIAL Penn State Website, with real approved research studies. I typed in search words, such as role play, and World of Warcraft. Nothing came up.

I researched Bednar Digital Humanities Research Team and nothing came up from Penn State at all.

This website that you use: http://sites.psu.edu/narratingplay/ is a website made on WORDPRESS, a free website builder.

I'm really questioning your integrity sir.

07/03/2015 07:43 PMPosted by Dovraga

Kiddo, if you're going to setup a fake website (btw Penn state can pretty much sue you for this), then you're going to need to at least learn how to code and maybe setup your links properly.

Bad Sherlocking is Bad. The study is legit.

For anyone who wants to verify all this on their own through search engines, use this:

• Go to Google
• Enter 'Pennylvania State University' in the search area
• The very first option you should see will be "Penn State-A Public Research University Serving ..."
• Click that link
• When you get to that first, main page, in the upper right hand corner you will see a search bar. Enter "Arts humanities libraries curation" into the search area
• The second or so link you should see is "Publishing and Curation Services"
• Click that link
• At the bottom left hand side of the page, in the information bar, you will see "Contact"
• Click the 'UL-PCS@LISTS.PSU.EDU' link and ask your question about this study

@Sodiumx,

http://www.research.psu.edu/volunteer includes only some of those studies that seek volunteers who will participate in experiments in-person, on Penn State campuses. Our study seeks chat log submissions from members of a specific, online community.

You can visit sites.psu.edu, "Sites at Penn State: Powered by Wordpress," to see that we use a Wordpress-powered website that is hosted on Penn State's psu.edu domain. Wordpress is a website building tool that can be used by a variety of organizations, including institutions of higher learning.

@Landrêth,

Thank you for taking the time to research us and contact us about the study.

@all,

I can confirm that Landrêth was in touch with our department (Publishing and Curation Services, University Libraries) to confirm the validity of the study, as he said here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/18300620407?page=3#48

Please contact me in this thread or at bednardigitalhumanities@psu.edu with any questions or concerns you might have. And thank you to those who have already submitted chat logs!

Sorry to bump this (last time), but I wanted to announce:

All discussion on the study is moving to our dedicated external forum, http://sites.psu.edu/narratingplay/forums/

The site also now has more and updated info and background on the study, as well as a growing list of FAQs. For the discussions with community members that led to these updates, please see the thread on Wyrmrest Accord, http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/18300110500?page=5.

Thank you!