Writing a paper about letsrun message board community

Liafburga wrote:

Might I recommend you change your conclusion to something along the line of :

In conclusion, the LRC message board can be best characterized as a intellect-barren wasteland comprised almost entirely of moral degenerates who loudly proclaim their hatred of women and people of other races under the veiled interest in the sport of competitive running. I strongly recommend shielding impressionable youth from the vitriol espoused on this site.

^^See minor edits. I also agree this is a great summary statement. Succinct, but yet hits on all the critical points.

In your conclusion, you talk about how letsrun has "redeeming aspects ... comments of support for people in pursuit of their goals ... there is a place for every runner or fan of the sport on the message boards."

I really like that you have that in the paper, but I think you should devote more time to it in the body of the essay. The body so far speaks almost entirely to the more negative aspects of the boards, which make the statement about redemption come out of the blue (especially to a reader who does not know the boards. Otherwise, I think your essay is

There are some good examples that people talked about in earlier posts on this tread, but anything about Will Steele would be a good topic to discuss.

Just my two cents, don't know if you will even read this before you submit your paper.

PS- Full Disclosure, I am a science major at a technical school. It would probably be prudent to get a second opinion before doing anything drastic to your paper.

I definitely appreciate the advice and input. I agree with you about the conclusion. There was so much emphasis in the class room in focusing on the hostility that can be found online. I think there should probably be some examples of the positive aspects of the message boards at some point in the body of the essay. I actually thought about Will Steele when I was thinking of positive examples of the Letsrun boards.

way more people on this board complain about racism/sexism than actually post it[/quote]

What kind of alter-universe are you inhabiting? Not only do a huge portion of threads include casual and sometimes vicious misogyny, but many of the threads that appear on the boards are explicitly aimed at trashing women and their bodies. I've never seen a thread on here in which people evaluate and condemn specific male runners based on their body types. Did you not see the recent Duke thread?

Also, the default person on these boards is male. I've posted responses to women-bashing on here and have had people respond with stuff like, "Preach it brother!" As if there is no chance that the poster is a woman. Many posters respond to the community as gentlemen, etc.

Finally, and this is the most ironic and fascinating part of letsrun: male runners' bodies, in general, are gender bashed because they do not conform to dominant cultural standards of masculinity. So, we end up with a running website that regularly hates on women, treats them as sex objects rather than human beings, and hates on all runners' bodies because they don't conform to cultural standards whereby women are supposed to have huge tits and curves and men are supposed to look like muscle-bound cavemen.

It's all for s*hit. Love the sport, love the bodies, and stop hating. Just run, you fools!

erik wrote:

Also, here's a fun fact providing some insights on community standards and shared understandings of what is appropriate: 30 posts from this thread have been reported since it started. Some of those posts are gone, some are not.

Interesting. We don't hear much about how and the criterion used for deletion. I wonder who is reporting posts and what types of posts are reported? As far as the posts being a representative sample, I never thought that. And certain types of posts you can tell are from the same poster.

Writing a Paper wrote:

I definitely appreciate the advice and input. I agree with you about the conclusion. There was so much emphasis in the class room in focusing on the hostility that can be found online. I think there should probably be some examples of the positive aspects of the message boards at some point in the body of the essay. I actually thought about Will Steele when I was thinking of positive examples of the Letsrun boards.

Search for these two great threads:

1. My goal of sub-4 in the 1500 I will not stop until I reach my goal

2. I have a crush on a girl in a coffee shop

Both fantastic threads, especially the second one.

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."

Writing a Paper wrote:

I definitely appreciate the advice and input. I agree with you about the conclusion. There was so much emphasis in the class room in focusing on the hostility that can be found online. I think there should probably be some examples of the positive aspects of the message boards at some point in the body of the essay. I actually thought about Will Steele when I was thinking of positive examples of the Letsrun boards.

Great example. agip also pointed out that it's a great resource for injuries. see several pages back.

Check out the threads "Training and Racing" "Training and Racing over 50". both are very positive.

How could you ignore the magnificent Lester Ballard surfacing from his cave to rip the cretins a new one ?

LRC's very own conscience........

Seriously, interesting thread - I'm the hobbiest of hobby joggers (pb's too embarrassing to post, but of course, I'm sub 14.30 in the 5k).

I got lost in your paper a little bit if I'm honest. Yes, the Duke sexism case is a good example of a controversial (non-running) topic that pulled in extremes of views, but I think the misogynistic simpletons were eventually given somewhat of a verbal thrashing. So, is that proof that LRC is generally a pretty benign place or a place that gives a platform to bigots ?

There is an unbelievable amount (to a Europeans eyes anyway) of casual misogyny in here. A lot of it can be found in the dating advice threads for example. What LRC does through it's anonymity is to allow these voices to be heard, when in polite society, the "social contract" doesn't allow it.

