A recent thread about the ever-popular "War on Christmas" included some remarks that served as a reminder, however tongue-in-cheek, that one might better celebrate the spirit of the season through philanthropy and charity than by continuing to beat the dead horses of secularism and commercialism.  In response, I posted this link to a post on Bakotopia in which the blogger, inspired by a personal encounter, is asking community members to help her collect supplies for our local homeless people.

I also mentioned that my own department here at the Californian, Interactive Media, is in the middle of a drive to make and distribute personal hygiene kits to the homeless in our community.  Several of you have already asked me how you can help, and so I'm posting our flyer and explanatory letter here.  We've already gotten great response, but we need help to reach our goal of 1,000 kits by Dec. 15.  Monetary donations (cash, money order, or checks made out to The Bakersfield Californian) toward supplies are most welcome, as are donations of actual kit supplies.  We are most in need of deodorant, toothpaste, and facecloths at the moment.

The flyer and letter have all the info you need (click the icons to download), but in short, you can mail donations or drop them off in the Californian's lobby at 1707 Eye St., 93301 (mail you can send to the attention of Angela Brown, Interactive Media).  And if you do drop by, feel free to ask the front desk to call me and I'll come up to say hi.

Thanks again for your help, support, and interest.  This is what makes this online community special.

Good morning folks!  I hope you got a chance to read Steve Swenson's "Real People" profile on our own "surfer grandma," NancyII, which was published this morning on page B1 of the Californian.

If you've always wanted to put a face to the name, you can also find the story featured on the homepage as the third tab on our featured-story-slideshow box.  NancyII is a long-time, much-valued member of this community, and I know that I look for her thoughts every day I'm on the site.  Thank you, Nancy!

And if you're new to the Bakersfield.com blogging community or want to know more about starting your own blog, check out our People page for more information, and feel free to drop me a line and say hi.

Our development team has been working on fixing the bugs you've been sending my way since the upgrade, and as of right now, the following bugs are squashed and their fixes are live on the site:

•  On the "new comments" list, commenters' names, as well as the names of the posts and blogs they are responding to, are bolded, active links for easier reading.
• New members will no longer display "member since" dates from 1999.
• You will receive an e-mail notification when someone signs your guestbook.
• Long embedded URLs now work--no more inserted spaces that read as "%20" and render URLs unfollowable.
• Deleted comments will not stay on the "new comments" list any longer.

Finally, the timestamp problem that made it look like everybody was posting at 11 minutes after the hour:  it's fixed on the "new comments" page, but we're still working on the issue on actual blog entries.

Others of you have been in contact re: individual issues, and rest assured we're still looking into them.  As usual, if you run across anything else weird and bug-like, leave me a comment or e-mail me directly.  Now we return you to your regularly scheduled programming, and have a good holiday.

Hopefully you all saw the Bakersfield.com homepage this morning.  Every day, a slideshow box highlights five stories or TBC products, with graphics and links to more information.  The third tab on the box today, "Airport holdup," features our front-page print story on six Muslim religous leaders, including one from Bakersfield, being taken off a flight on Monday.  What I hope you noticed, under the link to the web version of the story, was this link to Erikbako's post from yesterday and the subsequent discussion in the comments:

See what Bakersfield.com members are saying on the blogs.

Not only that, but print readers were directed to the same blog in a small "On bakersfield.com" box accompanying the print story, just under the fold on page A1 of today's Californian.

We're going to be doing a lot more of this kind of featuring and highlighting from now on.  We're in the process of revamping the People page to include space for user/blogger profiles (so don't be surprised if you get an e-mail from me), and both the People page and the homepage will highlight featured posts of interest that I think shouldn't be missed.

Of course, your help in finding these gems and in compiling ideas for a more user-friendly environment on the People page is always welcome.  I don't want only to be the go-to guy when something's not working right or you need to report a violation of the Terms of Use (though I do want to hear that stuff, too).  So, for all of your Bakersfield.com community needs, please feel free to  e-mail me directly.

Thank you for the running list of issues you've been posting in the comments on my previous entry.  As of Tues. morning at 10 o'clock, here's what I can tell you:

The following issues are already being addressed and the fixes will go live probably within the next couple weeks, if not sooner:  Hardliner's issue re: blog titles being readable in the "New Comments" list; the "this time code goes up to 11" problem; and new profiles being backdated to 1999.

Pete, we're checking with the developers to see if character spacing really did change or not.

Hardliner, your idea for a turn-off switch for comment notification has been filed to be looked at for a future upgrade.

Dusty, re: links in comments--Mattloch's Youtube link on Dr. BLT's post worked for me, so it might be a browser or software compatibility issue on your end.  As for Robb's link that didn't work on your blog, since he took it down, I can't check it.  So next time something like this happens, please leave it up and e-mail me to check it out.

