[JDEV] Jabber/Physics Research

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Sounds intriguing, and I'm sure that at least some folks in the Jabber
community would be willing to help out. Personally I'd like to see a copy
of your research proposal so that I can understand your data requirements
and your protections for anonymity. Once I'm comfortable with that, I'd be
happy to strongarm, er, persuade others into participating as well.

In true open source fashion you could of course just post your research
proposal as a URL to get maximum feedback. :) If not, send it to me
offlist (email and jabber addresses below).

Peter

--
Peter Saint-Andre
email+jabber: stpeter at jabber.org
weblog: http://www.saint-andre.com/blog/

On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, Reggie Smith wrote:

> Hello everyone, my name is Reginald Smith and I am a senior 
> physics major at the University of Virginia. I was 
> wondering if you could help me out on a research project I 
> am doing this semester.
> 
> A lot of research has been done in physics recently through 
> statistical mechanics and graph theory on networks in the 
> real world including ecosystems, the Internet (thus the 
> famous 19 clicks between web sites paper), and even human 
> language. Very little work has been done on seeing if 
> social networks follow this same pattern however. In my 
> project I am attempting to do a similar study on the 
> statistics of instant messaging networks. At first I tried 
> to get data on the huge IM networks like AOL Instant 
> Messenger but it is far from sure whether or not I will get 
> access to the data I need. 
> 
> What is it I need? Specifically just a database describing 
> a group of users and the users on their buddy lists. I can 
> then write a program to do some data mining and statistical 
> analysis to calculate the measures I would be interested in 
> for my research. The great thing is that I don't even need 
> personal information, everyone can be anonymized as numbers 
> and the data will still be ok.
> 
> I found out about Jabber recently and since it is still 
> mostly client/server I was hoping that perhaps you have DBs 
> on the server describing users and their contacts. I do not 
> need anything else including emails (no I am not a SPAM 
> man), personal information (I want research not $), or 
> anything else no one wants to give out. Since I will be 
> dealing with aggregate statistics I won't really know much 
> about a specific user anyway. 
> 
> Well, to make this email short (too late I guess) I was 
> wondering if anyone could help me out and let me know if 
> jabber servers have this kind of information or and if so 
> if I could "mine" any servers to get some user info. Any 
> help is appreciated.
> 
> My full research proposal is available to anyone upon request.
> 
> 
> Reginald Smith
> University of Virginia
> 
> "Knowledge and learning without imagination 
> are as enslaving as ignorance; the greater
> danger being when you think you know, you are
> less likely to question your own assumptions
> and reasoning"
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> jdev mailing list
> jdev at jabber.org
> http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev
>