The pal-item.com Terms of Service (TOS) are the policies and terms that the Palladium-Item and its parent corporation, Gannett, have set forth for the use of their website at pal-item.com.  When you visit the site in your web browser, you are subject to those terms.  Opinions vary about whether the TOS can be considered a legal contract between you and the Palladium-Item, and how enforceable the terms might be.  But one thing is clear: as websites like pal-item.com become more interactive and encourage more user submission of content, it’s in your best interest to understand these terms and how they affect you.

The Nature of the Agreement, and Making Changes

Here’s the excerpt we’re looking at for this installment:

“Accessing the Site, in any manner, whether automated or otherwise, constitutes use of the Site and your agreement to be bound by these Terms of Service.

We reserve the right to change these Terms of Service or to impose new conditions on use of the Site, from time to time, in which case we will post the revised Terms of Service on this website. By continuing to use the Site after we post any such changes, you accept the Terms of Service, as modified.”

Let’s look at that first sentence in more depth: accessing the site in any manner constitutes an agreement to be bound by the terms of service.  This essentially means that by opening up a browser window and typing in pal-item.com, you are consenting to be bound (legally bound?  Who knows!) by the terms of service.  These terms could be construed to mean that even if you just click on a link from another website and you’re not even sure that you’re coming to the Pal-Item.com site, you’re still bound by the terms.

This is a fairly standard clause in “Terms of Service” documents, but continues to be an entirely unenforceable one from the perspective of the average user.  In any case where a dispute actually arises related to the terms, the paper would probably have to show your intent to “visit” and “use” the site more than in just a casual fashion.  Still, it's good to be aware that from their perspective, you’re bound to their terms the second you step onto the site.

Now let’s look at the part about updating the terms: “We reserve the right to change these Terms of Service or to impose new conditions on use of the Site, from time to time, in which case we will post the revised Terms of Service on this website. By continuing to use the Site after we post any such changes, you accept the Terms of Service, as modified.”

This essentially says that the moment someone on the Palladium-Item staff makes a change to the Terms of Service page, as soon as you visit the site after that change, you’re bound by the new conditions, even if you haven’t read them yet.

This is also a common provision of many terms of service documents, and is also pretty much unenforceable.  In July of 2007, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that website operators cannot hold visitors to the site solely responsible for visiting the updated TOS document in order to be bound by their terms.  See Douglas v. U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 2007 WL 2069542, 9th Cir. (Cal.) Others have suggested that site operators at least give something like 30 days notice after a change before it takes effect, and that they actually describe the changes that are made instead of assuming you can compare two versions of the document.  We know that the Pal-Item has our e-mail address on file if we have an account here - they could send out an automated e-mail notifying us of the change, as many kinds of financial institutions are now required to do in similar cases.

This also raises questions about what kinds of changes the Palladium-Item might make to the terms.  While it’s unlikely that they would introduce a new clause that says “every time you visit the site, you shall incur a debt to the Gannett Corporation in the form of $10,000 or the delivery of your firstborn child,”  it’s still of concern that a document intended to be a contract can be updated without one of the parties to the contract participating in that process.  The concern is amplified when you're submitting personal or original content to the site - how will that information be used now?  And even if you're okay with how it is used now, how will it be used in the future when the terms are modified?

I certainly find that to be food for thought.

Intellectual Property, and What They Do With What You Post

In this installment, I’d like to look at the intellectual property rights aspect of the TOS.  Here’s the first relevant part:

“…unless explicitly authorized in these Terms of Service or by the owner of the materials, you may not modify, copy, reproduce, republish, upload, post, transmit, translate, sell, create derivative works, exploit, or distribute in any manner or medium (including by email or other electronic means) any material from the Site. You may, however, from time to time, download and/or print one copy of individual pages of the Site for your personal, non-commercial use, provided that you keep intact all copyright and other proprietary notices.”

