More On Rockville Central’s Comment Policy: Full Names Required

Dear Readers:

Thank you for continuing to make Rockville Central an important destination for information and opinion about what’s going on in Our Fair City. Yesterday we had 1,836 page views, which I believe may be a record for us. As a recent article made clear, we continue to try to hone our comment policy and to balance openness and responsibility. We discovered what looked like abuse of the commenting system and implemented some controls that we hope will put an end to it.

We also want to let you know about another control we are formalizing. As many know, we in general are opposed to people commenting under pseudonyms, even ones that are not meant to hide a person’s identity. But we believe that Rockville Central needs to be a forum where people truly own their words. We do not want things written in the comments that people would not say to one another face to face, in a public setting.

For that reason, we are going to be requiring comments to be attributed by first and last name before we approve them for publication. That includes pseudonyms like “Fred In Hungerford,” even if the comment is positive.

If feel you have a pressing need to remain anonymous due to personal safety reasons, please email us and ask ahead of time (rockvillecentral@gmail.com).

Cindy and I know that there are some people who will be made uncomfortable by this. We are sorry, but believe this is best for the overall health of the space. There are many forums where people can comment and express opinions anonymously or pseudonymously. This is not that place.

Thank you.

Comment Policy And Multiple Aliases

Dear Rockville Central readers:

As many of you know, our comment volume has been going up and up, and with the volume we have had a number of challenges as we try to balance openness with the necessity of keeping a civil forum. Cindy Cotte Griffiths and I have felt that we have reached a good equilibrium where, for the most part, we have no completely anonymous commenting and relatively few over-the-line instances of bad behavior. There have been a few judgment calls, and recently we decided to get a little stricter with what we approve, as people’s emotions began to run higher. But by and large it’s been working.

We have a new issue and a new policy we want to draw your attention to.

We recently discovered through looking at our log files that we may have had instances where people have logged comments under multiple pseudonyms. These are called “sock puppets” in the online world, and there is no online forum where they are tolerated. Rockville Central is no exception.

The best way to make sure sock puppetry is not going on is to ban the IP address on comments where we detect what appear to be intentional multiple comment logins (after first looking to make sure it is not multiple people logging in at one place of business, or some other obvious legitimate reason).

We are posting this note to let the community know that, from now on, that is what we are going to do. We have added a warning to the brief instructions above the comment-entry box, and we will not allow comments from IP addresses where there is evidence of multiple comment logins. IP addresses where that is happening will be banned from commenting.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Comment Policy: Focus On The Civil

Dear Rockville Central readers:

As some might have noted, there is an election coming in a few weeks (November 3, in case you wondered). As happens when it’s campaign time, emotions are running a bit high. Editor Cindy Cotte Griffiths and I have been amazed at the volume of comments and gratified that so many readers see Rockville Central as a good place to discuss issues.

However, with the increase in comment volume, we feel the need to refine our comment policy in order to protect the civil and respectful qualities of this space. Rockville Centralhas always been intended to be a blog where we can discuss issues in a measured way. Sometimes we worry it may have lost sight of the “measured” part of that goal, in favor of being open to all.

Moving forward, we plan on tightening our moderation of comments. That means fewer comments will be approved. We will not approve comments that are clearly mean spirited or do not add to the discussion. We will be especially careful of comments that are critical of individuals. There are ways of criticizing behavior without criticizing people.

Our suggestion to people who wish to leave comments is to stop a moment and think about whether and consider whether you would really say what you are writing to an acquaintance or friend. That’s the bar we want to adhere to.

We will continue to actively seek out views that differ from our own, and to try to maintain a fair and impartial policy — both in attitude and in practice. We do not moderate comments based on ideology or because we disagree on the viewpoint of a writer.

We recognize that this policy refinement may cause some to lose interest because the comments will get less active. We accept that. We hope that it will also cause some readers togain interest, because there will be more room for thoughtfulness.

Thank you.

August In Our Fair City

Gentle Readers:

In newspaper circles, they call late August the “silly season.” This dates from days of yore when summer really changed the landscape of things. People went on vacation, offices closed. It was the time of year when not much happens. It’s called the silly season because newspapers, which had to fill page after page of newsprint every day, would choose this time to trot out the silly stories that made you scratch your head: This is news?

Well, no, it wasn’t, but there were inches to fill. In the world of online volunteer local news sites, we don’t have that problem!

And so, while the world no longer slows down as much as it did, in many ways summer is still a slow news time. It’s also a time when people take a bit of a break! And so you may see our volume of stories decrease as we head into the bottom innings of summer.

Rest assured, we’re still here, and as things pick back up (typically when school starts up again) the stories will become more plentiful.

Meantime, enjoy your silly season.

Here is one way you can help: Send us news tips! This is a community resource!

