These threads often end up in a different ‘country’ from where they began .

The example of abortion, which you noted appeared in virtually every thread for a while, was not excised when the subsequent conversation followed that path.

Somehow, I fail … as you have so often have pointed out… to see how it is fair to allow one diversion to another part of the subject of ‘communication’ … and not another. You have often said that it’s because it’s “your sandbox”.
I fully agree it’s your sandbox; I simply think the selectivity of the distinctions you make are an example of what is generally known as ‘double standards’, and that is not ‘fair’ regardless of whether one is a member or not.

Also, I do not find your Kerry Miller example parallel; she can’t edit the ‘tape’ in a live show.

The comments section(s) of our blog are intended solely for discussion of the ideas which we have raised in our initial blog post. If you would like to discuss a different issue, you may purchase a Basic Membership. Basic Membership costs $3/month OR $36/year, and it allows you the privilege to bring up your own issues for discussion in our sidebar blog.

Personally, I’m generally unwilling to buy a right to speech. However, I would be happy to make a financial contribution to support a forum for (relatively) free speech.

Going back to the example of the conversation that you deleted:
Kiffi’s questions raised a topic of local interest, inasmuch as both Tracy and Stephanie cared to discuss it as well. If you opened up the ability for any member of the community to write a “guest blog,” then it would be easy to say, “Kiffi, that point isn’t directly relevant to the topic at hand. Perhaps you could write a blog post that could start a separate conversation on that topic?”

That’s a kind of forum which I would be happy to financially support.

“I’m a bit confused by your last post. Are you saying is that these topics are not forbidden – if someone has paid in order to be able to bring them up?”

Patrick, yep, that’s what I’m saying. Sandbox capitalism rocks, baby!  As I wrote back in October (#27 above), it’s kind of like the MPR Kerri Miller book club model which, if you become a $50/month member, you get to speak up at her online chats and f2f gatherings. 

But I bet if you joined and kept trying to comment about how you object to the Strib’s position on a new Vikings stadium, even when the book being discussed that night was about food, sex, spirituality or whatever, she’d have that big brute Gary Eichten escort you to the door.

I don’t think so Griff. The Chamber is membership based, so they would only be looking toward its members. Northfield.org is non-profit. This would need to be a different model…

Ad banners for the membership drive start going up on Monday.

then you could use it as a method to generate both traffic and funding to locallygrown. You could toss in a small radio ad during your show and do live pod-casts from local businesses.

You could do streaming media profiles of each business. You could do a live webcast of the winter walk.

There are many cool things that could be done with this. It would take some time however.

This would allow non-technical small business owners a method to promote themselves on the web, and to have a unified co-marketing focus.

Think the news of LoGroNo, the calendaring of NEG, and a side bar of all the businesses partipating on the left, with small advertisements on the right nav.

Users could provide thier e-mail addresses and get an e-mail every so often (Digest of new promotions and postings).

There could be some type of search engine, so you could type in the product your looking for, and it would come back with where to find it in town, so you could “shop local”.

Restaurants could post specials, etc.

It would be a way to aggregate the local businesses into one unified web presence, for very low cost to each business.

Just a thought.

All those would be distinctly different from an issue-related post “I’d like to talk about last night’s School Board meeting because…” or an information-request “Anyone know what coffeehouses are open on Thanksgiving?”

Does that help?

• Basic: $3/month or $36/year:
  
  an ad-free experience (there will be Google Adsense contextual ads and membership promotion banner ads for non-members) and the ability to submit non-promotional posts to the sideblog
• Premium: $5/month or $60/year:
  
  same as Basic, plus the ability to submit TWO promotional posts to the sideblog/month
• Premium Plus: $10/month or $120/year:
  
  same as Basic, plus the ability to submit FOUR promotional posts to the sideblog/month

Let me what you think the pros and cons of this might be.

And FYI, I’m experimenting with a rating system for comments and posts. And I’m trying a new Search tool that’s supposed to search comments and posts.

But as I wrote above, we could promote any sideblog posts to the main LG blog if we deemed them worthy… whatever that means. I like your idea of allowing our community of users to rate the posts as one way of determining whether they get featured.

This means that we could run an MPR-style membership week, plastering banner ads all over the place and only non-members would be annoyed by them.

Allowing people to create blog posts adds considerably to the editorial workload if one plans to maintain a higher level of quality, so restricting it to paid members is one way to manage it. That’s partially why MPR requires a $50/month membership level for the Midmorning book club!

