In order to make things work more easily, we recently switched the site’s summary email management over to FeedBlitz. It seems the broadcasts have been going out daily. We just tweaked some settings and you should now receive such notices only one time per week, on Mondays. Please let us know if you observe otherwise.

This site has a poll feature that I’m learning how to use (see left sidebar).

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Please let us know if some bell/whistle appears to be broken. (I just noted that the archive by category tool in the right sidebar doesn’t work. Will note when it’s back in action again.)

We’ve updated/moved several listings in the directory on this site (e.g., updated Vernon John’s name to reflect that it is now a Jr. High school), and we’ve added a new section: Studies, reports, plans. This new section offers access to such documents without having to noodle in the archives.

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Comments around here have been a mixed bag. They have allowed folks to share info on, e.g., where recycling bins are located, or how the new Fuelperks program works, and they have allowed folks interested in, say, gardening to find each other to discuss their common interest offline. But they have also provided a space for people to vent, or worse, to hide behind anonymity to launch snarky remarks.

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The host behind the site offers different ways for commenting to be managed, some of which make sense as described, some of which… well, the description leaves me scratching my head a bit. Anyhow, we’re going to experiment with these settings. We’re aiming to check out a world in which folks register to be able to comment. Right now it looks like older threads’ comment sections are open, and the latest thread’s commenting is closed, which is not quite the intent. Sooo, please hang tight while we mess with the settings over the next couple of days.

Hey folks, a few no-no’s are worth mentioning, given a few recent comments (some of which have not gone live): posting as someone else in town, posting totally anonymously (using a pseudoname and also giving a fake email address). Anonymity is a privilege — don’t abuse it. ‘Nuf said.

At this time, we’re deciding against an ‘edit’ button whereby folks could modify their own comments. While such a feature would allow folks to fix their typos, it also would come with some downside potential, per the experience of other site moderators I’ve talked with regarding such a feature. Sooo, if you would like to try to avoid entering typos, I would suggest a quick proofread before hitting send. Or maybe compose what may be a lengthy comment in Word or some other text editor that is easier to see lots of text in and that offers some sort of spellcheck functionality, and then copy/paste into the comments box. At any rate, most typos don’t keep one’s point from coming through, and if there’s any question, folks can always ask for clarification.

Curious about which threads have the most comments on this site? John M has hooked us up with a new tool: 50 most commented. A link to this little tool can also be found down near the site’s footer material. Thanks John!

We did another upgrade recently. So far, it looks like in the right column, searching by category gets one a whole lot of nada. The other search fields work. I will comment when this has been resolved. Please let us know if you find any other functionality that doesn’t seem to be doing what it should.

I’ve been out of town about 2 weeks. The email inbox is full of stuff I’m getting to with some delay. I hope to be caught up by early/mid next week.

PPN had its first 1000-pageviews-on-a-given-day April 7.

Pre-dawn “Breakthrough at Petersburg” Tour; Southside VA Heritage Days at Fork Inn; Stephanie Nakasian Trio; Workshop: Education and economics in Petersburg, 1950s to today; Southside VA Heritage Days at Fork Inn; Meeting on “Vacant Spaces = Artful Places”; Bill Deal’s Original Rhondels / 4 Play; Ward 4 meeting; Flo’s Mellow Mood Band & Show; Petersburg GOP annual dinner & silent auction; What it means to be in a historic district; Park Day; Pathways - Open House; MORE…

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A discussant at the conference Media Re:Public (a conference convened by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society — the focus is on participatory media) has brought to our attention that the community of ‘hoodblogs and blog aggregators in the Richmond area lead the nation “by far and away.” Here is report that the Project for Excellence in Journalism has completed on such sites, which is among the conference’s Background Materials. Kudos to John Murden of CHPN and the folks at PharrOut (RVABlogs, RVANews) for getting the balls rolling.

Hey all, noting that the site had been terribly slow on/off for several weeks, yesterday we made some changes that we hope have effectively resolved the molasses effect going forward. In doing so, we didn’t lose much content, though it seems things like apostrophes, quotes, and dashes have barfed. We’ll clean such details up in the most recent posts. Anything new shouldn’t be affected.

Hey, today is PPN’s one-year anniversary. Our first post was on the March 2007 Friday for the Arts lineup. Since then, we’ve clocked 767 posts, 1218 comments, a redesign that now features images of Petersburg at the top of each page, and membership in a growing network of ‘hoodblogs that together cover a big chunk of the greater Richmond area. I can’t wait to see where this next year takes us.

Hey all — head’s up that the lights may or may not go off on this site Friday pm/Saturday am as we effect additional steps in the host switching process. Will try to nail down a priori what to expect in the event of a lights off scenario.

The revive of Jan14-Feb14 posts/comments still being in the hands of some web engineers, and a bunch of announcements piling up, we’re going active again and may at a later date try to effect a fun merge. In other words, let’s play.

Hey folks. You’ve likely noticed that the site was down a few days. Sorry ’bout that. We moved the site to a new host and encountered some interesting technical details along the way. There’s still some kinks to work out, e.g., the site is presently current through Jan 14 2008– we hope to have it updated to last week later today.

We’ll be goofing with the backend of this site around Jan 15 +/-, which may or may not lead to temporary site wonkiness — we all get to find out together, yippee!

PPN can now beam up “alerts”, e.g., lost dog or similar messages. For example:

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FYI: The calendar in the left sidebar is a little different now… Instead of displaying a set Sunday-through-Saturday format all week long, it now displays a rolling week from 1 day back to 6 days ahead of whatever the current date is. (This change also applies to the calendar in the weekly-ish emails.) So now, no matter the day of the week, you can see what’s coming up, say, 5 days hence without having to leave the main page of the site. Handy. Thanks John M!

If you are moved to tears to have access to an online calendar of local goings-on, overjoyed to regularly see Ron Moring’s photos, tickled as you can be to have a space to pose questions for our local media to explore, overwhelmed at the prospect of being able to access city council minutes, BRAC reports, and other documents all in one place (and archived!), etc etc etc, then let Richmond know — show your support for Petersburg People’s News. (Oh, and while at it you may learn about some other really outstanding topical blogs out of the greater Richmond area, if you don’t already follow them over at RVABlogs.com.)

Welcome to the Petersburg People’s News! We put this site together to focus on issues specific to our area, like other “hyperlocal” journalism sites that are springing up across the country (like the nearby Church Hill People’s News and the West of the Boulevard News from Richmond and Charlottesville’s cvillenews.com).

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