First - The Rules
After a significant amount of harassment on the presently available venues for discussing PONTE VISTA, I've decided to start my own blog in order to give people a neutral forum to present their opinions. I will attempt to answer any and all questions to the best of my ability. However, I am not a professional urban planner. What I know, I learned from the Draft Environmental Impact Report. Hopefully, readers will be able to weigh-in with answers when I am stuck (which might be quite often). All I ask is to be certain you have an accurate source to quote in your answer.
The rules for posting are simple.
1. Keep on topic.
2. The blog will be moderated and no aggressive comments will be tolerated.
I hope you all enjoy what you read.
4 comments:
Mr. Field,
Thanks for starting a place we can express our opinions without being hounded by trolls.
Skip Robinson
Howdy Tom and Skip,
I don't mind mentioning this blog on my blog and think that we all need to see if this blog is truly neutral.
Tom, you and I both want a compromise to Bob's current plans. I would gladly post your recommendations on your blog as a part of the comments.
Unfortunately I feel that "moderation" leads to censureship and that is why I have tried to avoid it on my blog. Perhaps if you continue to moderate your blog I will think about moderating mine, but I really do not feel censureship serves anyone very well.
We and discussed this via Emails and I am quite happy that there is another forum such as yours to deal with the Ponte Vista issues. I think everyone who is as interested in the project as much as we are might want to consider starting a blog of their own.
Honesty should rule both of our blogs, I feel. I think you have withstood the criticism on my blog very well. There are R1 folks who are as far off on their side of the issues as there are supporters of Bob's current plans.
Skip hasn't gotten the criticism on my blog that you and Michael Meacher has and that is good, in my opinion.
I really hope your blog presents unbiased facts as you write it will.
Your attendance at last Thursday's meeting means that I did ask you if you were Tom Field and you said, "No" or something to that affect. I feel that you could have been more honest with me on Thursday night, but you still maintain that you can not trust that I will keep your true identity in confidence.
I think this could be a problem if you want your blog to be taken as being honest, unbiased, and truthful.
My policy still stands, Tom. I have no need to reveal to anyone who you are, but it would be in the best interest of the credibility of this blog to let me know who you are.
Good luck with your new blog. I will Bookmark it so I can easily come back and hopefully join in discussions. Skip has reasonable comments on both of our blogs now and I hope Michael will continue to have opportunities on both blogs.
MW
Mark,
As I said in the post "Easy to Fix" above, I had tried to leave the moderation off and I immediately got a comment full of gibberish. It was not a comment whose content I did not agree with, but rather something completely off-topic meant only to tweak me and the first rule of staying on-topic.
I don't want a bunch of comments all saying the same thing, or merely agreeing with my ideas. But I will not let the discussion be hijacked by people with agendas. For example, the commenter last week who admitted that he had baited Michael Meacher and others. It will not matter whether the commenter is for or against Ponte Vista.
I am sorry about the identity thing, but you have to understand my position. I do not want any confrontation with anyone. I believe you would not PURPOSEFULLY disclose anything. But accidents happen and I would rather not take the chance.
I look forward to your comments and sharing your ideas.
Tom
Tom, I think, because both you and I have been to all of the meetings and know what we know about the project, sometimes I forget that there are folks out there that have not been as passionate about the project as I have and may not have the same amount of information we both do.
It would be nice of folks who comment would use accurate sources, but I have found on my blog that I need to provide infomation about the facts and try to quell rumors and unintentional mistatements and unfortuante errors.
I bet you and I could assist folks who don't know the sources as well as we both perhaps do.
We both could also hold a heavy hand to those who deliberately mistate facts and make their opinions seem factual.
MW
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