What’s is LetsRun article on The Harrier

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Robert Johnson installed a filter on the message boards that made it impossible to use the words “gay” and “rupp” in the same post.

Ah the 20-year old trick of someone who doesn't have an audience writing about Letsrun..com hoping we'll link to them. I'll fall for it. The argument seems to mainly be this:

The Harrier wrote:

I believe in free speech and also believe that a place like LetsRun should be able to moderate their message boards how they want. However, I do have an issue when Robert and Weldon Johnson don’t uphold their own guidelines for the message boards. This was made so obvious in this case where Robert Johnson chose to delete multiple threads about Tom Schwartz leaving Tinman, threads that were presumably not against their message board guidelines but instead were threads they felt they needed to delete to protect the parties involved for whatever reason.

What the author fails to mention is one of the of the key rules we have highlighted in bold.

LRC rules clearly state:

You understand that LetsRun.com does not pre-screen content but it may remove content at its sole discretion for any reason whatsoever.

So in reality, we were following the rules.

That being said, Weldon was irate at me for deleting the posts about the amateur hour that was related to the Tinman breakup. I only did so like the night before we published our story simply because I had meant to figure out what was going on the week before but got distracted by other things.

I really don't understand the logic of the piece. The author seems upset that a) we deleted a single piece of info in the Tinman piece and b) that we dont' immediately delete everything. Which is it?

That's totally contradicotry logic in my mind.

The piece represents why people don't trust the media. The author writes, "Within 10 minutes, I was able to find multiple posts on the boards that clearly violated their own guidelines". So what> no shit.

There are more than 10 million posts. If you couldn't find something out of 10 million posts, then it would be a statistical miracle. Then the author basically proves my point just like Leah O'Connor did a few years ago when she complained about the awful things writen on here when she cited a ton of posts - that actually had all been deleted by the mods - by pointing out there is a post that calls Kara Goucher "The whiniest bitch ever to run professionally".

What a misleading statement. The post is actually 4 years old. And guess what?The post is deleted. It just wasn't subsequently deleted when people quoted others later on in the thread. The author also cites a post about Galen Rupp that is from 2007 and a post about Mary Decker that is from 2003. So it really took you a lot longer than 10 minutes to find an objectionable post. It took you 3-17 years to find 3.

I spent 40 minutes on the phone today with a person upset with our moderation policy. It was a great conversation. Why? Because unlike facebook and twitter, you can actually reach a real person on the phone. Did this author even bother to reach out to me to tell me how they are going to figure out a perfect way to balance free speech and moderation - something that one of the world's riches company's faceook can't even figure out? No.

Moderating is VERY hard. If you want to help us, call me at 844-538-7786 instead of writing some faux outrage article.

Rojo

PS. Here is proof that the Goucher post is no longer active and here is proof that one of our key rules is we can delete whatever the hell we want.

I'm a fan rojo. Keep it up.

Rojo, you are 100% correct that you are within your right to delete anything on your own website in part or entirely. No one can prove that you’re wrong whether you’re following established precedent or erasing things on a whim. However, the more you dabble in gray areas the more you will find users upset with you. It comes with the territory man. You might as well own it. In the ten years I’ve been coming here I’ve rolled my eyes at a bunch of administrative decisions but here I still am anyway. Perhaps it’s because despite my opinion that you could do a lot of things better no one does run a better running website/community right now.

rojo wrote:

I spent 40 minutes on the phone today with a person upset with our moderation policy. It was a great conversation.

Let me guess, was it Stoppit Smith?

Moderating is not that hard if you have a policy and enforce it consistently.

The funny thing about LR is that posts get deleted which point out things the Brojo's don't want to hear.

Flew the coop wrote:

rojo wrote:

I spent 40 minutes on the phone today with a person upset with our moderation policy. It was a great conversation.

Let me guess, was it Stoppit Smith?

Most likely

keyboard warriors who hides behind an anonymous name wrote:

Moderating is not that hard if you have a policy and enforce it consistently.

Even if you have a policy, isn’t it subjective whether or not something violates it?

Runner10287 wrote:

Flew the coop wrote:

Let me guess, was it Stoppit Smith?

Most likely

Yes .

cvbbxa wrote:

keyboard warriors who hides behind an anonymous name wrote:

Moderating is not that hard if you have a policy and enforce it consistently.

Even if you have a policy, isn’t it subjective whether or not something violates it?

