Weekend in Florida! There is nothing like it. With the weekend comes time for you… It’s your time to garden, party, catch up or just relax. No matter what you choose, It’s also your time to ask your questions, leave your comments or start a new topic. The weekend forum is open.
I must confess, over the past couple of weeks I have grown very concerned with some of the comments left on your blog. I feel that sometimes people speak their mind too openly and not worrying about consequences and feelings of others. At times they feel they are doing their neighbors a service, other times they are defending a prior comment or idea. Regardless, many feel that their comments become harmful attacks directed at another neighbor. You can see great examples as many often attack Jeff, Sherry, Susan, Rick, Randy and the list goes on. While I am not condemning or condoning, I feel that in the writers mind, they are trying to make their point. However, often it is at the expense of other. Yet, at the end of most days, we come together, support one another and reunite for the general cause of making Seminole Heights a better place to live. Whether it be uniting to create a community garden, joining as a group to create an exercise boot camp. Whatever the mission, we unite.
After many days of watching the site and reading many comments, I turned to other online blogs to see how they handle such flow of argumentative comments, neighbor discord, etc. What I found is most other blogs do not have these issues. Is this a good thing?
Looking at area blogs (bartlettpark, Davis Island, Tampa Heights, South Tampa, Port Tampa, North Tampa and the list goes on). What I found is that most of the sites were lucky to have 10 post in the past 4 months, but what was more interesting was that most of the sites only had a maximum of 2 comments from those 10 postings. This got me thinking. For most of you, if the site had no comments, no postings and little traffic, would you bother checking the site daily? With the site now averaging almost 300 visitors per day, and same days 400, I am sure we will always have varied opinions. My question becomes how do we harness this energy, passion and enthusiasm for the betterment of the neighborhood? Do you have any ideas?