I'd have loved you to be able to reference the Will Steele thread, the outpouring of support for Eddy Lee, the sheer wisdom of the old timers (the Remembrance Sunday thread this year was a complete surprise to find on here, and incredibly moving), the erudition of the many book suggestion threads, the chess commentary by seriously good ex-players like Avocado's Number. There is just so much wonderful stuff here, and if I was writing such a paper, I'd have tried to explore the stark contrast between the witless bigotry of some and the humour, wisdom and knowledge of many others. How it coexists with running as the only real link is probably a fascinating essay in it's own right.

The point that is trying to be accomplished in this essay is the fact that mainstream message boards or online forums, such as letsrun, provide an environment for hostile conversations. Other people are using xbox live games in which immature youth speak in hostile and aggressive tones toward each other. The professor mentioned Grand Theft Auto, but said that if one is to do that they need to play for a few hours on xbox live so they can actually have experience.

Many of the hostile posts on this, and many forums, come from the very people who claim to hate hostile posts made by others. Looking deep into the mirror is something all posters should do.

In psychology, you learn that APA-style conclusions should not be based on personal biases. Any conclusion about internet forum should note that what one person finds offensive is not necessarily offensive to another person.

Writing a Paper wrote:

The point that is trying to be accomplished in this essay is the fact that mainstream message boards or online forums, such as letsrun, provide an environment for hostile conversations. Other people are using xbox live games in which immature youth speak in hostile and aggressive tones toward each other. The professor mentioned Grand Theft Auto, but said that if one is to do that they need to play for a few hours on xbox live so they can actually have experience.

Try this version:

"The point is that mainstream Internet message boards such as Letsrun.com, where people can post incessantly and anonymously, free their visitors from the nominal burden of accountability and thus serve as remarkably fertile soil for the seeds of hostile conversations. Similarly, younger people use media such as Xbox Live and its cousins as vehicles for exchanging wildly aggressive barbs and insults. Professor So-and-So mentioned the extremely popular game Grand Theft Auto, stating that if a newer player wishes to participate in the verbal nastiness himself, he should first spend a few hours on Xbox Live to gain experience with what can only be described as a unique and truly renegade form of communication."

Your version fails APA format for a conclusion. A proper research paper should have an unbiased summary of findings and a an unbiased conclusion to be a valid paper.

English is my 9th language wrote:

Try this version:

"The point is that mainstream Internet message boards such as Letsrun.com, where people can post incessantly and anonymously, free their visitors from the nominal burden of accountability and thus serve as remarkably fertile soil for the seeds of hostile conversations. Similarly, younger people use media such as Xbox Live and its cousins as vehicles for exchanging wildly aggressive barbs and insults. Professor So-and-So mentioned the extremely popular game Grand Theft Auto, stating that if a newer player wishes to participate in the verbal nastiness himself, he should first spend a few hours on Xbox Live to gain experience with what can only be described as a unique and truly renegade form of communication."

APA Format Fail wrote:

Your version fails APA format for a conclusion. A proper research paper should have an unbiased summary of findings and a an unbiased conclusion to be a valid paper.

The OP described his project as an essay, which I took to mean something giving him latitude to editorialize and pontificate as he sees fit. Admittedly, I did not read through all of the posts in this thread, if for no other reason that a third of them are likely to inexplicably disappear before daybreak.

Don't work so hard to skew an essay to what you think it should say. One sided essays are not good papers.

One sided essays are not good papers.[/quote]

That's not necessarily true. Despite what your high-school English comp teacher probably drummed into you, not every issue has two *legitimate* opposing arguments. A good example of how even respected media entities can't resist rolling out the "two sides to every story" canard is a New York Times piece a few years ago about a group of fundamentalist Christians making a pilgrimage to the Grand Canyon as a means of somehow establishing that the canyon had been created all at once by the Noahchian flood of Bible fame, rather than being carved out over millions of years through erosion by the Colorado River. The story actually portrayed the creationists as having at least a veneer of scientific credibility, as if there exists genuine debate over whether modern geologists have it right or whether the loose bunch of nomadic desert shepherds who wrote Genesis a long time ago were correct.

I the case of Letsrun.com, no real debate exists concerning the nature of this place -- the bias of the moderators, the continual bickering over mindless topics, and the fact that this is exactly how the owners wish it to be. The only point of contention is whether or not this is acceptable; some people clearly don't care while others protest or even disappear altogether.

The OP never said they were assigned an essay. They said a paper was assigned.

Everything can be debated.

Your personal opinion about letsrun is just that, a personal opinion. Recognize your comments as your personal opinion.

Skewed Essays wrote:

The OP never said they were assigned an essay. They said a paper was assigned.

Correct on the second statement, but wrong on the first.

Writing a Paper wrote:

The point that is trying to be accomplished in this essay...

Skewed Essays wrote:

Everything can be debated.

Really? How about the value of pi? is it okay to round it down to three? Or is the fraction 22/7 better?

What about the speed of light in a vacuum? The molecular mass of a proton? Whether or not humans can mate with turnips to produce fertile offspring? Are these all topics that are, in your view, open to legitimate debate? Remember, you did say "everything," and I'm getting the idea that you're equating blind, ignorant noise and a basic refusal to acknowledge facts owing to some emotional or otherwise corrupt agenda with the term "debate."

OP's first post "our class has to write a paper about the "virtual community"