I remember at couple of  times ladies (who actually were in school- imagine that!) coming to this and other boards (and the usenet: alt.prostitution and alt.sex,strip-clubs) canvassing  people for participation in their research projects.

If there weer multiple instances where they asked for formal input - survey completion type work, and/or interviews;  I'm not at all surprised that the public corpus has been mined for relevance.

I'm reading it now.  It is interesting.

One of the co-authors of the article in question, Christine Milrod, operated the Erotic Highway as an advice column for the hobby.  She did it pro bono, and it was extremely popular.  As she mentions in the article, she is a sex researcher and PhD of considerable reknown, certified in NY and CA, and with her own counseling business.  If memory serves, as  part of her research she asked TER hobbyists if they wanted to volunteer to respond to a questionnaire she had prepared, and the article is the result.  In other words, participants knew beforehand that their comments could be quoted in an academic article for publication.

I think many TER readers feel that her years doing the Erotic Highway constituted a high water mark that has not been equaled since...

Knowing that the police follow these forums, and recently a journalist showing up at a meet & greet, I think it's safe to assume people outside "the monde" regularly read our goings-on for their own purposes. When you speak on the Internet you are speaking to the whole world. You can't assume the only people listening are the ones you want to listen. I think it's great to have a scholarly paper written based on these discussions. I believe the fear and disdain people have for our kind are based on a combination of being raised by the community to feel that way, self-serving, sensationalistic journalism that reinforces and justifies the negative stereotypes, and having no personal experience to counterbalance their unfounded fear and disdain. It's nice to hear that a serious work has been written by someone who sees us all as real people with an alternative view.

As far as culling and cataloging our comments, GOOGLE has been doing it daily and they get "better" at it every day.

You will see TER quotes all over the internet from most of us. Like it or not it's part of being on the internet.  That's why we don't use our real names. I am quoted a couple of times in Dr. Milrod's paper and I don't really have a problem with it at all.  Bostonguy57 exists as an entity on the internet.  It's not the name on my driver's license and I don't introduce myself to people using that name.

I doubt she quoted me, considering the number of times she Moderated me.
HV