Let’s break that down a bit.  The first sentence says that basically, you are not allowed to use any of the information on the Pal-Item.com in any way that involves copying it or redistributing it.  The rest of the paragraph notes that you are allowed to make a single reproduction of a page on the site, as long as it’s just printed out or saved as a file on your computer.

Here are some examples of the kinds of things that this clause makes a violation of the TOS, as I understand it:

• Including an excerpt from a story on the pal-item.com site in your own weblog or website
• Sending your friend an e-mail with a headline and the first paragraph of an article pasted into it, even if it then links back to the full article on pal-item.com
• Printing off two or more copies of an article for distribution to your friends and family because you found it interesting

Let’s move on to the clauses related to the intellectual property license you give to the Pal-Item when you use the site, which I’ll break down into chunks:

“…when you submit or post any material, you are granting us, and anyone authorized by us, a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, copy, modify, transmit, sell, exploit, create derivative works from, distribute, and/or publicly perform or display such material, in whole or in part, in any manner or medium, now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose. “

This basically says that when you submit information to the site – such as a comment on a story, a photo, a blog post, a forum comment, etc. – the Palladium-Item can do whatever they want with it.   For example:

• If you submit a photo that someone else finds valuable, the Palladium-Item can sell it to them and keep all of the profit from the sale.  They could even just use your photographs in their own print products, without passing any royalties or other payment on to you.
• If you submit a blog post that is especially insightful, the Palladium-Item can publish it in their print edition as editorial content, again without compensating you.
• If you submit a 1,000 word comment in the forums, the paper can edit it down to 100 words and republish it as an alternate version of your comments.

All of this can be done without asking for your permission, or without even telling you about it.

Here’s the next part:

“The foregoing grant shall include the right to exploit any proprietary rights in such posting or submission, including, but not limited to, rights under copyright, trademark, service mark or patent laws under any relevant jurisdiction.”

This basically says again that even if the information you submit to the site is under some sort of copyright or trademark protection – such as a cross-posting of a blog entry from another site where you are a blog author with your own copyright terms, or such as an excerpt of a book you’re writing – the paper can still choose to sell it, edit it down, republish it elsewhere, etc.

“Also, in connection with the exercise of such rights, you grant us, and anyone authorized by us, the right to identify you as the author of any of your postings or submissions by name, email address or screen name, as we deem appropriate.”

This says that the paper can attribute to you any content that you submit.  This is generally a good thing – you get credit for your words and photos – but the language doesn’t make clear whether or not the attribution would go beyond what is publicly visible to the rest of the users of the site.  So, if you believe that you’re posting a controversial comment from behind the relative anonymity of a screen name, you might still see your real name or actual e-mail address next to your comments if they’re re-used by the paper elsewhere.  All they have to do is deem that to be appropriate.

In a separate document, the Pal-Item.com Privacy Policy, they state that “we reserve the right to use, and to disclose to third parties, all of the information collected from and about you while you are using the Site in any way and for any purpose.”  While I’m sure that the intent of the Pal-Item.com staff is good when it comes to the disclosure of your personal information, it’s still worth noting that, according to their terms, they can still technically tell the rest of the world anything they know about you, whenever they want, and possibly as a part of attributing your comments on the site to you.

This might change how you think about what you post on the site.

I’ll note here that I am not an employee or affiliate of the Palladium-Item or Gannett, and do not represent or speak for them in any way.  I am also not a lawyer; you should consult a qualified legal counsel if you have questions about the meaning and implications of these terms.

Privacy, Miscellaneous Clauses, and Conclusions

In this final installment, I’d like to highlight a few miscellaneous clauses, and make some overall conclusions about the terms of service as a whole.

Let’s start here: “It is a condition of your use of the Site that you do not… Use the Site to post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane or indecent information of any kind.”

