About This Web Site

In case you haven't noticed, I am on vacation and not able to visit the site regularly. I've been out since Monday, and I'll return about a week from today. Until then do not expect blog entries to get promoted to the front page or anonymous comments to get approved (although I'll drop in and check up IF I can).

Happy summer to you!

As some of you may have noticed I am out of town for a 9-day trip to Austin, TX where I am visiting family and attending South by Southwest Interactive. I am still checking in here periodically, but don't have time for new posts.  That means it's a great time to write that blog entry you've been thinking about, you don't have to compete with many other posts to get on the front page!

Soon after I get back, we should start seeing some of the work of the five students in a UNC class on Public Affairs Reporting for New Media, who will be focusing on the upcoming Primary election in Orange County.

Meanwhile, we haven't had an open thread in a while, so... how the hell are y'all?

Now that the election is over (mostly) I'm turning some attention back to some nagging issues here on OP.  This site is never going to be gorgeous or as easy to use as one with a full-time staff dedicated to making it so, but I think there are ways to make some small changes that can have a big impact.

For example, I already added "more" links to some of the featured posts in the left hand sidebar of the front page, so that now you can get a bigger picture of the active conversations on the site, and you can browse all of the top-rated posts of the week (and see which ones are at the bottom, too).  In addition, there are still site stats available to registered users which show you which members and which posts are the most active (for better or worse).