Rawdon 2.0 Forums, Carnet / Blogs, Nouvelles et plus

Week overview

I started this forum / website last Friday, February 15th 2008. Things have been pretty smooth on my side of things. On the other hand, it has been suspiciously silent this last week. The injunction had a sudden impact, effectively shutting up the people it targetted, forcing into hiding the unnamed ones and dispersing the rest. A forum with over 100 members is gone, with little chance of resurrection. After the 15th, except for the interview about this new forum, there was no more news coverage. In English, not a word yet. Two occasions were missed, at least: the SLAPP coverage and the expected removal from the net of the Inverdigm server hosting the forum, which never occured. The municipality's administration has yet to publish its meetings minutes after December 18h 2007. Finally, we citizens are all paying the price and it seems we can't do anything about it, but like Steve says so succinctly, "Yes we can!"

Web site news

This website has seen a little activity, with only 5 people creating accounts and leaving comments along with a few anonymous ones too. For Friday, I'm counting over 400 hits (quite a few are probably mine, then some spiders from searh engines, and the rest, well that's you) which prompted me to add better statistics and hopefully show the full diversity we can achieve.

I also converted the default front page to show a few news items instead of leading directly into the forum. I hope that's ok. I haven't had much time to enhance the site, nor did I translate as much stuff as I wanted too. I'm trying to make amends by writing this first in English (and now wondering how I'm going to translate this...).

About moderation, language and topics

The only thing that will enhance ths website is the content and the exchanges we can have to maybe achieve a better quality of life together. I had two main reasons to start this website:

1. To defend freedom of speech
2. To give something back to Rawdon, where I fondly remember growing up

I hope you can help me get there. I could use a hand with moderation (which I'm only using right now to prevent spam). I haven't removed a single message (except said spam) although I was a little tempted once or twice. Eventually, I will let each user flag inapropriate content and when it will reach a certain level, it will get thrown into moderation for manual review. Guidelines will soon follow to help in determining what is and isn't appropriate on the web site.

Next time

I had planned for a longer article, as the overview might lead you to believe. I didn't want any longer to produce some kind of announcement so here is what should be considered the first part in a series of two or three articles, depending on what the next few days have in store for me.

1. News from the defendents
2. News from the municipality
3. News from citizens
   1. Citizen or Resident?
   2. And blogs
4. In the media
5. How did we get here?
   1. Steve Solo's forum
6. Conclusion