Your friends at Rockville Central

Yesterday’s Rockville Roundtable Breaks Ground

If you missed yesterday’s Rockville Roundtable lunch at Benjarong Restaurant, you missed a great conversation! These monthly lunches started out as a lark back in February 2008, when I announced I would be having lunch at a certain place on a certain day, and invited whoever wanted to to join me (Dutch treat of course). I thought maybe three people would show up, but a dozen people came to join me and right then and there we decided to keep it going. Every month we meet at a different place, and we change the day of the week, too, so more people can make it over time.

At these lunches everyone is welcome and there are no set agendas. City and state elected officials have attended and it is always an interesting give-and-take. People just bring up topics that interest them and we all talk about them.

Yesterday we broke ground in two ways.

Candidates Calling

First of all, we had four candidates for office attend: Piotr Gajewski (who announced he is running for re-election to city council); Cheryl Kagan (running for state senate in 2010); Phyllis Marcuccio (running for mayor); and Waleed Ovase (running for city council).

Each one of these candidates had a chance to say a few words — and they did! Each gave a quick overview of why they are running and what they would bring to the office, if elected.

There was some controversy ahead of time, which is another first for this lunch. Piotr had let me know ahead of time that he wanted to declare his intentions at the Roundtable. While the lunches are always open to everybody, and to any topic, I was also a bit worried about how it would really work. By getting together every month with an ever-changing group of Rockville friends, we’ve created a very inviting and intimate space and I did not want to lose that. Low-key, small scale — that’s us. The Roundtable is not a “political” lunch, it’s a civic lunch. But the Gazette mentioned in yesterday’s edition that Piotr would be making an announcement and I got a few emails from regular attendees that were uncomfortable about that.

My feeling was that I would allow any candidate to do a similar thing — which is not to make a big speech but just to talk about what they are up to.

In the end that’s what happened: all the candidates got their say, but it was not a big deal. I have not spoken to some of the people who raised concerns since the lunch (I had to run and do some other work for a client right afterward), but my sense was that there was a good balance struck between fairness to all, openness of the space, and the fact that like it or not it’s election season and there are fellow community members who are standing for election and who would like to tell us about that. (I welcome differing views  on how it went, either in the comments or directly by email.)

Then we moved on to what, for me, was the real ground breaking aspect of yesterday’s lunch.

Talk About Comments

As many readers know, Rockville Central has had some growing pains over the last few months. Our readership has shot up and with new friends we’ve gotten a lot more new activity in the comments. Sometimes the tone has gotten mean, and we’ve struggled to figure out a reasonable policy that balances all the values we are trying to uphold: helpfulness, openness, fairness, transparency.

The difficult thing is that there is no one correct answer to this conundrum. I have been getting many concerned emails, but they are on all sides of the issue, ranging from a strong conviction that it’s crucial to retain the ability to comment anonymously so people feel free to speak, to the equally strong conviction that we need to filter more objectionable comments than we now do and that all people should be required to give a full name and address.

So Cindy Cotte Griffiths and I have been struggling with what to do, now that we are getting, some days, ten and more comments where we used to get ten a month.

And so, we talked about it yesterday and I was simply over the moon by the time the conversation ended. Everyone had very, very good points. But even more uplifting was how the exchange of views allowed us all to see new possibilities for how we might handle the issue, and to see how other points of view besides our own — even if we don’t agree with them — are also valid.

By the end of the lunch, we had hit upon what I think is a good plan for moving forward, and I will be implementing a new comment policy over the next few days. The main points of the new comment policy will be:

• All comments will be held for review before posting
• We will apply a fairly strict rule for what gets approved. We’re not going to approve comments that criticize other people in personal or mean-spirited ways,
• Instead of just deleting such comments, though, we’ll send a note to the commenter telling them why we are not approving their comment and encouraging them to resubmit

Note that anonymous comments are OK but will have the same criteria applied. And so you will have to leave a real email address because otherwise we can’t contact you if there is an issue with your comment.

We’ll see how this goes for a while — it may be more work than Cindy and I can reasonably do, but I think it will be OK. Some folks may have to wait for up to several hours before their comment appears, if we are away from the computer for some reason.

But I think this balances a lot of the competing issues when it comes to comments. Remember, we want to be fair and open for all, but most of all we want to be helpful to the community. That means we are trying to create an online space that is polite — like a face to face town meeting, but you don’t have to get dressed up first.

I want to thank everyone who came yesterday, for helping think through this difficult issue. I also encourage people to keep up the conversation in the comments!

My plan is to begin implementing these comment policies over the next few days.

Rockville Central May Break This Weekend

Gentle Readers–

There’s a spot of maintenance we need to perform on our publishing engine over the weekend (for those who care, we are upgrading to WordPress 2.8.1). I wanted to let you know becuase there might be some, um, downsides.

Our web site is highly customized (by me, which is to say by a person with no more hacking skill than a chimpanzee wearing oven mitts) and so the upgrade may break things. It is possible that you may visit this fine web site over the weekend and find it looking very odd. Worst case is this lasts into the week (please, God, let that not happen, please.)

When it’s all done, it should be back to normal. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up. I am planning to do this on Saturday.

Thanks,

–Brad Rourke

P.S. Cross you fingers for me.