As with much of the language I’ve looked at, this is pretty common fare in the world of TOS documents, but it does always raise the question of who gets to decide what material is “abusive” or “vulgar” or “indecent.”  Speaking from my own experience, I’ve historically found a significant percentage of the comments posted on the Pal-Item forums to qualify as abusive or defamatory, but that doesn’t mean anyone else necessarily would.

The legal interpretation of such terms, with the exception of cases where there are clear definitions, usually comes back to community standards.  I hope that users of the Pal-Item.com site have enough of a sense of what the community standards are to avoid violating it, but I'm not sure that's the case.

“It is a condition of your use of the Site that you do not… Use the Site to post, transmit or in any way exploit any information, software or other material for commercial purposes, or that contains advertising.”

I’m just not sure quite what this means.  If it’s requesting that we not ever make use of the content of the site in a way that might lead to making money, that may be a difficult one for the members of the business community who do look to the Pal-Item for information about itself.  If it’s requesting that we not ever post a link to another commercial resource or website with the intent of having someone else make use of it, that also seems difficult to follow…if someone asks for a list of local pizza restaurant websites, is it a violation to respond with the list and links?  I’m not sure.

Regarding termination of accounts, the policy says, “We may cancel or terminate your right to use the Site or any part of the Site at any time without notice.”

I certainly understand the desire to protect the Pal-Item site by exercising this kind of total control over it, but this kind of approach does tend to hinder true community engagement in an online conversation.  In “real life,” we don’t expect to be unconditionally ejected from a community space without some sort of conversation or advance warning.  The Pal-Item.com staff have historically done a good job of establishing a process for banning someone from the site that gives them an opportunity to shape up, so this shouldn’t be too much of a concern.  But as with other clauses, it’s worth being aware of as you decide how to participate here.

In the last installment I noted that I’d look further at the Pal-Item.com Privacy Policy.  As I noted then, the policy pretty clearly states that the paper can make use of the information it gathers about you and your use of the site in just about any way it wants, including handing it over to some “third party” of their choosing without notice to you.

A related clause notes that the advertisers on the site may also collect information about you separately from the Pal-Item, and that they may have their own privacy policies:

“These third-party advertisers and ad servers may use the information they collect to help present their advertisements, to help measure and research the advertisements' effectiveness, or for other purposes. The use and collection of your information by these third-party advertisers and ad servers is governed by the relevant third-party's privacy policy and is not covered by our Privacy Policy… If you have any concerns about a third party's use of cookies or web beacons or use of your information, you should visit that party's website and review its privacy policy.”

This essentially makes it our responsibility to check the privacy policies of every advertiser that places ads on the site and that might be gathering information about your browsing habits.  While this is by no means new to the world of online advertising, it would always be nice if the site hosting the ads took a more proactive approach to setting privacy standards for its advertisers when it comes to its users` data.

“Please also note that as our business grows, we may buy or sell various assets. In the unlikely event that we sell some or all of our assets, or one or more of our websites is acquired by another company, information about our users may be among the transferred assets.”

It’s worth noting that this basically means that even if you trust the current Pal-Item.com and Gannett staff to do reasonable things with the data they collect about you, there’s no guarantee that it won’t eventually be sold off to another entity that is less worthy of your trust.

I think that’s all of the specific clauses I wanted to cover in this discussion.  I’ve obviously singled out phrasing that is potentially troubling to me or others, but there is plenty of other language in the policies that are useful and positive, and that provide some kinds of protection for users (e.g. the Privacy Policy discusses the measures the Pal-Item takes to protect children in their potential use of the site).

But for me, all of the concerns add up to one primary conclusion: as written, the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy do not adequately protect my interests as a potential participant in the Palladium-Item’s online conversation space and interactive components. Whatever interest I have in blogging on the site is mitigated by concerns about how my submitted content could be re-used or sold without my permission.  Whatever interest I have in submitting photos or “My P-I” stories is mitigated by the same concern.  And whatever desire I have to try to engage fellow users of the site is tainted by concerns about how those conversations might be used against me at a later time, especially if I run afoul of the Palladium-Item’s or Gannett’s own corporate interests.

