From:	 "Utpal M. Dholakia" <dholakia@ruf.rice.edu>
To:	 <letters@lwn.net>
Subject: Request for help
Date:	 Mon, 15 Apr 2002 18:29:40 -0500 (CDT)

Dear moderator of the LWN website:

I am a faculty member in the Jones school of management at Rice University
in Houston, Texas, USA (this may be verified using a Google search with
"Paul
Dholakia", or "Utpal Dholakia"). We are conducting an academic research
project, studying social interactions online more generally, and
specifically how communities organized around products or brands are
formed, from a sociological perspective.

In this regard, we are conducting a survey of people who belong to
internet-based LINUX groups such as mailing lists, websites etc. seeking
information on different elements of their thoughts, feelings, and
motivations of participating in such groups, and the value of the group to
them...

Our survey is available on the web at the following URL:

http://www.surveypro.com/cgi-bin/surveypro/run_survey.cgi?id=2444

Please note that the survey is targeted especially at those individuals
who interact with the more-or-less same group of individuals online within
the mailing list (as in your case) or on some other online forum (more
generally), that is, those who have online friends that they interact with
regularly.

I was writing to seek your help in publicizing our research, among your
community and constituents (participants and contributors to your LWN
notice) in an appropriate and minimally intrusive fashion ---perhaps
posting a short note at an appropriate location on your website or in your
linux-related discussion lists/user forums might be very effective... Any
help you can provide to publicize our research among your membership and
constituents would be very useful indeed!

I am very sensitive to issues of netiquette, so please feel free to modify
and abbreviate this message to a few lines, if you decide to post it for
publicizing.

Of course, our research is strictly academic, and has no commercial links
or interests whatsoever. We hope to publish this research in a sociology
journal.

As a small token of our appreciation for participants' time, and in the
spirit of the philosophy underlying the open-source movement, we will
donate a total of $500 to the five favorite organizations/ groups of our
participants' choice (we ask the participant's to nominate their favorite
groups in the survey). Of course, the findings of the study will be freely
available from my website or via email (upon request) in approximately two
months.

I hope you are able to help our effort. Please let me know if you have any
questions.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,
Paul Dholakia
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Dr. Paul Dholakia
Assistant Professor of Management
Rice University
314 Herring Hall - MS 531
6100 Main Street
Houston TX 77005-1892
Tel: 713-348-5376
Fax: 713-348-5251
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~dholakia
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