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I don't understand your point, and I sure as hell can not imagine why you think a writer needs to stick to a formal style, rather than express thoughts both for

I don't understand your point, and I sure as hell can not imagine why you think a writer needs to stick to a formal style, rather than express thoughts both formally and informally, but this issue has come up before. Over the years there has been a set of people who reliably criticize academic writers who write in an informal manner on their blogs. The economist Paul Krugman gets this kind of criticism a lot -- that is his blog is not sufficiently formal for someone who has won a Nobel prize. All the same, danah boyd explained her reasoning before, on the matter of informality and blog writing. This is what she wrote (several paragraphs): I'm an academic but I'm also a blogger. For me, these are separate identities. I write formal papers that I spend months trying to find the language to properly express what's going on. In those papers, I try to balance precision and readability. My blog is a different story. I write in an off-the-cuff manner, trying to paint impressions rather than nuance. In academic writing, I have to outline methodology and background, assuming that no one has heard of me or the topic before. In my blog, I write with the assumption that people are familiar with my work and with the topic. In academic writing, I write for posterity. In my blog, I write to get an issue off my chest and to work things out while they are still raw. The informal language in my blog is intentional. The lack of citations is intentional. They are meant to signal that this is a work-in-progress. I want to signal that I'm thinking out loud. Unfortunately, many feel as though a blog must be formal and then they project this view onto my writing and then complain about the language and the lack of cites. I am capable of situating arguments in broader theoretical arguments, but I don't attempt to do that here while I'm working through things. I guess my signals are broken. The blog structure is not built for long essays. My blog itself is not formatted to take on a 3000 word essay (it breaks). When I started publishing conference cribs, I started making them separate webpages that I would link to from Apophenia and M2M. Following that, whenever I'd write a blog entry that was longer than 2000 words, I'd shove it off to the same messy directory with my papers and my cribs and link to it from my blog. They're all under the /papers directory simply because I started keeping track of things at the papers URL. You can see more than papers there. I started sub-directorying it a few months ago because it was getting messy. Essays are exactly that and the class piece was an essay. I added citations to everything under that directory because I was finding that people were taking that material out of context. They were copying/pasting the whole article without reference to where it came from because it looked like it stood on its own (folks didn't do that with my blog entries). I wanted people to know the context so all essays, cribs, op-eds, and papers got tagged with a citation. Unfortunately, this meant that people thought that it was a proper paper. http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ResponseToClassDivisions.html http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ResponseToClassDivisions....

shaggyfrog 15y ago
Your over-focusing on just the issue of a lack of citations. The entire format of this piece is centred on the use of provocative questions as headings. This is a well-known trope in journalism for lazy writers who are more concerned about generating traffic than they are doing their job, i.e., finding answers. See: Betteridge's Law of Headlines.
- lkrubner 15y ago
  These are 4 important questions that everyone who creates an online social service needs to think about. danah boyd asked: 1. What if the stranger danger / sexual predator moral panic increased LGBT suicide? 2. What if “It Gets Better” increases emotional devastation for some LGBT youth? 3. What if the media spotlight around bullying causes harm to youth? 4. What if us adults are part of the problem? Let's talk about a hypothetical: you have created a new online social service, and now there are media reports that it is being used by some kids to bully and torment other kids? How would you feel? If I was in such a situation, my response would focus on the systematic forces that allow bullying to happen. I would argue to the media that the focus should be on the social pressures that lead to bullying, rather than my online service. I would also reach out to the victims and offer any support I could. I feel that being helpful in such situations is the best course, both morally and for the business. I would not worry about "setting a precedent", as that line of reasoning was a disaster for AirBnB, in its recent scandal. 2 things should be noted: 1.) danah boyd's line of reasoning is convenient for online services trying to protect themselves legally. I'm sure lawyers for online services will be looking at her line of reasoning and considering that she is a PhD who works for Microsoft, and possibly crafting future defenses around such arguments. 2.) danah boyd could be correct, which for some strange reason is a possibility that you are not even willing to consider. I mean, what if the stranger danger / sexual predator moral panic increased LGBT suicide? This is a perfectly valid hypotheses for research. Why are you so quick to dismiss it? If boyd decides she wants to investigate this question further, or she feels other researchers should be investigating this question, then why is it you want the question dismissed without consideration?

shaggyfrog 15y ago

Your over-focusing on just the issue of a lack of citations. The entire format of this piece is centred on the use of provocative questions as headings. This is a well-known trope in journalism for lazy writers who are more concerned about generating traffic than they are doing their job, i.e., finding answers. See: Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

lkrubner 15y ago
These are 4 important questions that everyone who creates an online social service needs to think about. danah boyd asked: 1. What if the stranger danger / sexual predator moral panic increased LGBT suicide? 2. What if “It Gets Better” increases emotional devastation for some LGBT youth? 3. What if the media spotlight around bullying causes harm to youth? 4. What if us adults are part of the problem? Let's talk about a hypothetical: you have created a new online social service, and now there are media reports that it is being used by some kids to bully and torment other kids? How would you feel? If I was in such a situation, my response would focus on the systematic forces that allow bullying to happen. I would argue to the media that the focus should be on the social pressures that lead to bullying, rather than my online service. I would also reach out to the victims and offer any support I could. I feel that being helpful in such situations is the best course, both morally and for the business. I would not worry about "setting a precedent", as that line of reasoning was a disaster for AirBnB, in its recent scandal. 2 things should be noted: 1.) danah boyd's line of reasoning is convenient for online services trying to protect themselves legally. I'm sure lawyers for online services will be looking at her line of reasoning and considering that she is a PhD who works for Microsoft, and possibly crafting future defenses around such arguments. 2.) danah boyd could be correct, which for some strange reason is a possibility that you are not even willing to consider. I mean, what if the stranger danger / sexual predator moral panic increased LGBT suicide? This is a perfectly valid hypotheses for research. Why are you so quick to dismiss it? If boyd decides she wants to investigate this question further, or she feels other researchers should be investigating this question, then why is it you want the question dismissed without consideration?