I would even go further to say that it’s a danger to the health of our public discourse that the Pal-Item.com site is held up as a primary online space for conversing about the issues that matter to us most, when the space itself is, by way of these policies, hostile to the kind of vulnerability, mutual respect, and protection of individual contributions necessary for such conversations.

The great thing is, these policies could be changed to address those concerns. I’m sure you’ll join me in chuckling at the remote likelihood of this, given that the language probably comes from a corporate legal office that is charged with protecting corporate assets, not encouraging open exchange and protecting the interests of site users.  BUT, it is possible, and I wouldn’t be bothering with this series of posts if I didn’t think the Palladium-Item staff might at least take some of these issues under consideration when we share our concerns.

In the end, you may still choose to participate there, as I'm sure many will continue to do.  Heck, I may still choose to participate there in some form.  But I hope these discussions have been helpful in illuminating some of the factors that affect how you participate, and what can be done with the information you submit to the Palladium-Item.

If you have your own comments or questions about the Terms of Service document or related issues, feel free to post them here.

Thanks for reading!

Good:

1. The site clearly continues the paper's commitment to encouraging conversations and interaction between people who track what's going on in the community. As I did in 2006, I commend them for this.
2. The abuse reporting system in the forum is more robust. As I understand it, if a particular comment is reported as "abusive" by three or more people, it will cease to appear in the conversation thread. In the past, users could report abuse but action had to be taken by an administrative user.
3. The system for recommending stories published on the site allows users to see what's interesting to fellow readers.
4. With their new blogging system, any user can create a blog. While these user blogs aren't featured like the ones maintained by the staff, they are a good platform for a kind of conversation that's a little different from forum posts.
5. The use of customizable profile photos (or whatever image a user chooses) alongside posts gives the conversation the potential to feel a little more personalized and authentic than when there were none.

Bad:

1. The site is slower than snail snot, and it's not just the server side of things. It appears to be using a ridiculously complex Javascript system for generating pages, and demands more client-side computing power than ever just to print some text and images out on a page. There's Web 2.0, and then there's UCK.
2. The new site continues and increases the trend of control by non-local Gannett Corporation staff who have no connection to our community that isn't based on a profit motive. Locally-based Online Editor Jason Truitt has apparently less control over the site than ever.
3. In moving to the new system, the paper is apparently leaving behind all of the existing forum conversations. As unhelpful as most of them were, it's bad form to just nuke years of posts (though they're still available for the moment - ready your crawler bots) and expect people to invest in a new space that may be nuked just as easily.
4. With their new blogging system, any user can create a blog. I'll just leave it at that.
5. There appear to be no e-mail notifications that you can receive if you want to follow the conversations around a particular story or discussion thread.
6. Related, the site makes pretty poor use of RSS feeds when it could have done so much more (though they do seem to be updated in a more timely manner).
7. The site navigation is weird and seizure-inducing. Key menus appear and disappear, key content sections change without warning, and I think there are at least seventeen gazillion links you can click on at any given page. Okay, I counted, it's 222 links for the front page...who the heck has the time?
8. By virtue of being slow, hard to use, and utterly confusing, the site offers less value for Palladium-Item advertisers. To whatever degree their focus has been shifting to an online presence that replaces traditional revenue sources for print media, this has got to be a big step back.

So, on the whole, I'd give it a big thumbs down.

The update has got to be frustrating for the local Pal-Item staff. It seems like some over-zealous Javascript jockeys must have known someone who knew someone at Gannett headquarters, and were awarded a big fat contract for updating the websites of this and other media properties (apparently this system is being rolled out at other papers around the country) with a bunch of pseudo-social networking features. Unfortunately, someone forgot to think about things like usability, good interface design, fostering true dialog, getting user input...you know, those kinds of things.

