How often do you think we're being observed by students...!?

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How frequently/often do you think that we're being watched/monitored/observed by researchers/college-students/behaviourlists/psychologists/psychiatrists/researchers/self-proclaimed-scientists/etc. ?

Yes, seriously, how many « studies » are we on these forums being a part of right now ?
You know, the thing where people are like, obtaining statistical-data, perhaps for reports ?
Also things like for perhaps reports for a psychology-paper or psychology-classes ? =o

less than being "programmed"

I'm a grad student.

And a researcher. You can go to the link in my signature line and see what kind of research I do.

I ask people before quoting them, which you don't have to do. I do it because being ethical is important to me.

You can go to Google Scholar and put in Wrong Planet and it shows when WP has been used in academic research.

Researchers and students don't bother me. I'm more curious about how many law enforcement and intelligence agencies are lurking on these forums. With the constant media link between autism and mass murder there have to be at least a few government lurkers here. Actually it's probably mostly just bots looking for keywords...hopefully one of the keywords isn't virgin or they'd have to have a full time employee browsing the forum.

Who knows? Maybe an journalist has become one of our most trusted, beloved veterans on WP...

I'm convinced I have been monitored since I was around 10...
Always felt on the outside looking in as a result...
Little motivation/point in trying to be part of the team when they don't let you into the inner circle...<shrug>
I think it happens a lot...
Thankfully, most of us enjoy our own company...

"True dat"...
We have to assume we are being shadowed and reflect on what we intend to post...
Welcome to stalag earth...

I'll admit I'm a governmen lurker; I currently work at an embassy and am bored.

But my mom actually is one of the people who does investigation for the government on people's background. While they might be some workers snoping the forum because someone they are investigating has an account, they aren't going to look here for mass murderers as that's not what the government does. The media, being stupid, might though, and there was one case of a shooter who announced their plans on Wrongplanet.

Intelligence agencies would like to either a: hire b: kill c: clone me. I want royalties from my clones...

Researching probably is good as in time they will hopefully learn to recognise that we arent totally useless. Law enforcement doesnt bother me much. They have their jobs to do, wrong or right. A functional society would not be playing these games and our society is not functional.

every so often, a link to a survey shows up here, so this place is known by researchers.

it is safe to assume that the normal conversations are also being monitored/scouted for potential research topics, but they don't hold quotable data normally.

really, i'm not that bothered: my public transport pass is used to monitor my travels, my customer benefit cards track my purchaces... one more or less place where i'm watched doesn't really affect me (exceptions withheld obviously)

I'm autistic and a sociology/anthropology student. In my Disability, Identity and Power class one of our course long assignments is to find an online forum or support group to basically monitor and then incorporate into our final paper, the only requirement is that the resource we use be open for public viewing (not one that you have to join and say that you have the disability for) and if we ask anyone specific questions we should include what we're using the information for. I think that this site was listed in the suggested forums to look at, though I've been looking at it on occasion for months and got an account right before school started. So researchers/students looking at this probably happens pretty frequently.

Awesome handle incidentally. Socialist chickens in floral dresses comes to mind.

Well, my ghostery Safari extension detects 4 trackers, (which is a quite common number), 3 of them are gathering dara for "advertising," and one more (Google Analytics) is collecting "analytics," whatever that means.

In addition, I can't see what they could find on a website that they couldn't find through asking people with Asperger's syndrome questions.

I know many people on the spectrum, but when I ask them questions, I can't rely fully on the answers because they're friends and family. They might be trying to save my feelings or trying too hard to be helpful.

I interact daily with many, many people on the spectrum. I can't just walk up to someone I kinda know and say, "Hey, you haven't told me, but it is obvious to me that you are autistic. May I ask you a question?" What they "are" is none of my business. It's like saying, "Excuse me, I see that you are a gay man..."

This is a great place to hear people talk openly and to ask questions for open feedback. People can hide their identity, so you might hear from a doctor, a non-verbal person, a person who works at Burger King- all kinds of people who you otherwise might not get to have an intellectual conversation with.

Analytics tells you things like which pages were accessed, how many times, from what countries, etc. It's helpful for technical reasons, like to tell you if a page is down, for advertising, and for other things I'm sure. The trackers are probably for ads, so you'll see things that apply to you and not things you'd never look at.

On which point, I assume I'm not the only one on here who gets frequent recruitment emails from intelligence agencies?

Not sure I'd be a good fit because I think they should be helping local businesses to defend themselves from cyber attack rather than be the ones conducting said attacks...