Weblogs are Alive and Well on Northfield.org
Q: What moves faster than high-speed Internet?
A: The Northfield rumor network!
I just heard that we're eliminating citizen weblogs from Northfield.org. That's news to me!
Of course we're not eliminating citizen weblogs. In fact we're adding new blogs to our feeds every week. What we're doing is finally getting ourselves out of the blog hosting business. We currently have less than half a dozen active bloggers using Northfield.org as a web host. This change only affects them. All our other citizen bloggers are using one of the hundreds of other sites that offer free blogging tools and hosting.
We still syndicate every citizen blog we can. We still spotlight local blogs in our regular This Week in the Northfield Blogosphere feature. We still have a completely open picture and story submission policy. And we're freely offering our time and services to transition those few remaining locally hosted blogs to a new location.
This is not a step away from our principles (as I have seen it characterized), but rather a way to better use our limited volunteer resources to accomplish the goals and mission of NCO. It's just not practical—nor pertinent to our core mission—to provide services that are freely and readily available.
Years ago NCO provided public computer terminals when there was a lack of them in the community. There's not such a need for that anymore. Later, we provided free website hosting to local organizations. But again, free or inexpensive web hosting became ubiquitous, so we dropped it. Next to go will be the few remaining northfield.org email accounts that we still maintain as a legacy from the days before Gmail and Hotmail and all the other free options out there.
NCO has been working on making weblogs a tool for strengthening the civic fabric of the area for individual citizens, local leaders, and local non-profit organizations since early 2004. We'll continue including them on Northfield.org as long as they are being written.
Doug Bratland
Board Chair
Northfield Citizens Online
Slight confusion
If not for hosting them, what are Northfield.org's "citizen weblogs"?
As you say in your post, the situation has changed -- for example, it also wouldn't have been as easy when citizen blogs were first offered to aggregate them, as RSS was not as universal. Nonetheless, there's nothing false about the criticisms.
Though citizens can still have weblogs (Northfield.org obviously has no jurisdiction over this) and they still can be listed on Northfield.org, they're still not "Northfield.org blogs" -- at least not in the way the used to be.
Sean Hayford O'Leary
(As Griff used to say, "Full Disclosure": I am a member of NCO's tech committee, but that has not discernibly affected my opinion on this.)
Three sides to every coin...
_If not for hosting them, what are Northfield.org's "citizen weblogs"?_
In a perfect world, N.org would host _every_ citizen's blog, in perpetuity. Unfortunately, more than anything else, volunteer time is not limitless. Running a free blog service was just redundant, now there there are more and *better* free services out there.
It's my fond hope that this will encourage *more* people to find their voice as it will no longer seem that there is an inner circle of N.org hosted blogs. Everyone is starting from the same point - it is up to them to see what they make of it.
Answers to some of my questions
I found some answers to some of my questions I asked Chip by looking on Blogosphere -- no direct response. What's up with that Chip? And because of Doug Bratland and Chip's sideways responses, I've got more question marks than before, that's the kind of thing that gets me asking questions, but I just don't have time with all this Mesaba Discovery due and a Motion hanging... I'm trying to figure out what to do and in the meantime preserve my repository of documents and links that is the only place that this info is (though mncoalgasplant.com has most of the Mesaba stuff). From what I can tell, moving to a free blog is a hell of a lot of work, tedious awful task, and though Sean is the on-task volunteer, I would not feel comfortable dumping that info dump on anyone, and given photos and such have to be individually loaded or some such, what a pain. So I've got to find a way to pay for this, the time to do it, and I want to find some dough for Sean because it is work.
I do liken this to community radio, and looking at your mission statement in the "About Us" on the site... oh well...
====================================
For the world, here are Chip's responses to my questions (p.s., it's "ceases," though I'd much prefer you "seized" it!):
NCO is no longer hosting free blogs and free email accounts. Carol’s a bit pissed off about it.