Robin, we're looking into why new guestbook comments aren't generating notification e-mails (it's not just you).

Also, re: your "logged in since Oct. 13" issue, check on your end if you set your computer to remember your log-in back then.

Finally, Hardliner, we've tried to replicate your "save draft" problems, but to no avail.  Anyone else being forced to re-login or losing text when reopening saved drafts?  Please let us know, and let us know what OS and browser (including version) you're using so we can check it out.

For those of you who let us know about new bells and whistles that you like, thank you (and keep the love comin').  More bugs?  Comment here or, as always, e-mail me.

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster.” —“The Six Million Dollar Man”

This weekend, we’re upgrading Bakersfield.com to version 2.0 of the software platform that runs all the features you love so much—profiles, blogs, comments, and all our other community-based interactive stuff.

Here’s your heads-up:  The upgrade will necessitate a site outage from about 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. PST early Monday morning (or late Sunday night, for you nocturnal webizens who do your surfing long after I’ve crashed).  That means that, for that one-hour period, you won’t be able to register as a new user or access the blogs or comments to either view or post.  If you’re already a registered user and logged on before the outage, you will be able to read news stories (but you might run into some problems if you’ve cleared your cache and gotten rid of cookies on your computer before the upgrade starts).

What to expect once it’s done?  Well, like Steve Austin, 2.0 will make your favorite online community that much faster and more stable.  (Your profile and blog URLs will change, but the old URLs should still work and be redirected automatically to the new ones.)

No new features are being rolled out this time….  But rest assured that this upgrade lays the groundwork for a whole mess of cool new toys and new interactive features that will enhance your Bakersfield.com experience in the next few months.  Stay tuned to this blog for details as they come.

Our development team has been working hard to make sure that this upgrade goes smoothly and your experience, once you log in Monday morning, is as bug-free as possible.  (We’ve even gotten help beta-testing from generous B.com community members; thank you, and keep an eye out for future opportunities to help.)  So, if you do encounter problems next week or after, please leave a comment here or e-mail me directly.  And as always, your feedback, positive and negative, and your ideas for the future are always sought after and welcome.

See you on the other side!

Yesterday blogger Erik Bako posted a critique of the daily reader's poll that appears at the bottom of the Bakersfield.com homepage.  His main criticism was of the often tongue-in-cheekish text that accompanies the “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” choices, and he was concerned that poll participants could be forced to make a false choice, or not participate at all.  Why, he wondered, couldn’t readers supply their own rationales behind their answers?

I spoke with our web editors in the newsroom here, who choose a poll topic at their daily news meeting and are charged with writing a poll question for the following day.  The daily reader’s poll has been on the Californian’s website for years, and was one of our first interactive features to solicit reader feedback.  In a world of blogs and other internet-based venues for the expression of personal opinion, today’s reader’s poll is produced purely for entertainment value.

As such, the wording that follows your affirmative or negative answer choices is chosen with that in mind.  The web editors have gone back and forth between concise and wordy, and seeing no effect on the level of participation either way, have decided to err on the side of fun and lively versus dry and boring.  The occasional complaint comes in from a reader whose opinion wasn’t included, but such is the nature of this kind of polling, which collects data from a limited number of diametrically opposed choices.  Again, we could reduce the answer choices to a straight “yes,” “no,” and “maybe,” thus avoiding the issue, but the web editors take the risk in the name of producing an interesting poll question that more readers will stop to answer.

The nature of the polling software again precludes “write-in” answers—but that’s the beauty of the Bakersfield.com blogging community.  Anyone can write their mind on the topics s/he cares about, and anyone can comment, respond, agree, disagree.  Multiple venues for multiple ways of participating in this community and contributing to civil discourse and debate—that’s what Bakersfield.com is all about.

So, what do you think about the homepage polls?  Here, you don’t have to stick with “good,” “bad,” or “indifferent”—tell me what you think, and why, and I’ll make sure your thoughts get read by the people who want to know what you’re thinking.

When I was a teacher, I and most of my colleagues would start each semester by setting out the rules that would govern all classroom interactions.  Being young and idealistic, we tried to get our students to come up with their own rules by consensus—of course we always had a list of what we wanted them to say, just in case they needed some inspiration.  We asked them to think about why they were there and what needed to happen, how people needed to act with each other, in order for things to get done.  We asked them to brainstorm about the meaning of “community,” of what a good community looked like in practice, and what kind of rules community members needed to agree to follow in order to keep the community going.  And you know what?  Without much prompting and only a little guidance and editing, those lists almost always ended up full of words like these:

Respect.  Integrity.  Honesty.  Openness.  Teamwork.

