Is there interest in a Somerville Area Discussion community?

[turil.livejournal.com]

After the recent post about fracking, and the deluge of comments about open discussion not belonging on the Davis Square community, added to the idea that there is value in real community connection where people are encouraged to learn more about their neighbors' personal interests, concerns, and ideas, I'm wondering if there is community interest in either of the two possibilities:

1. Making this Davis Square community more open to free discussion.

2. Creating a new community for "Somerville Community Discourse".

I mean it's nice to have really niche discussion groups, like BostonBikes, and such, for the real geeky stuff that people are passionate about, but for a more broad discussion about topics that affect everyone, it's nice to have a place for that to happen easily.

What do you all think?

Comments

[fefie.livejournal.com]

There is an underused Somerville LJ:
http://community.livejournal.com/somervillemass

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

There is also davis_talk which was created for this purpose if anyone ever wanted to use it, but nobody actually does.

[ifotismeni]

i always thought that's why people create a personal LJ - people then friend each other, someone writes on a topic in their personal LJ, other people can comment. etc?

[ron_newman]

And there's also http://SomervilleVoices.org

OOOOH!

[turil.livejournal.com]

That's great! Let's promote that more often. I don't think I'd ever heard of it (otherwise I'd have joined it. :-)

Maybe someone other than the-most-controversial-woman-in-Somerville could make a post about it periodically so other people start using it. And maybe someone could write a short article about it for the Somerville Journal, so other folks would join in the conversation.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I am specifically *not* interested in making this community more open to discussion that does not have some specific relevance to Davis and closely-surrounding environs.

[turil.livejournal.com]

That tends to only get people who tend to think alike, which kind of makes it hard to have a more diverse discussion. Though it's certainly part of one's options to just post to one's friends.

[turil.livejournal.com]

That link didn't work for me. Can you check to see if it still works?

[turil.livejournal.com]

Oh, wait, now it's working. Odd. Thanks!

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Seconded. The reason I joined this community was to hear about and discuss specifically Davis-related stuff.

[turil.livejournal.com]

We could take that over and reword the description to encouraging more open discussion, rather than just limited to "anything and everything relevent to living here", which sounds somewhat restrictive.

Also, is Sonofabish a reasonable (non-snarky) owner? I vaguely remember that person being kind of aggressive. Which isn't so good for encouraging healthy, respectful discussion. :-)

[ron_newman]

He has left the Boston area entirely. I think he now lives in or near NYC.

[preraphaelite.livejournal.com]

Thirded.

[turil.livejournal.com]

So maybe call this one the Davis Square Events and Announcements community, and the other one the Davis Square Discussion Community to clarify what goes where? Is there a better way to clarify the difference between an open discussion of Davis Square neighbors vs. just announcements?

[ron_newman]

I don't want davis_square to become just announcements (that would be boring), but I would like to see it remain focused on local matters.

[djethan.livejournal.com]

My experience is that it's not just events and announcements but also discussion involving Davis Square and the surrounding areas (e.g. MaxPac protesters).

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think discussion is fine, if it's locally relevant. If they were planning frack-extraction at the MaxPak site, it would be a reasonable topic for discussion here. :)

[molyflogs.livejournal.com]

Why not just delete the things that don't belong? There are several other options available for folks to post their discussion stuff at. The fact that "They aren't often used" is a decent indicator that folks aren't as interested as maybe you think they are. I like the community the way it is.

[ron_newman]

Or, for that matter, if some local group were announcing an upcoming screening of Gasland. HBO is not local ... but Somerville Climate Action is (and I think they've occasionally sponsored showings of relevant movies).

[fefie.livejournal.com]

>The fact that "They aren't often used" is a decent indicator that folks
>aren't as interested as maybe you think they are.

Or it's an indicator people just gravitate here because of the level of activity. I think it would be good to use the Somerville MA LJ for non-Davis topics concerning Somerville.

[bluesauce.livejournal.com]

That really only happens when people act like ravening psycho beasts towards people that disagree with them. Normally, people can actually make friends and have civil discussions with people that don't think just like them.

[ron_newman]

This comment was unnecessary and doesn't add anything useful to the discussion. Let's focus on the issue and not the personalities.

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

Really? I wonder why my FL is so full of diverse personalities then.

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

Fourthed-ded.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Fifth-ed (I think that's where we are now)

As I said on the fracking post, if the criteria for posting to the Davis Square Community is "issues that affect at least some of us in some way," then, hey, we can just post about everything and anything, and before you know it, this isn't a Davis Square comm anymore...it's a "whatever people feel like posting about" comm...and we already have that.

It's called "LiveJournal." I mean, I have my pet causes that I want to people to be more enlightened about, but I don't post about them in this community because, well, they aren't Davis Square concerns.

Breaking news on the latest burrito place, updates on the crazy homeless guy in the T station, and pools on when the snow will melt, however, yes, please, bring it on!

