Also seeing one of my posts was John Umbaugh. You may remember I got an unsolicited email from someone saying his name was John Umbaugh, a student in Michigan working a school project. The email asked several personal questions so I decided not to respond directly to the email but rather to post about it. Well, John heard of the post and sent a follow-up email which I post below.
Hello. The other day somebody drew my attention to your entry (http://seto.org/mt-diary/2006/10/open_letter_to.html) about my blog project. I wanted to leave a comment, but I see that comments have been disabled for that post. In any case, I still want to give you a response that - hopefully - addressed most or all of your questions. Below is the text of the comment that I composed.
I'll also post this on my blog site in case others might have similar concerns. Thanks!
-John
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Hello!
If he were for real, he probably would have come to my site and got it from the link I have on the right side of the page.
In fact, I don't remember how I obtained your email address, but it's been my experience that often people prefer one over the other - or, in the case of blogs with multiple authors, there are several emails, and I have mistakenly emailed the non-primary contact, if there is one.
If so, he would know my full name because it across the banner at the top of this page.
Sometimes people use pseudonyms or even complete alternate identities for their blogs. Sometimes it's even a fictional blog with fictional characters. Rather than leave it to chance or to my own judgment, I wanted to have blog authors characterize their own identites to me.
In fact, if he has come to my site questions three and four are also strange.
Well, if in the case the participant's email was different, I thought that these would facilitate matters. Also, it was my intent that my call for participation would be circulated to other blog authors who might be interested. I know that I've gotten at least a few other interested authors this way.
In today's environment of epidemic identity theft, question five is none of his business. If he wants to give ranges of ages (e.g., 20 to 29, 30 to 39, etc.), I might answer that. But my actual birth date? Shirley you jest.
Birthdates are in a sense more reliable than ages because, if for example I do testing three months from now, on average one fourth of the ages will be inaccurate by one year (assuming that authors were honest with me in the first place about their ages!). That was my rationale.
The bottom line is, if this were a sanctioned study of the University of Michigan I would think John would need to get what is known as Informed Consent.
Perhaps indeed I did not provide as much material as I should have on this matter. I have posted my method here: http://citym.org/blog_author_feature_extraction.pdf . I think this explains in a fair amount of detail why I need the information. As far as safeguarding the information - well, I certainly won't be distributing it to anyone, if that's what you mean. In terms of this being a "sanctioned study" of the University of Michigan - this is simply my class final project, not an "official study."
And finally, neither his email address nor his website is hosted by the University of Michigan.
I _do_ have a Michigan email (you can search for my last name "umbaugh" on the umich directory for confirmation: directory.umich.edu), but I find it much more convenient to use gmail for my mail, and my personal site for hosting the material.
In order for me to give this type of information I have to trust and believe John is who he says he is and will use the data for the purpose he states. But since I don't trust unsolicited emails, especially ones that ask these types of question, I will not be answering John. If you are out there John, sorry, but I decline to participate.
OK! Have a good day!
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John Umbaugh
citym.org | qwer.us | gamesresearch.com
Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!
