Actually I felt the recent SA articles are not as good as some of the older ones. Seems more opinion than analysis. A lot more assertion than before.

This post was brought to my attention in the context of a recent post that I had written.

If the bit about "impression of SA bloggers indulging in writing academic articles in this blog" is a response to what I had written, then it is missing my point. My point is that the *tone and style* of SA has become overly academic, and not in a good way. It is still academic in the sense of being rigorous and truthful, but SA lately has taken on an air of being dry, disconnected from the average reader, and sometimes even self-absorbed and obsessing over tiny details.

Of course not every article is as dour as I have described, but it's a general perception that I get increasingly often these days.

I don't have an agenda against SA. I just say it the way I see it.

Just so you guys know, the use of a pie graph representing breakdown of articles in category is quite inappropriate. Just pick up any social research text and they'll tell you that. It would probably be better to list the breakdown in a table even though it's not as visually pleasing.

Ted:

To each his own. Btw, I am a theoretical physicist (or computational biologist now) and not a social scientist, so I don't follow the conventions of social science texts. A pie chart is definitely more "exciting" than a table of numbers.

Elia:

Style is a matter of choice. In essence, we have no interest to address your point about Singapore Angle and we are aware of our audience. Market forces do not dictate what each individual SA author writes.

The objective of this exercise is to demonstrate that people are more inclined towards rhetoric and polemic based on the truth they see it, and not observing the real numbers behind what reality really look like. A quote from Oscar Wilde comes to mind: "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."

The key point, as I put it as clearly as possible in the last paragraph: is there, somehow, an anti-intellectualist streak within the Singapore blogosphere? Perhaps, that question is much more worth examining.

Joseph:

Thank you for your feedback and we will see what we can do in the future.

Who is the average reader? Is there an average reader?

I have always believe that the blog sphere is so large with no barrier to entry that every blogs can/should have their targeted audience. The next blog is just a click away anyways =)

For me personally, learning from others' opinions and points of view in the comment thread from my posted articles is well worth my time in writing and posting the articles. Debating and discussing issues in a constructive way help me to better understand why I think the way I do, and correct myself if face with better facts.

Does opinion count less than analysis and vice versa? Some readers prefer opinion (think SAP) and some readers prefer analysis (think SA Main). I think the beauty of SA is that this is a collection of individuals who have different writing styles and topic preferences, and each write what he is passionate about.

Even though it is critical in businesses to know what the customers exactly want in order to thrive, SA is in a strange position where we gain nothing (not even google ads which is a decision from the group not to do so) from the readers except from the readers' (precious) time contributing to the comment threads after reading the article.

Random thoughts on the posting and comment threads I read.

No worries, I am just blindly adhering to the dogma as had been instructed to me in my training. :)

BL, thanks for crunching the numbers.

WRT to your closing question, I would suggest that the answer is yes. Perhaps some factors include how the vocabulary, as used in the Singaporean context, is unhelpful. For example, 'scholarship' more commonly connotes the type awarded by the PSC rather than the pursuit of learning; 'academic' as a term of abuse when discussing policy and politics due to the low status of social science research in Singapore; 'rational' as furthering the chasm of the great affective divide due to a fetishization of a particular type of instrumentalist rationality by the ruling party that, in turn, contaminates other less instrumentalist appeals to reason.

Bernard,

Hi. I fully agree with your conclusion statement (in this comment called Discussion) per se, let me say this upfront. But, even for a back-of-envelope analysis, it seems to me that the data given in this post do not support your idea. Perhaps let me reformat the information you have provided, so that I can align my understanding with yours.

Define meanings and classification processes:

"Academic" = with proper references and footnotes, or "REFTNT" for short. (3 lines above Fig. 1, '...by academic standards i.e. with proper references and footnotes.')

Threshold % REFTNT articles to classify SA site as Academic = not specified. Therefore assume > 50%.

Threshold no. of refs and footnotes in article to classify article as REFTNT = not specified. Therefore assume > 0.

Run classification script.

Result: % REFTNT articles = 22%.

Conclusion: SA is not an academic site.

Discussion: Why do people think it is, then? They must be 'harbouring some preconceived notions' 'even if evidence and rigorous analysis show otherwise'. Also, 'The objective of this exercise is to demonstrate that people are more inclined towards rhetoric and polemic based on the truth they see it, and not observing the real numbers behind what reality really look like. A quote from Oscar Wilde comes to mind: "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."'

Your data is alright, but the Discussion statement does not follow from your results - the link between SA not being an academic site (by your definition) and the idea that people are more inclined towards rhetoric etc is very weak, for a couple of reasons. One is the unspoken thresholds defined. The other is the part that Elia has commented on as above, the first step of your line of thought, "Academic" = REFTNT. He suggests "Academic" = tone and style, as an alternative. I would personally agree that the latter definition is reasonable as well; consider that it's not a far leap to see how tone and style alone, as qualitative measures, could make SA dry reading and therefore put some people off reading it. A persistent dislike of real numbers would quite plausibly not be a discriminating factor for such a population, and it is untrue to attribute their tagging of SA as 'academic' to such a factor or to say without further testing that they must have a preconceived dislike of real numbers *for sure*.

I personally agree with your idea that people stick to their preconceived notions despite some numerical analysis that would disprove those, but this is because of my own observations, and not the reasons or analysis you have provided here. Too many unspoken assumptions and missing links there are, between "Academic", SA, and persistent dislike of numbers.

cognitivedissonance,

Nobody is making those links that you claim in your comment. By the way, your use of classification is totally bogus, if not absolute rubbish. Neither in any way, I suggest that showing 22% means that we are not an academic site. To prove that it is not an academic site is far more simple that your reformatted interpretation, almost 99% of the articles are not published in academic journals for a start.