[barry-rafkind.livejournal.com]

I helped create Somerville Voices for just this reason. Feel free to join and post! You don't even need to register to comment, unlike LJ.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

this was exactly, exactly the thought i had when i read this. most people i know on lj and became friends with IRL i met through b0st0n.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

i disagree - what they said is true. most people do have a somewhat diverse group of friends with opinions that differ on certain subjects, and can have an interesting, civil discussion.

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

yeah, that's what i said in the other post. slippery slope and all that. DNW.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes. There are many, many other communities on LJ for discussion of lots of other issues. Also, people who find that none of the communities meet their needs should just make another community.

mod note:

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

We do. I probably would have deleted the fracking one muuuuuch earlier this morning, IF I had been in a position to let other mods know, and IF there hadn't been comments already, and if my workday hadn't been super crazy. But I for one thought it was pretty superfluous as, not local, regardless of how disturbing one might think the process of fracking is.

Re: mod note:

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Yep, by the time I was able to get to it, there was enough discussion that I didn't feel right removing it. Also, under other instances we've seen, the poster seemed to understand that it wasn't really appropriate for the comm and said they wouldn't do it again.

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Ron is correct. If anyone cares to take over as admin, feel free. And just for the record, I am a snarky motherfucker and proud of it.

[anyee.livejournal.com]

Don't you have not one, but two blogs yourself, turil? Why not open one of those up to reader input, put a note in one of your ever-enlightening posts to this community, and play over in one of those sandboxes. I do not understand the appeal of completely re-defining a functioning community in order to get your needs met. Then again, who am I talking to...

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

All semi-erect dildo award winners have to be snarky. It's the law.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Most conversations I have on personal LJs seem to be with people who aren't local. We are talking about common interests (having a common interest is a different sort of thing from agreeing) even though they don't live within walking distance. Some don't even live in driving distance.

I thought Turil was specifically looking for wide-ranging discussion among neighbors...which is a different sort of thing than I usually see online. When I want wide-ranging discussion, I value the input of interesting people who live far away. (Sometimes they have even surprised me with local knowledge.) The Davis Square Community as it is now is good for when I want to talk about something of specialized local interest. Am I missing something?

Young Somerville?

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

Have any of you thought about joining Young Somerville? I think they meet (in person) about once a month. I went once and They seem like a good group of civic minded forward thinkers.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/youngsomerville

Re: Young Somerville?

[ron_newman]

That link doesn't work. It just goes to the main Facebook home page. (Anything after "#" isn't really part of a URL, it's just a pointer to something on the selected page.)

[turil.livejournal.com]

But I'd like a place where the "ravening psycho beasts" (whatever that means! :-) can voice their opinions as well. I don't really want them in my own personal space, but a public community, full of all the diverse range of Somerville types would be nice to have, at least for some of us.

[turil.livejournal.com]

This already is mostly an events and announcements community. That's my point. Nearly all the posts are about events, either upcoming, or things that recently happened. (Snow, snow, and more snow! :-)

My guess is that far more interesting conversations happen at Davis Square LJ meetups than ever happens here. But I'd love to have that kind of open ended discussion happen online, so that it can happen on a daily basis, as opposed to just once a month for a couple of hours, or less. Know what I mean? Building community by letting people just schmooze and hang out with eachother, without someone hovering over them telling them what to talk about. There's definitely a place for focused, specific-topic talk, but there's also a need for more free-form discussion that really makes a community a community, rather than just an announcement list, with a little bit of chitchat sometimes.

But if there isn't someone who wants to make this happen on LJ, that's fine. I'd do it, but I may not really be living here anymore, and I presume that we'd lose a lot of people if my name was attached to it, since I've become quite the scapegoat for the bullies and don't have the respect needed to run an open forum that appeals to a truly diverse crowd. At least in LJ that's the case. (In the "real world" I have lots of support and respect, professionally, and organizationally, though I'm still pretty opinionated, as you probably remember from the Bike Committee... :-)

[turil.livejournal.com]

The discussion of the MaxPac protesters is still really an event discussion. It's about an event that has already happened... :-)

Re: Young Somerville?

[rikchik.livejournal.com]

The # bit often triggers javascript to show a particular sub page (see http://io9.com/#!5777512/is-gravity-left+handed) - it breaks many web standards but is sadly becoming more popular.

Re: Young Somerville?

[ron_newman]

That link works for me (though I don't understand how), but the Facebook one doesn't. I'm using Safari if that matters.

Re: Young Somerville?

[somervillema311.livejournal.com]

Well regardless if the link works or not, have any of you ever thought of joining the community group Young Somerville? Try the link below.

www.facebook.com/youngsomerville

Re: Young Somerville?

[turil.livejournal.com]

I have considered it! But I'm not in that age bracket. Maybe they could have one for All Ages Somerville. :-)

Re: Young Somerville?

[ron_newman]

I would, but my age disqualifies me ;-( I'm actually closer to eligibility for the Council on Aging.

[djethan.livejournal.com]

I suppose one could debate the semantics and what constitutes an event, but I agree with the consensus. The idea of keeping Davis Square LJ focused on Davis Square (and the local environs) is sound.