Notes from the City In the Times Union.

[stephendare]

The Times Union is in the process of expanding their community input section and in that effort, I am leading a section on their public forums called "Notes From the City".

As many of our posters know, the TU Forums have long been a wasteland of ALLCAPS postings childish attack speech and flame wars, but the Rules of Civility have been posted in Notes From the City and I am having a fairly amusing time having to enforce them.

Im posting this thread because of the number of people who have emailed or texted or messaged on facebook to ask whats up, plus I think the TU is going to advertise the site a little next week or so, and I wanted to explain it before they do.

I am with Metrojacksonville.com, and not a TU employee, to answer the basic underlying question.  We have been cooperating with the TU and have shared content back and forth for a few months now in a spirit of community--along with other great blogs like urban jacksonville and jax politics.  We are all learning from each other in the process and its been a pretty great arrangement.

One thing that we blogs and indie websites have learned how to do (mostly through trial and error) is maintain an area where people can have a great conversation and ideas can actually be discussed. The newspapers in general across the country have not really mastered this, and most of the public forums are a big ALL CAPS mess of flame wars and incivility.  Hopefully we can help infect them with our experience, and in the meantime an even larger group of people will be exposed to the concerns and ideas championed by metrojacksonville readers and posters.

Anyways, Im just now getting the area set up and filled with conversation subjects, and already widespread consternation and flames have broken out. 

If you are interested check it out: http://jacksonville.com/forums/community/notes_from_the_city_moderated_by_stephen_dare

But you might get a chuckle at the response to my presence there by the Times Union regulars:  http://jacksonville.com/forums/community/community_forum/149749