[Meta] Users, I need your input. How do you want c/linguistics to be?

1. A mix would be nice.
2. I'd certainly prefer stricter moderation; "quote your sources" and "no crack theories" seems like a bare minimum to making this community valuable.
3. Yes, it would be nice to keep the focus on the linguistics, which is how I understand the "almost".
4. I have decent familiarity with computational linguistics, but linguistics is not my main area.
5. I'd be most interested in keeping up with and seeing discussion on the latest publications, but I'd have no problem with other content.

1. A mix would be nice, especially while the community here is so small. On a side note, somebody needs to make /c/linguisticsmemes asap.

2. While I did value /r/linguistics' more strict academic focus, it also made the place a bit dreary at times. So maybe "stricter but not quite as strict as /r/lingustics"?

3. I agree with this rule completely, though I wonder which issues you will choose to consider political/not political.

4. I'm a professor in a lingustics-adjacent field, with extensive knowledge about historical linguistics methodology and a variety of modern synchronic theoretical methods in various other subfields as well.

5. All of the above. Especially while the community is small, I don't see much benefit in being too exclusionary.

Thanks for doing this - people like you who have the time and willingness to build communities here are what will make Lemmy successful long-term!

Edit: I just saw your comment below (and now also the sidebar), and I think "One way I can implement this is by a simple “keep on-topic” rule, but enforce it a bit harsher for subjects bound to bring divisions outside Linguistics into the table." is the perfect way to approach the problem.

1. Who should be the primary target audience of this community?

I think it's fine to let that play out

2. Which type of moderation do you guys like? Stricter or laxer?

Similar to above, but a baseline should be maintained to keep the initial contributors coming back. E.g. for one, I'm not looking to get angry by PIE-denialist drivel for example (this might be a location-specific concern).

3. “Almost no crown or cross” rule: yes, no, indifferent?

I find it better to moderate the quality of the discussion, rather than the content. So long as it is still relevant to Linguistics and it's not a flamewar, it should be acceptable.

4. How much do you know about Linguistics?

Stopped short of pursuing a PhD in the field. Studies were focused on language disorders and non-typical morphosyntax.

5. Which type of content do you want to see here?

Definitely not papers. I would prefer discussions. Most of what I did on Reddit was to support language learners by giving them linguistically informed explanations of grammatical phenomena in the languages they were studying, and discuss with other language enthusiasts about emerging linguistic change or non-mainstream usage.

Eventually there might be a necessary split between a community of the science (this one, perhaps) and another one purely for language learning, but for now it might be most sensible to keep them at the same place.

1. Let it roll! But I'm a fan of pop-science and think the community could be a good place to discuss general questions, maybe delving into them if we see they hit an interesting area

2. Yeah. No spurious stuff, though maybe we could have some kind of Bad Linguistics Mondays? And allow for posts that have bad linguistics examples with a rule making it mandatory for the OP to explain what's wrong and provide the correct explanation

3. As someone else here said, as long as it doesn't cause a flame war I think it's not too harmful to let things go a little off-topic, as long as they have a tangential relation to linguistics or languages

4. I have a Bachelor's Degree! I like all subfields, but I think my favorite would be historical linguistics and semantics!

5. As standalone posts I wouldn't know what to tell you... Definitely news, though.

Nobody commented yet, might as well:

1. Let it roll for now, see who appears
2. and 3. Less rules for now to not discourage activity, maybe check again when more users are commenting in here
3. I'm a trilingual translator but not a studied linguist - so mostly curious layperson.
4. I've been through what you've posted so far - it's all interesting. I do appreciate if not only videos are posted in a group, but that's just my personal preference.

It's a bit empty in here, but I hope you don't give up, I'm sure people will appear eventually.

Hi! I'm a curious enthousiast and I would expect general discussions about linguistics. I would love to see very specific papers and I wouldn't mind basic grammar questions being posted here. Some can reveal deeper implications, maybe. No crack theories is good imo. No cross or crown: i guess culture and language are very intricate and one can explain the other but beyond that, judging ang proselytism should be forbidden.