We always had catchphrases like “Attack the idea, not the person,” “Use ‘I’ statements,” and “No zaps” (meaning, no personal attacks or name-calling).  That’s not to say that things didn’t get heated or rough, but we always had that sheet of newsprint up at the front of the room to point to when we needed to, to remind them, “Hey, these aren’t just my rules, they’re your rules.”  And that set the tone for everything that came later.

Well, as it’s my first week on the job here and I’ve been delving deep and wide through the blogs, I thought now was as good a time as any to reacquaint ourselves with Bakersfield.com’s Terms of Use as they pertain to blogging and commenting in this on-line community.  At the bottom of this post, I’ve excerpted the pertinent sections of what you’ve basically agreed to follow by voluntarily becoming a member and participant of this community.  [Follow this link to the current full text.]

But basically, after spending some time eyeball-deep in blog posts and comments, I think we could all do well to take a page from my former students, who agreed, for the most part, that there were certain things they had to do as individuals, certain ways of interacting with each other they had to adopt, in order to help their community of learners flourish and grow to its potential.

If you read through the Terms of Use below, you’ll probably laugh, thinking of all the things you’ve read, or even written, that violate either the letter or the spirit of what essentially is an agreement between you, the user, and us, the site.  And I guess that’s one of the reasons I’m here—but I don’t want to have to always be the cop, or the bad guy.  A community should police itself, ideally; in my classroom, students reinforced consensually agreed-upon behaviors and censured misbehavior.  To an extent, that’s already happening here, and I don’t have to step in because other users have already done it for me, reminding the errant user of what’s expected here.

But you know as well as I do, if not better, that the seeming anonymity, the facelessness of the internet seems  to encourage some people to try on in-your-face personas and act in ways that are not that helpful to the building and maintenance of community.  I don’t know how many variations on “idiot” and “moron” or worse that I’ve seen lobbed by users at each other in just a couple days on the site.  So much for “no zaps,” for attacking the idea but not the person—so much for respect, even for those you disagree with.  Is that the kind of community we want here?  I’m not saying we ban humor, or sarcasm, and I’m not bashing free speech or the right to one’s opinion.  I’m saying that there are ways of getting our points and personalities across without personal attacks and reducing ourselves to mudslinging and namecalling.  We can disagree, and explain that disagreement, without attacking those we disagree with.

For an on-line community to work, we have to trust one another, even if we don’t agree with one another.  In the last few days, I’ve seen users post comments on a single post as both themselves and as anonymous users.  I’ve even seen users post anonymously and refer to themselves in the third person.  Honesty?  Trustworthiness?  New technology and new freedoms don’t mean we have to throw these values out the window, do they?

By now, I’m sure some of you are thinking I’m a humorless “Big Brother” type, but I’m not.  Sarcasm, parody, irony, political humor—it’s all great at fomenting debate and making your point, but only if other readers understand that it’s a joke, and if the humor doesn’t draw its power from hurting others.

We do have a system in place for you to report violations on blogs and tag the violation as either “offensive language,” “threats,” “inappropriate content,” “copyright violation,” or “other.”  Again, the meanings of these violations of our community standards of conduct can be found in the Terms of Use, and that should guide your decision-making in what to report.  Please, don’t use the violation reporting system to play a joke, or to get back at someone.  And please, when you are asked to explain your objection, do so in detail.  The way the system works now, we can’t pinpoint where on the post or comment thread you hit “report,” and the report is generated anonymously, so we'd greatly appreciate it if you included contact information so we can follow up if necessary.

If you’ve read all of this, let me assure you again, I’m not Big Brother, I’m not the Internet Police, or the foe of Free Speech.  All I’m saying is, for any community, physical or virtual, to thrive and survive, its members must agree to follow certain guidelines, based on common sense and respect, to govern their interactions.  Please think about what I’ve said, disagree if you want, but think about it.  And read the Terms of Use so you know what you’ve agreed to.  This is your community—take care of it.

From Bakersfield.com's Terms of Use:

Contributing Content and Comments to Bakersfield.com
Bakersfield.com includes various interactive community areas where people can post content to the site. These include (but are not limited to) user profiles, blogs, comments on profiles and blogs, and comments on news stories. All users who live in Bakersfield or Kern County ages 13 and over are encouraged to contribute information and pictures to www.Bakersfield.com.com.....  We reserve the right to terminate any accounts that do not fit this description.

