I hope people will forgive the off-topicness of this post. At the risk of bringing up a controversial subject I seem to recall that some people on this list have had contact with either fan fiction or (as the recent successes with NaNoWriMo) with amateur fiction that the authors make available online. I am currently doing a doctoral research project in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Southampton (http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/). My supervisor is dr monica schraefel (http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~mc/). [For those who want to check my credentials] I am looking for people willing to participate on an online survey designed to investigate how people find and access fan and amateur fiction on the Internet. I know that online communities are frequently the target of social science studies so I would like to make clear that this survey is part of a human-computer interaction project and the answers are intended to inform the design of applications to aid and support these communities as well as further research into usability and trustworthiness of the Web. The questionnaire is aimed at Internet users of all ages, whether they are part of the fan or amateur writing community or not. I would really love to hear from anyone who is either involved as a reader or writer, has stumbled upon fan or amateur fiction or who has a friend or relation who does such things as a hobby. All responses to the questions are confidential and anonymous and no personal data is requested. All data will be stored in accordance with the UK Data Protection Act. The questionnaire will take roughly fifteen to twenty minutes to complete (give or take a few minutes depending which sections are applicable to your situation). Please check it out. The URL is: http://interaction.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ir/projects/ontofic/survey/ If you have any questions about this project then please contact me (kf03r at ecs.soton.ac.uk) or contact the Fan Fiction Ontology Creation Project (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onto_fanfic/), a group made up of members of the fan fiction community who have expressed interest in the related work. Thanks Fides P.S. Please feel free to forward the URL above to anyone you know who might be interested.