802 Online

That's the name of our new winter sports blog.

And this is our blogger, Jason Starr. He'll be posting about skiing, snowboarding, sledding and other downhill-type activities.

Jason emailed me and pitched this blog a couple months ago. He really wanted to launch it in early November, but he contacted me right as we were poised to finish our web redesign, so it took a little while to get this site up and running.

Check it out, leave some comments, tell us what you think.

The name is a play on "toboggan." I wanted to put an umlaut on the 2nd "o" — just for the hell of it — but it seemed too cute.

Somehow I have neglected to mention last week's episode of Stuck in Vermont, starring Goma, this super-cute Himalayan cat. My apologies!

I mentioned Goma once before on my blog, when I introduced Sachie Tani's My Himalayan Cat Goma Blog. When I first wrote about Goma, I dismissed Sachie as just another cat blogger. But now I know that Sachie's love for Goma is real. And powerful. Watching Eva's video made me love him, too!

I wrote about Goma in my Web Page column in the paper, to draw attention to the video Eva posted online. That's what Goma is looking at in this photo from the Goma blog.

I am powerless to resist the cuteness of Goma.

Another twist on my last post...

Dan Barlow had an interesting article in the Times Argus yesterday about the lawsuit against iBrattleboro.

It's my understanding that iBrat is covered under the Communications Decency Act (Section 230, I think), so they should be fine legally.

But I have to agree with Traci Griffith's assessment:

"The government is still playing catch-up with the Internet in a lot ofareas, especially around speech," said Traci Griffith, an assistantprofessor of journalism and mass communications at St. Michael'sCollege in Colchester. "It's too bad we didn't have the foresight toaddress some of these issues earlier, but we are going to see newattempts to regulate the Internet in the next few years."

Will the laws change? Will websites become liable for comments posted by 3rd parties? It does seem unlikely. Can you imagine someone having to read and filter every single comment on every single web forum before it got published? That seems crazy to me.

But maybe that's because I'm one of the people who would have to do it.

I mean, I think hands-on moderation is key to hosting a healthy discussion. It's definitely smart to read comments and remove them if they violate a policy, but pre-screening seems too labor-intensive to me for a site like iBrat. And it would put up a barrier that could inhibit the community conversation that makes the site so useful.

Incidentally, what's up with the lack of links in this story? C'mon, Times Argus. How hard is it to link to iBrattleboro?

Fiona Spruill of the New York Times is participating in a Q&A this week on the Times website. A co-worker emailed it to me a few days ago, and I just checked it out. I appreciate her willingness to answer questions (and the Times' willingness to let her), because I'm really interested in what she has to say.

I'm particularly curious about the Times' commenting policy. Seven Days is moving closer to adding reader comments to stories, and I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Like, how are we going to moderate them? Or, more accurately, how am I going to moderate them?

Here's part of Spruill's answer to a question about adding more reader comments:

We have made the decision to pre-screen everything and weed out thetenacious few who might try to derail a conversation with off-topic orabusive comments. (Our moderating guidelines are available here.)Moderating takes time, which is why only a handful of articles havecomments right now, but we hope to open up more articles to comments inthe near future.

I know we aren't going to pre-screen everything, but I do want to have a system that encourages civility and thoughtful comments, and discourages trolls.

I notice that Spruill mentions the Times is hiring a part-time communty moderator, to help deal with the increase in comments. Unfortunately, that's not an option here... yet.

I also want to point out this comment thread on the Burlington Free Press site. I almost posted about it last week, but I held off, because I wasn't sure what to say about it. I'm still not sure, actually, but I'm putting it out there anyway.

The article it's attached to is the first (I think) of the two that the BFP ran about Shawn Burritt, a  guy from Jericho who was arrested for driving drunk and causing a crash that killed a high school student. It's a tragic story.

I think this comment thread exemplifies some of the best and worst aspects of online discussion.

Within this thread, there are comments from readers who were involved in the accident and knew the people involved. Their comments add a different and — I think — valuable perspective to the news story.

That is, if you believe that they are who they say they are.

There's no way to know for sure, really, since the writers use aliases, and there's no way to contact them.

There are also several inflammatory posts by people who just want to sound off on the story. Some of their comments are insensitive, and don't add anything to the discussion. They probably make more rational readers shy away from commenting.

It feels like this thread needs another layer of moderation, either by a paid moderator, or by the readers. Some way of elevating the useful comments, and downgrading the others.

