As the person responsible for turning on comments in the first place, I’m a big believer in FrontBurner, and you, dear commenters. I spend a lot of time here at D trying to come up with better ways to do things online. Sadly though, I don’t think this is one of them. Judging from the responses, there are obviously people on both sides of the fence, and rightly so — not everybody plays nice on the intertubes.
What I can tell you is that we’re working on a much improved comment system. And, yes, that includes a transparent moderation policy. As Wick mentioned, we in web have a long list of things to do, but this just made it to the top of mine.
We aren’t going to *change everything* (Tim, I’m looking at you), but I can promise we’ll have a much nicer playground when we get done.
Until then, comments are still flying for foodies, real estate junkies, Texas Rangers fans, and shopaholics.
From a very well-connected civic leader about the Enough Is Enough campaign:
If even half of these folks would have said “Enough is Enough” and decided to bring the Cowboys to Fair Park we would be transforming South and East Dallas today. It would be your cover story. Unfortunately I do not recall any of them engaging to stop, or even slow down, Arlington/Tarrant County. Even had we lost to Arlington after a battle it would have been nice to see the establishment cared for Fair Park…at least as much as they seem to do for a downtown hotel in the city’s Government Sector.
Dallas-Fort Worth has been named the second-best place in the country to live by RelocateAmerica.com, a Web site that provides info about communities to people looking to relocate. The site’s pick for No. 1: Tulsa, Okla.
Dave Levinthal, over on the Dallas City Hall blog, is actively campaigning for the participation of those who’ve been put off by our decision to disallow anonymous comments. Well-played, sir.
Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment: while I understand the reasoning behind shutting down the comment function, we’re kind of turning our back on some instances where the comments became the story, advanced it even, such as this spectacular example. No?
Bethany Anderson is one of my favorite FB commenters ever. On her blog, she writes intelligently about why she disagrees with our decision to stop allowing folks to comment anonymously. Her thoughts are all the more salient because, for a time, our comments section had grown so sour and personal that Bethany had stopped commenting therein.
Interesting story by the greatness that is Reese Dunklin over at the DMN Investigates blog. Seems that Florida-based Office Depot may be under investigation by our AG for overcharging businesses in Texas. A whistleblower from Florida, David Sherwin, was the one who, um, blew the whistle. And blew it hard. Before the “disgruntled” employee was fired in April 2008, he did the following:
Sherwin has acknowledged sending an e-mail to Office Depot’s chief executive in which he threatened to “kick your ass so hard that you would fly across Florida like Tinkerbelle.”
Sherwin said he was drunk at the time and has entered rehab since he was terminated. He said he was frustrated that Office Depot superiors had not taken seriously e-mails and memos that he sent warning of liabilities from the alleged overcharging he found.
For the record, Tinker Bell is two words, no “e” on the end.
The first person to send me a note about this change — a powerful man with an expense account that is rumored to be limitless — simply said, “Amen.” The second note I got, from a newsprint-loving FrontBurnervian, said:
I won’t give up on FB, but Wick’s edict, I’m afraid, will make the conversation here less interesting for me. I think what Wick is saying is that I’m not smart enough to discern the difference between an intelligent or idiotic comment. I give the FB Nation more credit than that.
By the way, you took a kick to the crotch yesterday with your public relations post. A lot of the comments were sophomoric and stupid, but I still enjoyed reading them.
Me, I’m ambivalent. I agree with Wick: too often the comments were noise. But every so often, someone would offer something that made me laugh or made me think. If we lose those fruitful contributions because people will only make them anonymously, then I’ll be sad. But I hope we won’t. As evidenced by the comment I’ve included above, smart people don’t mind sending e-mail to editors using their real names.
Only problem now is, of course, I’m not exactly suffering from a deficit of e-mail.
Like many homeowners who built huge during the housing bubble, cellphone mogul Alan Goldfield is in a pickle–just a much bigger one than most people. Goldfield’s $65.5 million Champ d’Or mansion near Hickory Creek has been on the market for seven long years. (Estimated monthly mortgage payment a buyer might face for the 35,000-square-foot palace: $314,000!) Now there’s a chance this Lone Star Taj Mahal could be torn down for redevelopment. The May issue of D CEO mag has the whole bizarre story, written by Mark N. Vamos–formerly of Fast Company and Newsweek, currently the O’Neil Chair in Business Journalism at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts.