We have enough traffic to test something like this: 8,000+ people per month visit the site, so no need to worry about a big enough area to draw from.

As for volume of comments, it can be tough to keep tabs on 1,000 comments per month if you’re using the right sidebar only.  It’s way easier if you use an RSS reader like Google Reader and even better if you use one that allows you to sort the comments by topic in order, like Mozilla Thunderbird. Have you tried that approach?

The Sideblog demo is on the right sidebar, below where the listing of comments and commenters are. It’s not a link!

I don’t see the Membership Sideblog in the lower right sidebar.  I do see a Forum in the uppermost row, but it doesn’t seem to be active yet.

I’m concerned that you’re going the opposite way from what many of the comments on this page suggest.  The Membership Sideblog, based on your description,  seems to be a place for paid members to post.  Instead,  several people gave you the same comment: they want to see an area where ANYONE can post, and they’d be more willing to to support LG financially if this were possible (and highlighted on the homepage, I assume, so that it was actually active).

I too favor more freedom of speech so that more members of the community might feel comfortable speaking online, and I’d be willing to pay for it.  Specifically, I would want a portion of the website that:

-was highly visible from the homepage

-was entirely open and unmoderated (ie no censorship; people could complain to one another if there were problems)

-included posts that were automatically added to the regular LG right sidebar if a certain comment threshold was reached, to make them even more visible

-was included in the LG search schema

I do also like the idea of moderated discussions with local leaders, but I think such discussions would need to be open to all.  So basically I guess I’m voting for an MPR-like process of voluntary subscriptions for a great product.

My big concern, though, is the size of the community.  MPR succeeds with this because they’re pulling from a big set of listeners.  I worry that any subscription option within Northfield would be limited by the size of the town.

Another concern I have with the site (just to voice a problem that maybe you’d consider tackling) is the huge volume of comments.  In one way, this is GREAT since people are interested and interactive.  However, pages very quickly get to the point where I can’t consider reading everything to get caught up, and therefore I don’t bother posting.  I think this is a big barrier between the regular posters and those lurkers who just aren’t on every day (or even every hour).  I’d love it if you can think of some way to fix that -- I don’t have any ideas, just throwing it out there.

• I’m still thinking that it’s best to keep all content open to everyone.
• I prefer a revenue model that charges an ongoing monthly or annual membership fee. This would seem to make it easier to: A) approximately match the number of hours worked each month to the amount of revenue generated each month; and B) conduct a membership campaign in which certain new features/services would be added if we get X new members
• I think we can turn off advertising for anyone who is a paying member and logged in with a username and password. Display ads would be promotion-type nagging to become members, though we also might want to display other types of ads, eg, Google AdSense

I have a new idea as a benefit for becoming a member, one that doesn’t operate on the ‘exclusive content/access’ model.

Members would be able to get to publish content to a Membership Sideblog. Members could blog about Northfield-related issues, promote Northfield-related events or causes, and, if based locally, promote products and services.

Sideblog posts can contain whatever a normal blog post contains, including links, images, photos, slideshows, videos, etc. Comments can be attached, too.

Blog posts that we deem particularly interesting could be promoted to the main LG blog, just like we do now for Guest Bloggers.

See the lower right sidebar for the sample Membership Sideblog and let me know what you think.

I use the phrase “community leader” in a purposely broad way. It’s not just elected or appointed officials. It could also include:

• public employees in a leadership role (principals, managers, administrators, etc).
• non profit executives and board members
• association leaders
• business leaders
• church leaders
• community organizers
• project/task force leaders
• etc.

Others in the community who might not be leaders in the usual sense but who nonetheless might be influential in matters of public affairs:

• book authors
• teachers/professors
• helping professionals
• and that catch-all category, consultants!

Hope that helps!

Throughout the year, Kerri will select six books that are moving, inspiring, and changing the world we live in, and we’ll send them to you. In addition, you’ll be invited to online chats and intimate live events that will bring you closer to the authors you’re reading.

Does this constitute the same kind of elitism that some of you have been concerned about re: a LG membership option with exclusive benefits for members? Does it “undermine the public nature” of MPR?

You and others here (and some accosting me at my corner office at the GBM) have convinced me that we should abandon the idea of special features/access for paid members.

As for a Pressville F2F forum, it sounds like a great idea. Let me know if I can help.