The data is only meant to construct an argument whether all the articles are really hard core analysis, and the impression that commentaries or opinions can be perceived as academic in that regard. Neither do I at any point make any inferences on whether people dislike numbers or not.

Bernard & ringisei

Well stated and written on both your articles.

Regards

Bernard,

Your follow-up comment is incoherent and the second sentence in it uncivil where I truly meant well. In any case I have said what I wanted to say and you have instead tried to trump it by redefining academic yet again to getting published in journals. Contrary to your assertion you have indeed made an inference on how people dislike numbers, in your reply comment to Elia which I then quoted. There is nothing more I wish to say and I quit this discussion without prejudice. Have a good day.

cognitivedissonance:

The problem with your argument is that you have attempted to place assertions that I did not make, for example, where did you get the idea that I was responding to Elia's post or even better, since when I made the inference that people dislike numbers? Worst, you try to substantiate using bogus methods. My criticism is towards your method and not you. Nor in any way I have been uncivil to you as I criticize the classification methods as total rubbish.

What it means is that for every five articles a SA author writes, only one can be treated as a serious article by academic standards i.e. with proper references and footnotes. That means the impression of SA bloggers indulging in writing academic articles in this blog is exaggerated.

Hi Bernard, interesting short article with beautiful pies. But I sense that you're having a bad day? :) Actually, I can see where Cognitive Dissonance & Elia Diodati are coming from; they mean well lah...

Basically, I think you're defining the term 'academic' too narrowly, and CD and Elia were trying to broaden the definition. On top of what they said, this is what I think...

1) (Definitely) more than '1 in 5' articles in SA can be treated as a serious academic article. To say that only an article with referencing/footnotes is a 'serious' one is to define 'serious academic article' too narrowly. Even though some articles don't have referencing/footnotes, they use hypertext links to refer readers to other webpages (so in a sense the hypertext links already serve as referencing tools). And the general style of the article can still be very academic. Your definition focuses on 'form' rather than 'substance'.

2) There's a conflation of 'academic' with 'boring' and 'un-polemical' in the discussion. An 'academic' article is not necessarily boring in tone/style, nor is it necessarily devoid of any polemical sentences.

2b) (To add on to point 2) There's also a conflation of 'academic' with 'obscure'/'overly cheem'/'hard-to-understand' in the discussion (e.g. '...impression of SA bloggers indulging in writing academic articles'). 'Academic' articles need not be hard to understand...

As a guest contributor, I was under the (bogus?) impression that if my submitted article was not "academic" (read: references and footnotes) enough, then my article would be bounced back to me ("rejected") for me to insert those references or footnotes. Hence in my submitted article, I took special pains to have more references and footnotes then what I am normally comfortable with. Back then I was quite aware that some of the regular contributors don't cite references, but the bar was raised for guest contributors for quality control purposes.

That said, I contributed to SA some time ago. I don't quite so think that SA is so uppity now compared to back then. But I do see where such impressions come from.

Hi FO, Articles won't get rejected just because of the absence or insufficiency of references/footnotes! :) It's just that there are 10/11 writers and each of us can give our suggestions on incoming articles. So as long as ONE writer feels that he prefers you to have references/footnotes, the suggestion will be forwarded to the guest writer (even if the other SA writers don't really mind). A good blog post is a good blog post, with or without references/footnotes. A bad blog post is a bad blog post, even with a 300-item bibliography and 1000 footnotes! Okay, I'm being dramatic again... :)

Anyway, all you need to do is to secure the votes of more than half of the SA writers.

FO,

It really depends on what you are writing on. The reviewers for SA usually take into account what the blog post is about. For me, I try to think in terms of what would happen if I am submitting an entry like you to be reviewed, and hence I have to keep to the standard that I need to.

In any case, I do recall that your post was reviewed with a clear mandate for publishing. :)

It's not the typographical convention (footnotes, endnotes, in text references, MLA style, Chicago style, Turabian, whatnot) that matters. Rather, for instance, if one makes a claim that is not obviously true and could in any case be backed up by suitable sources, then it is entirely appropriate that one cites the source. The point is so as to allow the readers to check things out for themselves. There are other examples. And this referencing can be done using whatever typographical convention the writer prefers--think of the humble hyperlink--what else is it but the web cousin of the footnote/endnote, etc? Needless to say, if the argument does not require the making of such references--it is assessable "as is"--then the references are redundant.

Incidentally, I don't recall any reviewer actually requesting that the guest contributor cite references, etc. per se. But there are many cases in which reviewers refer the writer to additional sources, whatnot as suggestions on how aspects of the article may be improved. I recall cases where reviewers pointed out to the writer that some factual assertion made in the article is either supported--or refuted--by this or that study. And surely that would be important information. How exactly the writer takes up the suggestion can vary.

To use FO's article on "Religious Discourse" as another (slightly different) example. During the review process, I remember pointing him to something in John Rawls, Political Liberalism and several other places because (a) I know that he is philosophy trained and should be familiar with ideals in this ballpark, and (b) I thought the idea of "burdens of judgment" discussed by Rawls could help him in conceptualizing something in his article better. But how he takes up that suggestion is up to him: in fact, it is entirely possible to read those sources I suggested, get the idea, and express them without any fancy citation of Rawls and it would have been fine. But obviously most people will give credit where credit is due, using whatever typographical convention.

Isn't it just more fun to make people angry?