People: BE CIVIL IN YOUR COMMENTS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

It is just a few days since I posted a reminder about our comment guidelines. In a nutshell they are:

• Only write what you would say to someone’s face
• Be civil; criticize people’s ideas but not the person him or herself
• Hurtful comments are NOT HELPFUL

If anything, since then, the tone of some comments has gotten worse. This is hugely disappointing. I am hopeful that we can lift ourselves up, instead of sink down further.

This is a community space, provided free for all, meant to be helpful to all. Your right to express your opinion does not extend to mocking and berating others.

Honestly, this behavior is beginning to disgust me. There is no excuse for calling someone names. You may as well be writing on a bathroom wall.

So I am giving fair warning: If this continues, I will begin to aggressively filter comments and I will consider shutting down all comments.

A Reminder About Our Comment Guidelines

Gentle Readers,

Periodically it is useful for me to step in and remind people about the norms we have here at Rockville Central when it comes to commenting. It’s been a long time since I did that last.

While we are an online site, and we look a lot like a “blog,” we’re actually something a little different than that. Rockville Central is a civic space that happens to exist online. We’re more like a big, informal civic meeting. So some things that are typical on many blogs we just don’t think have a place here.

Over time, I have distilled it all into a few simple guidelines:

1. Try to only write what you would say to someone’s face — this is a civil space, not a bathroom wall [UDATE: fixed erroneous "not"]
2. If you disagree with someone, write about their ideas — not about them
3. If you are angry, express that — but don’t go overboard with hyperbole
4. We are neighbors, so please think twice before you post as “Anonymous” or “Concerned Voter” — saying who we are promotes accountability for our words
5. My bias is to let most comments stand but comments that cross the line will be deleted — in extreme cases I’ll close comments on a certain post or take other actions
6. Patently offensive comments will be deleted — swiftly and without notice

Think of these guidelines as our comment policy. They are not rigid (except for that last one).

Since we redesigned Rockville Cenrtal, comment activity has picked up dramatically. With that increased activity has come some increased emotion. By and large this is good and just shows that we need places to talk about difficult issues. But sometimes people have been getting pretty close to that line I talk about above.

So I thought it would be a good time to remind people.

The “anonymity” issue is one that I get a lot of questions about. I am trying to strike a balance between ease of use and accountability. So I don’t have a hard and fast rule. In fact, I change policies over time based on what I feel are the needs of the space. Sometimes I clamp down and make people “register.” This has the effect of slowing down commenting because some people find it hard to navigate that system, but it does usually get the tone of things back on track. Most of the time, though, I keep it pretty open.

And of course I recognize that there are legitimate reasons for posting anonymously (in the cases of whistle-blowers or people who would be in danger if their identity were known). I also recognize that some people are just more comfortable staying anonymous, so in general I don’t go around yelling at people just because they don’t want to say who they are — I just try to remind folks periodically that this is a place where you can be public.

Today’s “policies” won’t necessarily work tomorrow. These are guidelines and they can shift over time.

One last thing. Remember this is a volunteer effort and we try our best. We’re not trying to build notoriety or throw bombs — we’re trying to provide a community benefit by opening up this space and keeping it open day-in, day-out.

If you have questions, concerns, comments, or criticisms, please feel free to email me directly.

Or, of course, add to the comments below!

(We have a long history of concern over comments, like most online spaces. Two good articles that give insight into our specific history are here and here.)

Rockville Central Second Most Popular Local Blog In Maryland

We can’t help but toot our own horn just a little bit, because we’re so excited! The authoritative Maryland Politics Watch has posted a traffic analysis that concludes Rockville Central is the second most-read local blog in Maryland.

In the article, written by Adam Pagnucco, our entry says:

Rockville Central Stats, from Maryland Politics Watch

Brad Rourke and Cindy Cotte Griffiths have created a true online gathering place for the City of Rockville. Their site carries a mix of news, editorials, announcements and pictures that many residents have adopted as an indispensable resource. Local politicians are particularly watchful as many have submitted guest posts and city elections are approaching. Rockville Central has been the second-most visited local blog in the state after Inside Charm City over the last two months.

And it’s accompanied by a very gratifying upward sloping graph!

The traffic is very gratifying. But, more important to us is Adam’s point that Rockville Central is a “gathering place.” That is our purpose. Speaking as a “civic junkie,” I am just over the moon to think that just opening up a civil, informative online space can fill such a need in a community.

I hope others consider starting their own such online spaces, here in Rockville and elsewhere. It all adds up to a more vibrant and healthy community.

Much research shows that communities with a habit of working together to solve problems are more resilient communities, able to weather ups and downs in the economy and other crises.

Rockville Central New Look Set For Friday

Dear Readers:

Cindy and Brad have been working very, very hard to get all the bells and whistles just right for the redesign of the Rockville Central homepage.

If all goes well, we will be unveiling it tomorrow morning!

So, watch this space. Please make sure you give us feedback on what’s working and what isn’t. There may be some bumps in the road at the outset, but we will try to minimize it!

Thanks in advance for your patience.