[EQAB-list] Citizen participation in list server, reports format

[Fred L Stephens]

I agree with Ellen that we need to encourage continued public face 
and feedback as we go along. In general, I think we will benefit from 
more public interaction. Web 2.0 interfaces will aid us in getting 
more young folks involved - I suspect. I doubt that will suffice for 
Oak Ridge where we have a lot of older citizens who might not give us 
their best via the Internet.

Which Web 2.0? There are probably several out there but Wordpress 
would work. However, I have my doubt that we can depend on city 
servers and staff for this. For one thing, they are stuck with 
Windows machines and Wordpress is likely more compatible with Linux 
based hosting sites. That would be fine with me. The cost is minimal.

Fred

At 12:05 PM 1/19/2009, you wrote:
>Consistent with Fred's "wondering", I believe that some sort of Web 2.0
>arrangement (i.e., a website that allows interaction and feedback) is
>needed as part of the next round on the sustainability initiative. After
>the ideas from the forum have been "processed," they need to be posted
>in a fashion that allows people not only to read them but also to
>comment.
>
>Neither Word files nor nor PDFs nor plain text messages with hard line
>breaks every 50 characters or so are particularly good ways to
>disseminate electronic content for public discussion. I think that the
>blog-like format that newspapers use (in which every article has space
>for comments on the bottom of the page) might be a good way to both
>disseminate the ideas and invited comment. For example, there might be
>about a dozen different pages, each listing a group of related ideas
>(collated from different forum tables), with all pages linked from a
>common index page and with each page including a space for comments. I
>know this can be set up pretty easily using the free open-source
>Wordpress software, but I don't know what comparable capabilities are
>available on the City's website.
>
>-- Ellen

Fred L Stephens
email: freds7 at dancingcreek.com