bellbird
MyPTSD Pro
Image that I speak America English And you speak Spanish? How could we communicate we don’t have a common language.
This is an English-language peer support site. We already have a common language: English.We need a common launguage!
Sure, English is a pretty whacky language and there is country/region/culture-specific usage and phrasing (see Words and Sayings Unique to Your Country/Culture for some nice examples) but the reality is, that this site has members from many parts of the world (myself from Middle-earth, for instance) and we still manage to understand each other the vast majority of the time. And if we don't, there's always the ability to clarify.
Furthermore, if you look around, you'll see many members, from many parts of the world, reporting a benefit from this site - with the current language usage.
Now, talking to your original argument. This isn't necessary, for a number of reasons.I think we need to create a (one) unfied language for our diaries so that researches can study us
1. As others have already said, our diaries are simply personal narrative.
2. You would need to essentially mind-read what kind of language the researchers would "want".
3. You're also essentially mind-reading that the researchers would even "want" us to use a 'unified' language.
As, in effect they'd not even be studying us interacting 'naturally', rather funneled into using some sort of 'code'.
4. Researchers design a study question and then either use and analyse pre-existing datasets that fit their study parameters, or otherwise perform new experiments to generate the required datasets.
If the dataset doesn't yet exist, so what? It's why we occasionally have researchers coming here to ask for participants in specific studies. It's not up to us (members) to do that for them (researchers).
It's important to remind yourself of the scope of a resource.
Here, the scope is peer support for those impacted by (c)PTSD.
It simply isn't a resource developed for the benefit of researchers.
And it is also entirely possible that turning it into a resource for the benefit of researchers (though I still argue such a benefit isn't necessarily valid), would remove the legitimate benefit experienced by members using this site for support (as others in this thread have also already said).
You appear very passionate about what you have proposed. But it also appears that as a result, you are trying to shoehorn this resource into fixing an issue that is not an issue.
I, personally, do not feel that you are going to make any practical ground here.
Instead, it may be more effective for you to:
1. Consolidate the 'code' you feel most relevant to the discussion of PTSD-related issues, beyond the language that is already being used here.
2. Create your own resource that requires members to use your proposed code to communicate.
Also ensuring that the scope of the resource is clearly for the purpose of being studied by researchers.
3. Once you have adequate membership and usage, approach researchers with a link to your resource/data.