You see, NCO is comprised of a bunch of new (and veteran) groups of volunteers. One of those groups is the Technical Committee (hey, that’s us!), or the “TC”. The TC is responsible for all technical aspects of Northfield.org, and just basically keeping things running (smoothly). We’re also the visionaries behind future technical solutions for Northfield.org.
Back in January/February of this year, we were planning for, and executing a huge platform migration, and essentially, a brand new re-launch of Northfield.org. The TC is comprised of career guys, dads, students, etc. We already were devoting countless hours to Northfied.org, but we didn’t have time to focus on other things in NCO that weren’t our core offerings.
The TC back then, recommended to the NCO Board, that NCO seizes support for free personal blog hosting, as well as free personal email accounts. Sounds like taking the pacifier away from the baby, huh? Not so. There are so many free alternative providers out there, it’s a non-issue. So the Board voted on the motion to halt free blog and email hosting/support. The motion carried.
Why did we do this?
It’s simple; No time to support free things for people, other than our main focus and vision, Northfield.org. NCO started handing out free blog and email accounts before NCO had a tech committee. Once NCO possessed a tech committee, that committee wasn’t aware that they’d have to support the general public with their free blog and email issues. NCO isn’t a hosting company…we’re not a service provider. We provide citizen-contributed news to Northfield. That’s all. It’s not appropriate for NCO to host blogs and email accounts. It’s not what we do…not what we focus on. When freely-hosted blogs and email aren’t working for someone, the TC is expected to drop everything and address the issue. We can’t. And it’s not fair to the people who NCO has been hosting free stuff with.
Answers to Carol’s questions
Let’s be forthcoming here, and answer the questions that Carol’s asked on her blog;
It’s a package of all the files and content that make up your blog. Having this package would make it possible to move a blog from one provider to another.
By “them”, it is assumed Carols means “NCO”. The only people that “leaned” on NCO with regard to the matter were the members of the TC.
Two things here. First, the free personal blogs are hosted using a legacy piece of software. The TC has to support that software behind the scenes. The TC’s goal in the platform migration early this year was a single, supportable platform. Second, as was mentioned earlier in the article, we’re not a hosting/service provider.
Already mentioned within this article.
A cost cannot possibly be estimated. Thousands and thousands of man-hours are devoted to NCO/Northfield.org. Incredible amounts of time is taken away from family, friends, hobbies, etc., to produce Northfield.org. It’s all volunteer. If volunteers were to bill NCO, there would be no NCO. Now keep in mind, our hosting costs are not free. NCO pays a hosting provider to serve up Northfield.org. So that costs money. Our domain name “northfield.org” costs money.
But it’s not about money or cost in the end. It’s about what NCO volunteers can feasibly do for Northfield. Handing out and supporting free blogs and email accounts simply isn’t feasible for us.
You didn't ask me, Carol.
I received no email from you. Only a forwarded one from Sean.
You're right!!!
Yup, you're right! I asked Sean to forward to the folks, and just sent a ten worder or so to you direct. But had I not went to count the "northfield.org" blogs I'd not have found the Tech Blog... I found three, but maybe others just aren't posting. Pacifier -- hey, I ain't no pacifist! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Community Chat List
At one point in time many months ago, someone, Chip maybe, indicated that there would be an
area where citizens could exchange requests for information on services and such. Like,
where can I get a good lawn mower person, or who has the best steak in town. If that is
still in the works, I'd be mighty happpy.
Bright
Yep, it's still in the works...
Glad you brought this up, Bright! Having the time to implement and maintain new features such as the community "chat" forum you described is one of the reasons we're trying to avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary tasks such as hosting blogs and email.
We've still got some work to do before we roll out the community forum, but we hope to have it in place this calendar year.
This year?!
Good God, I hope we can roll it out a little sooner than the end of this calendar year. :)
It's more than halfway over!
I hope so too, but considering July's almost upon us, I'm feeling like I'll wake up tomorrow and the leaves will be falling! Ah, the fleeting days of summer...