I don't know if we'll be able to build something like that into our site, but I hope that we can eventually. I think I want to have the option of reading all of the comments, but I want to see the best ones first. Or I want some way of seeing at a glance which are worth reading, and which are worth skipping unless I decide I want to delve deeper.

As you can see, I'm still trying to figure all of this out. Thoughts?

I'm still adjusting to life after drupal, which includes a new workflow process around posting stories to our website.

Blah blah blah.

Listen to me talk — can you believe that I used to be a poet?

I haven't been surfing Vermont blogs much lately, though I have been reading some interesting articles that are worth passing along.

The Video Explosion: interesting article for media insiders curious about how newspapers are doing with their video experiments.

The Rebirth of Backpack Journalism: I'm with this guy. I would be a backpack journalist... if I were still a reporter who actually wrote stories.

Christopher Walken mask: I know, it's not an article, but it's funny.

The 12 Most Influential Online Videos of All Time: Via Boing Boing. All Your Base Are Belong To Us!

Cory Doctorow Thinks Facebook Won't Last: Or so he says in this column. I'm not sold, though.

William Langewiesche disses Vermont:  That's my alternative title for this glowing profile of one of my favorite writers. If you don't know his work, you're missing out!

And just for kicks... A review of the book I just finished. It was great! I borrowed it from my local library. Have I mentioned that I recently volunteered for the Winooski library advisory board?

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy day.

I woke up early and actually spent a couple hours working. Not because I had to, just because I thought of something and wanted to get it down before I forgot about it.

Yes, I'm a geek who likes my job. And I'm thankful for that every day.

A woman drove her Jeep Rodeo through the picture window of a house on Mallett's Bay Ave. in Winooski earlier today. I'm posting this because the Free Press has posted some unbelievable photos of this bizarre occurrence. Nice job, Alison Redlich.

Here's the story. More in tomorrow's paper.

It is a little weird that you can purchase these photos (framed copies go for $54.95), but I guess we've all gotta make money somehow, right? Wonder if they'll sell any.

Incidentally, this is just a couple blocks from my house.

Traditionally, the Five Ws refer to "Who, What, When, Where, Why." They're the five questions journalists are supposed to answer when writing a story. There's also an H — "How" — which is important, too.

Now Paul Bradshaw at the Poynter Institute has come up with a new set of questions for journalists in the age of web 2.0:

• Who can I connect with?
• What did the journalist read to write this?
• Where did this happen?
• When are events coming up that I need to be aware of?
• Why should I care?
• How can I make a difference?

You can read his whole post on the list here.

In theory, I think it's great when we can give as much of this information as possible, though as a matter of practical fact, it's difficult to do for every story.

I think Seven Days is doing well, for the most part, with the first two. We're embedding links in stories. We make it easy for readers to get in touch with the people or organizations we write about. And I encourage the writers to send me links to data they find on the web. Last week's article on the 2007 farm bill, for example, contained a number of links to studies and statistics that Ken and Mike cited within the story.

I wonder if it's clear to readers that that's what we're doing? I wonder how I could make it clearer?

I think we also do ok with #4 — we always put relevant date and time info in the sidebars of our stories, or at the end.

We don't do as well with #3, the mapping component, though we do some mapping. Not as much as we'd like yet, but some.

Not sure about #s 5 and 6. I think that comes across in the writing...?

Incidentally, I got this nifty list delivered to my inbox through the Poynter Online E-Media Tidbits list.

If you check out the Seven Days website today, you'll notice some big changes. My favorite new feature is the flash thingy on the top of the home page called "Top 10."

Our web team basically designed the site. A Drupal programmer built it. I've been tinkering with the content end of it for ages (we imported all of our archives from Typo 3 into Drupal, which was a painful, painful process), and have been working pretty much non-stop for the past month.

Which is why I neglected my poor blog.

Thanks for your patience. Hope you like the site! Let us know what you think, either by commenting on my blog here, or by taking our feedback survey on SurveyMonkey.

We'll have more to show you in a few months or so.

Want to hook up with developers who can make Facebook applications? Check out Facebook Camp in Montreal tomorrow night, Wed. November 7. Dan York posts all the relevant info on his blog, Disruptive Conversations.

I really wanted to go, but am totally swamped, so I'm bagging. But Dan is going, and he's looking for other Vermonters who might be interested.

He sent me an email this morning saying:

The event is 6-10 p.m. but since that means going in Montreal rush hour, I'm thinking it probably makes sense to leave at something like 2 or 3 p.m. and then get some food or something up there before the meeting.

Let him know if you're up for it. Contact info on his blog.