Defining Reasonableness Online: A Case Study of an Internet Forum ...

Submitted for your reading amusement - This is something I discovered a fair while back, but didn't find a nice reading format version until now. Perhaps it can later go to a public forum.Laureij, Leon - Defining Reasonableness Online: A Case Study of an Internet Forum about the Creation / Evolution Controversy - Paper presented at the annual meeting of the NCA 93rd Annual Convention, TBA, Chicago, IL, Nov 15, 2007

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Abstract: The public sphere of argumentation changes as worldviews are communicated on Internet forums. Differing fields of argumentation and increased accessibility potentially thwart online critical discussion. In a case study of a forum about the creation / evolution controversy I evaluate its design in the light of the complexity of disparate starting points in the discussion. I propose to redesign the forum’s affordances and constraints in concert with theoretical insights into the ideal of critical discussion.

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The whole paper is here (PDF).evcforum.net comes in on page 9.

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To further explore these questions, I set out to analyze the debate between two great competing occidental worldviews, ‘evolutionism’ and ‘creationism’, carried out through a modern digitalized medium, the Internet forum. The specific forum in question can be found at EvC Forum: Home Page and offers open access to anyone with an Internet connection and e-mail address.

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4. The EvC Forum

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Running the queries creation evolution forum, creation evolution debate, creation evolution discussion in Google all yield this forum as the number-one hit, including the description: EvC Forum: Creation versus Evolution. Multi-Forum Discussion Board dedicated to developing a better understanding of the issues on both sides of the debate. The other query results following this top position are also predominantly links to debate forums devoted to the topic, but they all explicitly advocate one side of the controversy. This selection, among the other alternatives, seemed most likely to yield an instantiation of public discourse unbiased by a strong pull to either technical scientific discourse or private religious debate, hence invite confrontations between advocates of both sides of the debate.

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Adminnemooseus

Did the author ever participate in discussions?

Oh holy hell... Faith is featured. I'll continue reading. It's really cool to see what someone else has to say about the board.ETA: That was really interesting. Thanks for the link.So has EvC changed anything as a result of the paper?Edited by roxrkool, : No reason given.

I discovered this paper many months ago but the pdf link had eluded me. When I found the pdf (which had a time sensitive link, which is why Percy copied it to evcforum.net storage), I plugged it into the "Private Administration Forum" where it has been aging for a couple of months. There was no discussion of the paper at the PAF.I did track down a physical location and e-mail address for the author. As I recall, he is from the Netherlands, and is/was in a PhD program in communications in the U.S. I have found no evidence that he ever registered at evcforum.net. Percy had e-mailed the author but, as best I know, never heard back.It would seem that the core of his research was via all those moderation procedure discussion topics we used to do (look in the "Suggestion and Questions" forum). It would have been very hard without those topics. The use of such topics has been discontinued because the discussion got way out of hand (OSLT*).Adminnemooseus*Or something like that.

From what I can tell, discussion of EvC begins on page 9/10 (as Adminnemooseus says) and continues through the rest of the paper.Here's a list of Member names that I noticed as I went through:Phat, AdminPhat - p.10 - Used to show the difference between Admins and their regular member user names. Sorry Phat, I don't think they used your name for anything else...Faith - p.11, p.15 - The paper heavily disects some direct quotes from FaithBrian, Modulous - p.12 - Short quote from eachAdmin - p.14, p.15, p.16 - The paper heavily discussed many direct quotes from Admin and comments on how he runs the forums and deals with FaithMark24 - p.16 - Short quoteWounded King - p.17 - Short quotearachnophilia - p.18 - Short quoteModulous, Confidence - p.18 - A discussion commenting on the dialog between these two members.Confidence - p.20 - The paper disects some direct quotes from ConfidenceFrom what I can tell, EvC was displayed in a rather all-around positive light. Yay for those involved!!

"The demand for evidenced and reasoned assertions appears with an evolutionist bias ..."* chuckles *

Does this only apply to science fora, I wonder.

I did hear back. Since publishing his paper he's moved on to other things, though still in his core field, but with a much more corporate bent. His office in New Brunswick, NJ, overlooks the Raritan River across from Johnson Park where I played tennis matches for my high school.--Percy