Ughhh this got so nasty, I can not believe it.
I was not going to revisit this, but feel the need to salvage and refocus this so the thread can end or continue constructively. Again, for me, this was to some extent expository, so thanks for your constructive participation.
Web-based Social Networking Technology, while beneficial to politics and governance, is in its early phases, and brings with it a few issues that will probably be resolved by some federal, state, or county ethics board in the future, and probably not before a few courts pontificate on the subject. The single issue that came to my attention was simple enough: a button had writing on it, that conveyed meaning that I felt should not be connected to public participation in a municipal capacity. I suppose thats probably due in part to the fact I grew up in an era where there was less bandwith and more content. It seems that many others are fine with "clicking buttons" and giving abbreviated new meaning to words in order to get better access to content. Certainly I've got "friends" who are not really people I know, and I've come to accept this modified meaning when looking at the world through the contruct of facebook. Still I feel that institutions long standing should not change for causes that are light and transient. As powerfull as a medium as these networks are for bettering the public dialogue, as they currently stand, they are not best calibrated for explicit government, and I would rather not sloppily assume abbreviations and new meanings that are explicitly defined on say the Governor's or Mayor's webpages, which bear their seal, signature, and reside on government servers. In the short term, I think we are lucky that McGinn is reaching out using new applications, and am glad that the information that feeds Facebook, is fed and provided elsewhere. In the long term, I'll be happier when the title of the page resembles all the formality of a government document, does not put the corporate logo of the provider above the states, and uses words that are better fit to the meaning.