And so we remain a community where the presentation of local news, opinion and public conversation is increasingly managed and dictated by people who have never been to Richmond, Indiana, and in a way that is less and less useful to those of us who are here.

Government registration forms, social services, accurate weather updates, financial filings, interactions with our representatives in Congress, the ability to watch political debates -- all of these things are slowly (or sometimes quickly) moving toward a mode where if you don't have good Internet access, you're going to have to work a lot harder to get the information you want. For a significant population of people in the world who are almost always overlooked, this is a real problem, and one that is growing every day.

And it's not just about the "digital divide." I can't figure out whether it's a privilege or a curse that I'm often no more than a few minutes away from being able to look something up on the Internet. As I wrote in 2005, I also maintain some confidence that if the Internet went away today, things would be okay. But how long will that be true for most people? At what point will the inability to quickly and easily refer someone to your website for more information mean the total breakdown of society as we know it? Are we already there?

I still believe that websites and the Internet in general have a significant role to play in making our lives better, easier, and more about the things that matter. The way that information can be exchanged and displayed is unlike anything else available, and it's a tool we can use for much good. But it's so easy to forget what enormous resources it takes to make that possible - and what significant relative wealth one must have to take advantage of it.

I've been ignoring del.icio.us for a while now. I've seen little icons for it popping up on weblogs I read, seen references to it in articles on software and productivity (including one on my own company's weblog), and heard people using it in everyday conversation. But I really didn't understand it, or what it really did, or why anyone would use it. (Plus, it seems like a waste of a perfectly good domain name, icio.us.)

I'm still not sure I do, even after reading the site's own description of what it's for. This is a strange and disorienting place to be for someone whose job it is to have my finger on the pulse of web tech trends. But I'm trying out using it anway, and you can see my Chris Hardie del.icio.us page at http://del.icio.us/ChrisHardie. I guess it's just a list of web pages I've marked for...me? people in my "network"? the world?...to see, with various keywords associated so that I can...have keywords. Ummm, yeah, I think that's it. I kind of like it, but I don't know why.

Do you use del.icio.us? How? Why?

RickThalls.com

I'll start with the Rick Thalls campaign website, http://www.rickthalls.com/. The first thing I notice about Mr. Thalls` site is that the front page is over 900 Kilobytes in size. For someone on a dial-up connection, that's a large download, perhaps prohibitively so for some users. The main reason for this is that Mr. Thalls displays images that are sized much larger than they are displayed, forcing you to download much more information than is actually used. For example, the "Please Vote Today" image currently on the front page is displayed at 532 pixles wide by 230 pixels high, but the actual image file is much larger, 1007 pixels wide by 436 pixels wide - a big no-no in web development.

The current front page also plays an audio clip every time you load it, with Rick welcoming you to the site. While it's definitely an engaging use of "new media," it can become annoying after one's third and fourth visit to the site. Because it plays without prompting, it also holds the possibility of startling or embarrassing users who are viewing the site in a public or work setting and aren't expecting the sound.

This is a comment that applies to both sites: I don't understand the compulsion to put local weather information on a political campaign site. There are several hundred other places that I can get the weather in my daily routine, many of them on local websites - why do I need to have the weather listed so prominently here? It's a waste of "screen real estate" and comes across as unnecessary filler. Thalls' site continues that trend with a number of Flash-based games at the bottom of his front page. HUH?? I could almost see the utility if he had a "Kids Area" or something like that where the games were related to a policy statement, but in its current incarnation, the presence of a Pac-Man feature doesn't say "serious political candidate."

Once you start browsing around the site's inner pages, you begin to see some of the things the site does well: it has a consistent "look and feel" (sorry, Mr. Hill). The colors are bold and inviting, and make the site visually pleasing. Games and weather report aside, the site doesn't make excessive use of bells and whistles, annoying animations, or other tackiness. The site provides some basic useful information - Rick's background, when and where to vote for him, and how you can help his campaign.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment with rickthalls.com is the total lack of detail about the candidate's positions on issues and specific vision for what a Thalls administration would look like. As I believe he's done in many of his other public writings and appearances, he mostly writes in vagaries and sweeping generalizations that make the site seem more about propaganda and less about educating voters. "The appropriate partnerships within the city will play a huge role in solving these problems"...what does that MEAN? "We must portray a professional image"....what does that LOOK like? "We must address new revenue options!"...what ARE they?

