Sunday, March 22, 2009

Going Interactive ... But How?

Yesterday, I received this email:

"Your blog is worthless without comments. The entire point of this technology movement is for a read/write communication to open up and allow more transparency. By removing the ability to comment on your blog kills any dialogue that could have taken place. I encourage you to open up a dialog with the people you are representing so that you can properly represent us."

Since my rule is that my constituents have the right to be as rude as they want and I have to be nice in return, I decided not to fire an email right back. (Starting off with "Dear Mr. Deputy Mayor" or even "Hey Bill" would have been nice.) And it's kind of disconcerting to think that providing my constituents with detailed information about what I'm thinking and how I'm approaching issues is useless ... unless I provide an open line for constituents to rag on me in return.

Nevertheless, I've been wanting to allow comments for a long time. The technologically irony is ... I can't figure out how to open up this blog for comments. I've tried to figure it out repeatedly without success. So if anybody out there knows how to do this on Blogspot, please ... send me an email, the old-fashioned way, at fulton4ventura@gmail.com.

I can't guarantee I'll post all comments. I'll probably moderate them to screen out the extreme and the obscene. Nevertheless, this blog can provide a lot more interactivity than it currently does, and I'd be happy to move in that direction. Help!