Yes. That's what I told Stoppit. He like wants me to pre-screen content. And I'm like and then who is correct? He was very worried about Covid. I was like, "So when Fauci told us not to buy masks, we should have deleted that? OR should we have known that he'd change his mind a few weeks later?"

Forever? wrote:

However, the more you dabble in gray areas the more you will find users upset with you..

i 100% agree. Consistency is key.

I can totally sympathize with the notion that it's virtually impossible to censor everything with a limited staff and budget. That's undeniable.

What IS really annoying is when posts get deleted for absolutely no reason other than (presumably) the personal feelings of one or more moderators. I'm talking about things that aren't even "hot-button" topics or controversial in any way, and don't contain any foul language, private information, etc, getting mysteriously disappeared with no explanation. I think many of us have had that experience. It gives me the feeling that the moderator in question must have the opposite opinion to me on that particular topic, and just deletes my post because if he can't "win" the argument, he'll just delete his opponent's views (and I say "he" confidently, because let's face it, it's a he).

THAT type of petty censorship is annoying AF.

Shabadon't wrote:

I can totally sympathize with the notion that it's virtually impossible to censor everything with a limited staff and budget. That's undeniable.

What IS really annoying is when posts get deleted for absolutely no reason other than (presumably) the personal feelings of one or more moderators. I'm talking about things that aren't even "hot-button" topics or controversial in any way, and don't contain any foul language, private information, etc, getting mysteriously disappeared with no explanation. I think many of us have had that experience. It gives me the feeling that the moderator in question must have the opposite opinion to me on that particular topic, and just deletes my post because if he can't "win" the argument, he'll just delete his opponent's views (and I say "he" confidently, because let's face it, it's a he).

THAT type of petty censorship is annoying AF.

Your major problem is that you've given moderation privileges to person/people who tend to behave under their normal usernames, but are downright awful under unregistered names.

I've always said that I'm fine with not knowing who the moderators are if it needs to be a secret, but they really shouldn't be allowed to post under different names.

rojo wrote:

I only did so like the night before we published our story simply because I had meant to figure out what was going on the week before but got distracted by other things.

That's totally contradicotry logic in my mind.

Like rojo got distracted by like his nap and like by the TV and then by like his second nap between 2PM and 4PM in anticipation of like his early evening nap followed by the distracting pre-bedtime TV watching. Not to mention getting distracted by totally a contradicotry mind full of logic naps and TV watching.

Well part of the problem here is the left. They are supposedly in control but they are acting out of control.

Yay the first person in the thread to bring up politics!

I don’t like to identify with either political side, because it associates me with the idiots on either side, but without dropping parties and what not, there is a clear moderator bias in one direction.

Do I care? No. Should you care? No. This is a running forum, and although the political threads are fun to read due to the idiocy and hypocrisy coming from both sides, this is a running forum, and not a government ran running forum, so you really can say whatever you want, but the moderators have every right to delete whatever they want.

If you don’t like the way things are ran on this website, you don’t have to gripe about it, there are plenty of less toxic more friendly running forums than this one and you are welcome to go to instead.

I honestly think one of my favorite parts of this website is that you can start a thread saying “I’m 15 and just ran a 20:00 5k, how do I get to 16:00?” And the replies may be encouraging, or you may just get a bunch of “you have no talent, go play golf or something”

Letsrun is toxic, and that’s honestly what’s so charming about it, it’s not gonna change, and griping about that will only get you bashed on.

I was really mimicking a few people here and not actually making a statement but of course you could not pick up on that, no offense.

Roboo wrote:

I was really mimicking a few people here and not actually making a statement but of course you could not pick up on that, no offense.

No offense taken. In hindsight I probably should have picked it up as sarcasm, but you do have to understand a solid 1/4 of the regular users on this website say things like this completely unironically.

Also I may wanna clarify only the first line of that message was meant towards you, the rest was generalized to all of letsrun

rojo wrote:

Runner10287 wrote:

Most likely

Yes .

cvbbxa wrote:

Even if you have a policy, isn’t it subjective whether or not something violates it?

Yes. That's what I told Stoppit. He like wants me to pre-screen content. And I'm like and then who is correct? He was very worried about Covid. I was like, "So when Fauci told us not to buy masks, we should have deleted that? OR should we have known that he'd change his mind a few weeks later?"

Forever? wrote:

However, the more you dabble in gray areas the more you will find users upset with you..

i 100% agree. Consistency is key.

You were very charitable in taking time to speak with Stoppit, a total neurotic hypochondriac. Clearly they needed the validation.