Lastly, the site does not appear to offer a way to contact the candidate directly with questions or comments about the campaign. This is a failure of the promise of using the Internet for better two-way contact between candidates and constituents.

Other things I noticed in my review:

• The site is hosted on the Linux operating system using the Apache web server software platform. The site is hosted via the GoDaddy.com, Inc. service, which isn't local, but is widely known and cost effective.
• The page titles of the site that display in the web browser title bar are not page-specific. In other words, they all say about the same thing ("Elect Rick Thalls Mayor") instead of something more precise like "Rick Thalls - As Your Mayor" and "Rick Thalls - Vote Today," or something similar.
• The site does not have a privacy policy stating how they will use information submitted through the "Show Rick Your Support" form.
• The site does not validate to industry-recognized W3C standards, which means it may not be compatible with alternate web browsing platforms like devices for the visually impaired, people using text-only browsers, etc.
• The site does not offer any Spanish-language translation options for the city's significant Spanish-speaking population

HuttonForMayor.com

The website for incumbent Sally Hutton is at HuttonForMayor.com, but really, this is the Mayor's secondary campaign website. The primary one is the one belonging to the City of Richmond, and while I won't go into a full critique of it right now, let's just say that it probably doesn't reflect very comprehensively on the Mayor's administration to date - a missed opportunity for sure. But, moving on:

The front page weighs in at 177 Kilobytes, a fairly fast download for even slower connections, which is good. The site achieves a "graphical" look while still using style sheets and text to display the site's critical content (e.g. "Sally Hutton for Mayor" at the top) instead of bulky graphics. This is good for search engine optimization and usability by non-graphical web browser programs.

Unfortunately, the design isn't very compelling. A strange flag-like icon and some blocky header graphics don't really draw the user in or convey a polished image. Certainly, once we cross into the area of design aesthetics there is much that is subjective, but I think even newer web users can recognize that the site design leaves much to be desired in terms of professionalism and atmosphere.

Like the Thalls site, the Hutton site provides some useful basic information about the candidate: history and background (including home address and phone number, which is good to see), past accomplishments and service to the community, etc. But the site also lacks any concrete information about the Mayor's policy positions on key issues, or specific vision for what a second term in office might look like. If a voter came to this site hoping to educate themselves in making a decision, they would only have past-oriented information to act upon, a missed opportunity for sure.

The Mayor has a nice Flash-based photo gallery viewer on the site that shows her participation in various community events. Unlike the Thalls slideshow viewer, it doesn't have any captions to describe what's happening in the images.

The Mayor's site does offer a site-wide search feature which is useful to have, although the site isn't quite so big that one can't find what one needs by clicking through it.

Other things I noticed:

• The site is hosted on the Linux operating system using the Apache web server software platform. The site is hosted via the Lunarpages.com hosting service, which isn't local, but is widely known and cost effective.
• The site does not have a privacy policy stating how they will use information submitted through the "Volunteer" or "Contribute" forms.
• The Mayor makes her direct campaign e-mail address available front-and-center on the site's splash page, which increases the sense of her availability.
• The site's footer says it was last updated on September 29th, 2007. For a political campaign that wants to appear on top of the day's current issues, it's probably not a good idea to imply a month of no changes in the content.
• The site does not validate to industry-recognized W3C standards, which means it may not be compatible with alternate web browsing platforms like devices for the visually impaired, people using text-only browsers, etc.
• The site does not offer any Spanish-language translation options for the city's significant Spanish-speaking population

Conclusions

If the election were held today and the sole criteria for voting was the quality and utility of the candidate websites...it would probably be too close to call. Both sites have their positive features, but both lack any substantial future-oriented information that voters can use to education themselves about what a Hutton or Thalls administration will specifically look like.