In these turbulent times, we will not give you updates on every employee who leaves our warm embrace and winds up working elsewhere. Adam is different. He was here when this blog launched on March 20, 2003. So we’ll give him the space to say this:
I think I’m past the point where I fear a) jinxing it and b) that it’s all an elaborate practical joke. Now it can be said: I got a job. Starting today, I am a managing director at Perry Street Communications, which is a small but sophisticated corporate and finance communications firm. (I’ll be specializing in modifiers.) A friend of mine from St. Mark’s, Jon Morgan, started Perry Street in New York about three years ago. He moved to Dallas and opened an office here last year. Jon tells me we do strategic PR, which sounds neat. You can check out the Web site, but you won’t find my bio there yet. And I’m pretty sure my email is going to be amcgill AT perryst.com.
What does my job entail? Near as I can tell: take people to lunch, look at the Internet, and pretend to be very busy (e.g., Twitter, iPhone Scrabble, and surreptitious visits to The Pearl Cup). At least, that’s what I plan on doing for the first few months. (After that, most of my efforts will be devoted to embezzling from the company, using my “friendship” with its founder as a coverup.)
For reals: the job is great, the company is growing, and I’m totes excited. Exclamation point.
Press release TK. Two times.
We launched FrontBurner in March 2003, with the intent of holding a public conversation about Dallas among the editors of D Magazine. Many fads have come and gone during that time. Some have been wildly successful (hello, YouTube) and some have gotten mired in a morass of their own making (hi there, MySpace). One technological development that we embraced when it became available was comments from readers. No longer.
Many of our commenters have been thoughtful and intelligent, but as months turned into years, Gresham’s Law took hold. Comments became increasingly intemperate, irrelevant, and illiterate. Some good people hung on, but many good people left. The concept of user-generated content is fine — for other Internet sites. But for ours, it has not been a successful experiment.
The key to FrontBurner’s success is that it has always primarily been a conversation among the editors. Our readers don’t buy our magazines to find out what other people think; they buy them to find out what we think. Similarly, people come to FrontBurner to read our take on the news and opinions of the day about our city. If that’s not why you come, then enjoy your several billion other options on the Internet.
Disagreement, dissent, and amplification are still welcomed and even encouraged. So we will return to status quo ante. If you have a comment to make, please address it in an email to the editor who posted. Give your real name (it will not be used). If your point is valid and well-made, the editor will post it.
In time, we may be technologically capable of posting comments directly from invited participants who add to our conversation with the quality of their intelligence and the perspicacity of their writing. We hope to have that up and running in a few months (our web developers have a few hundred other agenda items ahead of it). Until then, we hope you enjoy FrontBurner the way it used to be.
Sam Merten over at Unfair Park dug through the documents accompanying the city’s February 11, 2009 refinancing of the convention center debt. In them, he discovered an analysis by HVS (the same group that has done all the convention hotel analyses) that estimates the city would produce higher revenues without a hotel than with it.
As I wrote back in our November issue, I support the concept of a convention hotel, but I believe the current proposal is badly conceived from a financial standpoint.
Our position:
On Proposition 1: Vote yes. Force the city to come up with a better alternative.
On Proposition 2: Vote no. This union-backed idea would stifle neighborhood redevelopment and economic growth.
Slate has posted an extraordinary way to view the recession’s effects on unemployment since January, 2007. Push the green arrow and keep your eyes on the Dallas area. While the rest of the country is getting hit, our jobs continue to grow, then the growth becomes slower, then stalls until December, 2008 — then wham!
Texas exceptionalism was, I regret to report, a temporary phenonmenon. The ABC News/Forbes list I posted yesterday was not as up-to-date as Slate’s.
Why It Is Futile To Criticize The Critics
Coincidentally, the great Elaine Liner posted an explanation last night of why her local drama site, TheaterJones.com, does not allow comments.