Some more slug questions from your friends at IU

For everybody who doubts our credibility, tommorrow all of your questions will be answered!

In reply to the following people who have questions for us:

dudte:

For our Introduction to Human Interaction Design Class we have the priveledge of trying to answer the CHI problem for CHI 2007. The CHI problem, Computer Human Interaction, is a design competition for students in Computer Human Intertaction. Feel free to check out there site: http://www.chi2007.org/submit/competitions.php The class number is I541, the professor's name is Dr. Marty Siegel.

Currently we are seeking HSC (Human Subject Commitee) approval for our scenario based prototype and user-experienced prototyping. Once we have approval we will post a information about how you can participate in our user-experienced prototyping.
My contact information:

Kenton Hankins
hankinsk@indiana.edu
http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/people/profiles.asp?u=hankinsk (if you want to verify that I am a student)

Also, our HSC number is: Study #06-11569

CallMeMrSlug:
Are you really GRADUATE students?

Yes, we are and graduate students (see above for my information). Congratulations on the new addition to your family.

RobertLangDirect:

We can not answer this issues for you, we are only trying to use technology to get more people to slug. In no way do we want to inhibit the current slug system.

getmehomepweeze:

We are not phishing. If you are interesting in phishing research we will be glad to direct you to people within our program and school that are studying phishing and other cybersecurity issues.

spongebob:

Please send me an email (see previous response in this thread) to me with the next time you are in Indy, we could go to the Rathskeller and discuss slug system.

We slugs are so trusting we get in cars with total strangers and promptly fall asleep. But by God you better not ask too many questions on our website!

I think you may be real, but let's test this.

I go to IUPUI in Indy several times a year. Want to meet for dinner?

Hank

What is the name of your IU approved project?
If this is for a specific class then course # and professor?
Who is your faculty advisor?
What is your IRB #?

Legitimate IRB approved collegiate research is not hard to verify. give us the #'s and we can make our own calls. I would suspect your IRB approval also requires more research subject (us) consent than what you have provided so far. I'm not saying your not legit - yet - but you haven't done a very good job of informed consent and subject protection. If you are not to IRB yet you may be learning about the difficulty of inquiring of your subjects without their trust. We seem to trust drivers and riders (statistically) significantly more than we trust unknown and poorly identified researchers.

Fortunately, my wife gave birth and I can respond to this at this late hour when I would normally be asleep preparing for my commute.

Are you really GRADUATE students? I mean really, you identify a small problem and ignore the obvious. Do infomaniacs pride themselves on small achievements? How about doing a survey on when riders most often go to particular sluglines which would help drivers know when to be there, or visa versa. Something like that might be meaningful. This varies considerably depending on how far from DC the slug park and ride happens to be. But trustworthiness means accepting someones word, and that has NO meaning in the slugging community. I don't accept the drivers promise to appear, he just does, because its convenient for him to be there at that time, and convenient, on that particular day, for me to meet him there. Tomorrow, it may be convenient for him to get there a little later, and thats cool, cause I may do the same. If you really want to make an improvement, you would study the times of "convenience". Just my opinion.

From the previous responses we found some of the other issues to be lack of Parking space, introduction of hybrid cars, HOV congestion etc, however being informatics students these issues were not something we could address in our design solution.

Unfortunately, there are enemies of slugs as we all know, including those that are pro HOT, pro hybrid and just slug bashers. The net results is a suspicion on our part, as is natural. What is the solution to this for someone coming on the site wanting information about slugging? Get involved in this forum and build up some hit points and credibility first. But as for wanting information on the down side of slugging, I say, slug some yourself and you will see there is a small downside.

Final point. As far as I am concerned any newcomer to this site is suspicious until they have posted somewhat consistently over a period of time. Doesnt have to mean they have to agree with the majority of us, just that they appear sincere.