For me, the whole point of having a campaign website is to provide in-depth information that can't be easily shared during a speech, debate, or passing conversation. If someone's already at the site, they already know that you're running for Mayor, and in this race in this town, they probably already know a lot of tidbits about you.

So, each candidate should have had detailed policy documents outlining their budget plans, economic development vision, environmental policy, governing model, staff structure, and more - and then they should have been referring to that information throughout the campaign. "For more information about exactly what I'll do about issue X, you can go to my website..." They've elaborated somewhat in the pseudo-blog hosted by the local paper, but as election day draws near, that too seems to be more of a platform for quick sound bites and less for substantial presentation of information or dialogue.

If I were to be overly cynical about all of this, I could infer that neither the candidates nor the voting population think enough about the substance of ideas to bother with effectively using one of the best mediums available for exchanging that kind of information, the web. But, I suspect that what's really at work is low standards and poor precedents for what kind of political web presence is necessary or desirable in a local election.

With that context in mind, both campaign websites are probably doing exactly what they set out to do, and as well as they set out to do it.

I recently tried an experiment, where I took a couple of my blog postings from here, and cross-posted them on an account at Daily Kos. As a result, I got to learn about the strange culture that's evolved on this headline-making site. For example, a posting there is actually called a "Diary" (not a diary entry, just a diary). And there's apparently a whole crew of users of the site who go through reading the hundreds of diaries posted throughout the day, and they "Rescue" them, which means they highlight them for the rest of the users of the site to read. Apparently, I hit the Kosian jackpot of having my first two diaries ever rescued and discussed. Most interesting was how many people commented on the entries compared to their life on this site. I suppose that when you've built a critical mass in an online community, the content gets a lot more attention, no matter its quality.

Anyway, it was fun to know that a site read (and often condemned) by various national political and media figures had, for a brief time, a little linkage to my self-indulgent ramblings.

Now, slackers, how come I can't get 33 of you to comment on a blog post here?

Seeing this phenomenon (which is, I think, actually just the true spirit of the Web showing through) inspires me towards activities like writing in this weblog. It reminds me that I don't have to limit myself to having a web presence only if it's complete, formal, pre-meditated, and purposeful. The web as a medium is just as well suited (if not better suited) for the raw and creative as it is for the commercial and polished. Surely as a viewer, creator, and hoster of many websites, I can enjoy those different modes of online existence equally as well.

However, there is a largely underutilized potential for the personal website that I'd like to comment on. As I see it, a great deal of the world's problems are derived from a severe lack of communication, a lack of human understanding amongst one another. Just think, there are 5 billion people out there that you don't know; you don't have any idea where they came from, what they're like, where they're headed. You just assume they're pretty much like you and that they'll get along okay without you.

That's not the case. We go to war because we assumed someone was like us and they turned out to be too different. People die because we assume they'll be able to support themselves while we enjoy extreme affluence. Because our field of significance extends only to our family, friends, and the people we "know", we have a very narrow concept of how the "world" is.

The personal website is a great solution to this. Our stories, our interests, our problems, our joys; they make up who we are and when you can share in someone elses, you've suddenly broadened the field of people who are in some way significant to your life. If you can learn about people and what makes them tick, you're a lot more likely to know how to fix the problems that get the world down. You might even learn something about yourself.

The web and internet in general have an enormous potential to change our world, a hundred times as much as it already has. I've encountered people from all over the world I wouldn't have otherwise known about; we might not speak each other's language, but through this incredible technology we can learn about each other, appreciate each other, and openly and directly share the common bond of humanity.

The plunge is worth it. The vulnerability pays off. The potential for getting to know your world is unimaginable. Publish yourself.