n-gage, our e-newsletter about all things interactive on Bakersfield.com, goes out to your inboxes every Thursday at 10 a.m.  Tomorrow's will be issue number 2.  To make sure you don't miss a single edition, including a new "neighbor" profile every week, click here to sign up now.

BTW, you've probably noticed the new "ground rules" reminder in the comment submission box.  Folks have been working really hard over the last few months to create an online environment that is both welcoming to newbies and is open to thoughtful discussion of ideas and opinions.  I really appreciate the work you all have been doing to grow and shape this community.  However, a little reminder here and there doesn't hurt.  People from across the ideological spectrum are still finding it way too easy to respond to cheap shots with more of the same, or to call individuals or entire groups of people names for the sake of a laugh.  You've shown that you can talk to each other, challenge each other and yourselves, without lowering your standards or doing to others what you don't like when it happens to you.  Keep doing that.  Delete words like "wingnut" and "nutjob" from your blogging vocabulary.  Sure, you disagree with "them"--but what points are you scoring, or rather, losing, by labeling them like that?  For those of you who are quite sure that I'm only speaking to one "camp" or the other, rest assured, this is for all of us.

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I know, you've been afraid to hope, but finally, it's here.

No longer will your lovingly typed text disappear from the comment submission form at the bottom of blog posts when you mistype the anti-spam code.  Go ahead.  Test it.  I did.  It works!  Not only will your comment stay where it's supposed to be, but the error message telling you why your submission didn't go through (and that you need to enter the new spam code again) is right next to the the spam code field, where you're most likely to see it.

I know it took longer than we all would've liked, but know that community feedback is always wanted and heard.

Want to keep up with all the other stuff going on in our online community, from blogs to restaurant reviews and beyond?  Sign up to get the ngage e-newsletter delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 10 a.m., and click here to participate in our weekly blogger profiles.

Keep your eyes peeled when you're watching t.v., as our latest round of Bakersfield.com commercials started airing yesterday.  Continuing the testimonial style of the ads that featured newsroom staffers, these new ones feature users talking about how they use our online products.

I, of course, want to share with you our blogging commercial, starring our own mom-and-son blogger team, NancyII and Motopoet.  (Too bad we filmed before the third generation of the family, Cassandra, started blogging!)  Motopoet wrote a few weeks ago about the experience.  Nancy and Mark had great things to say about why they blog, and why they blog here.  Of course, the constraints of a 30-second spot being what they are, we had to cut a lot of what they had to say, but what did make the ad is a testament to the community you all have been building here.

On that note, I encourage you all to sign up for n-gage, our new email newsletter about our online community.  It's about to launch this Thursday, so click here to sign up so you don't miss an issue. (And click here for more details.)  Every issue will include a profile of one of your online neighbors--click here to fill out our questionnaire, and it could be you!

And don't forget, our interactive community goes beyond profiles and blogs.  If you haven't already, check out the Inside Guide to Dining, see what your neighbors have to say about your favorite restaurant or that place you've always been meaning to try, and add your own reviews (and rate the reviews of others!).

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Bakersfield.com's online community is growing--both in numbers of users and in the variety of things you can do here.  You can network with others via profiles.  You can express your opinions by writing blog posts and commenting on the blogs of your neighbors.  You can review your favorite (and not-so-favorite) local restaurants and rate others' reviews.  You can submit articles to be considered for online and print publication.  You can be a dedicated blogger who writes every day, or a lurker just taking everything in, or somewhere in between.

Now there's another way for you to connect with your community, to keep up with what's going on at Bakersfield.com.  Suscribe to our new, soon-to-launch email newsletter, n-gage.

Every week, I'll be sifting through the previous week's activity, looking for cool stuff to bring to your attention:  most popular posts, interesting topics or comment threads, appetite-whetting restaurant reviews.  Plus each week's issue will feature a profile of one of your online neighbors here--it could be you!  If you'd like to fill out a short profile questionnaire, click to email me with your answers to the prompts embedded in the email.

How to sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week?  Click here to go to our newsletter sign-up page and scroll down to click on n-gage, then fill out and submit the rest of the form.

As always, please let me know your feedback, ideas, and concerns.

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FYI, we've been made aware that a registered user named monrobert225 has been using the "send a message" button on user profile pages to spam B.commers with a variation on the ubiquitious West African bank account scam.

We apologize if you've been targeted.  Our "send a message" system was designed to mask user e-mails from spammers and employs a spam filter to prevent spammers from using bots--which means that somewhere, some poor schmuck is getting paid pennies to spend his day typing in spam filter codes. 

At any rate, we've blocked this user as of 8:45 a.m. PST this morning.  If you receive spam from any other users via our "send a message" system, please e-mail me immediately and we'll take care of it.

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We all know that the bloggers and commenters of Bakersfield.com hold strong opinions and aren't afraid to share them.  We also know, from the occasional food-related post and comment thread, that people here like to eat.  Now, we're happy to unveil a place where you can combine all of those passions:

The Inside Guide to Dining!

Now, any registered Bakersfield.com user can post reviews of local restaurants, post ratings and cost-per-meal information, rate others' reviews as useful or not, sign up to be labeled a "regular" of your favorite places, and earn a "trusted reviewer" badge.  [For more detailed information, read our FAQ and the Inside Guide launch announcement on the B-dot-com blog.]

If you can't find your favorite restaurant listed, please send the information to insideguide@bakersfield.com and we'll get it up there.  Also, any problems, comments, or ideas can be forwarded to me.  The Inside Guides will soon expand to cover a variety of categories of local businesses, all open to consumer reviews written by you, so keep watching.  Before I forget, I want to say thanks to a handful of dedicated B.commers who helped out with our beta testing. 

Happy reviewing!

...or if you were having trouble and want to know why, here's how someone who knows better than me (Sr. Project Manager for Digital Products Dan Pacheco):

If you're  heard from people who can't get to Bakersfield.com and the People pages, but you can, please pass this on to them.

We made some changes yesterday on the back-end systems that run these pages. They're all positive changes, but because of the way "The Internet" works, some people have had trouble getting to the site.

So why is this happening? It's because yesterday we moved the site to a newer, bigger, faster Web server. After we did that, we had to tell "The Internet" to send anybody looking for the site on the old server to go the new server.

As cool as the Internet is, it's also very decentralized. When we tell "it" to send people to a new server, what happens is that millions and millions of computers all over the world have to tell each other what the new address is. It's like one big telephone tree where one person tells someone, and that person tells someone else, and that person tells someone else until everyone has the same information.

Depending on where your internet service provider is on that phone tree, it can get the new info instantly -- or in some cases it can take as much as 48 hours! Yeah, that stinks. We didn't invent that crazy system, and if there was any other way of going about this, believe me we would have pursued it.

We made that change at 4 a.m. PST yesterday, so some people may continue having problems until as late as 4 a.m. PST tomorrow (Saturday, Feb. 3).

Some have found that things get reset if your restart your modem, if you're using broadband.  The development team is working on a server-side workaround as we speak, and we apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.  As usual, please contact me with any specific problems, issues or suggestions.