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When you do anthropological
fieldwork, your main tool is yourself. You participate, you observe and
you ask incredible amounts of questions. One of the basic things that
anthropologists use to keep track of all the questions we want to ask
is a question guide.
A question guide is basically a collection of simple conversation hooks
and points of interest that I would seek to cover during an interview.
It is only meant to be a guide for the conversation, not the framework
for the conversation itself, so I let the interview diverge from the
guide all the time and follow whatever lead my informant offers with
his replies. Therefore, the guide shouldn't be seen as the
authoritative F/OSS interview in any way. It just acts as a reminder
for me when I do interviews.
Traditionally, anthropologists guard their questions and approaches
fairly carefully as it does say a lot about how they think and act as
anthropologists. A question guide can in this way be seen as the source
code for one of their basic methods - the interview.
So in a way I am baring myself to the world by publishing the question
guide I've used for the past months. But I have noticed the obvious
interest with which my informants have sent long glances at my notes
and questions when I interviewed them. And I thought it would only be
fair if they could learn a little about how I work now that they have
told and shown me so much about their work and lives.
So I've tabbed out and commented my question guide for easy perusal.
And on the recommendation of one of my informants, I have taken the
time to write down my own answers to some of the questions to give
people an idea of my own background with computers and F/OSS. My
informants obviously had a lot more to say about these things.
The questions
My answers
- Feel free to send me your comments, questions or even better: your own answers to the questions offered.
Andreas Lloyd - 2006
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