You agree to adhere to the following rules when posting content of any type, including text, audio, video and files, in any of these interactive areas on Bakersfield.com:

1. You agree not knowingly submit any false, defamatory, abusive, obscene, threatening, racially offensive, sexually explicit or illegal material to the Web site. In posting comments on the contributions of others, you agree not to harass other participants.
2. You agree not to post anything that personally attacks an individual whose identity can be easily learned from what you post. An example of a personal attack is posting negative comments about an individual in a way meant to demean that person. Note that posting your opinion about someone's ideas or actions are not a personal attack.
3. You may not submit information that is libelous or defamatory or that discloses private or personal matters concerning any person.
4. You may not post information or links that are obscene or pornographic. You may not contribute information or pictures that violate the property rights of others, including unauthorized copyrighted music, images or programs, trade secrets or other confidential proprietary information, and trademarks or service marks used in an infringing fashion.
5. You may not use profanity.
6. Content contributions solely focused on the promotion of commercial events or businesses are not permitted.

[...]

Bakersfield.com does not endorse and is not responsible for any statement, opinion or advice given or made in posts.

Use At Your Own Risk
Your use of the Bakersfield.com service is at your own risk. Bakersfield.com does not intend to engage in any prior review of notes posted to community content areas, but it reserves the right in its sole discretion and for any reason to delete or redirect any information or other content posted to Bakersfield.com, regardless of whether the information or other content violates the rules for content described in above policies. Further, Bakersfield.com reserves the right to limit or terminate service to participants who violate the terms of this Agreement.

[...]

Bakersfield.com is not responsible for censoring or monitoring community content areas, but it reserves the right to enforce the policies outlined in this document, and reserves the right to move or remove posts at its sole discretion and without explanation. These posting rules may be revised over time. We will post those changes prominently so that you will always know what type of posts we prohibit. We do, however, recommend that you read this notice each time you use Bakersfield.com, in case you missed our notice of changes, at this URL:

http://www.bakersfield.com/...

New Bakersfield.com user Sonjaf is a journalism student in New Hampshire doing her senior thesis on how the internet has changed print journalism, and she's looking at The Bakersfield Californian and Bakersfield.com as a key case study in this transformation.

She's started a blog here to elicit feedback from users about what they like and dislike about the website and all the new technology-driven interactive features available, like blogs, video, and podcasts.

If you have something to say, go visit her blog and let her know--and while you're at it, let us know too, either here as a comment or by e-mailing me directly.

All these new interactive features wouldn't be a reality without you, the users, and any future directions we take depend on you as well.

Welcome to Blogging Bako: Life on the Bakersfield.com Blogs and Beyond.  As Community Content Coordinator here at B.com, this is where I’ll do everything from asking for your ideas or help on, say, product usability issues or new features, to addressing technical (and non-technical) blog problems and solutions, to highlighting particular blogs or bloggers of interest—anything related to community-generated content and the tools we’re using to create and disseminate it, we’ll talk about it here.

As I dive into this new role, let me tell you a little about how and why I got here.  My wife and I moved here from Los Angeles over three years ago for her work as a family doctor.  I took a sabbatical from teaching high school social studies while we settled into our 1952 Westchester ranch house and our new community.  When we got pregnant with our daughter, we decided that, at least for a while, I would stay home with her.  And so, from her birth on Halloween, 2004 until just the other day, days after her 2nd birthday, I had the amazing privilege of being a full-time stay-at-home-dad (SAHD) to our beautiful, smart, growing baby girl.

In some ways, being a SAHD is what now brings me here, to you.  Impending fatherhood sent me to my computer looking for the advice and experiences of those who had gone before me, which I was having trouble finding in the real world.  What I found was an entire community of parents, diverse in opinions and experiences and geographically far-flung, talking about what it was like to be a parent in all its permutations—new dads and expecting moms, working mothers and stay-at-home fathers, and everything in between.  I found a home in those blogs, along with some humor and more than a little reassurance, and soon went from being a reader to a commenter to a full-fledged blogger.  [If you look at my links on my profile page, you can click through to find my own dadblog, a group dadblog that I co-founded and coordinate, and another parenting blog to which I contribute.]

Teaching, parenting, blogging—it’s all interconnected for me.  I went into teaching because I wanted to help students find their voices and tell their stories.  As a new parent, I fell into blogging as a way to make connections with others, share my experiences with others as they had shared theirs with me, and create a living historical record for my daughter and my family.  And now, working on the blogs here at Bakersfield.com, I am excited by the potential of technology to blur the boundaries between readers and writers, to transform the definition of “newsworthiness” to include the daily lives and opinions of everyday citizens and community members, and thus to further transform the very idea of what “community” can mean.

I hope to talk, virtually and otherwise, with many of you, longtime users and newbies both, and I look forward to working together to growing this community, this technology, this platform for networking and expression.  Please e-mail anytime, and I’ll see you around the blogosphere.