THE EXPERIMENT CONTINUES — READ ME AGAIN!

THE EXPERIMENT CONTINUES

For the next one or two months the editorial team of The Complement will provide trial posting of VIEWPOINTS, an online resident discussion forum .

For our second VIEWPOINT, we move away from the theme outlined in the following paragraph.  Pratibha Eastwood’s essay War!?  Not Again is extremely personal, and insightfully addresses racism, war and politics.  It is more than we want to handle in the Complement, but not more than we think deserves a forum at RVM.  Comments and contributions solicited.

The intended topics started out as RVM community issues involving residents, Residents Council, and Administration.  These are normally considered taboo – to be ignored because of the potential for divisiveness or disruption.  We believe that a community of adults with undeniable common interests should be able to identify and work toward constructive resolution of issues of community concern.  In the interests of civility and accuracy the discussion is moderated and all contributions subject to editing.

RVMlist discussions and resident input to the editors have suggested a need for this kind of forum.  However this goes well beyond the role envisioned for The Complement, so we will see if the trial can develop an independent identity.

For VIEWPOINTS to continue beyond a trial period, we will need to have:

• Significant participation in the form of contributed articles or substantive comments;
• Expressed approval at least comparable in magnitude to expressed disapproval; and
• At least two individuals willing to serve on an editorial board that provides selection of topics and moderation of discussion.

Comments on either the basic idea of the discussion page or the specific contents of the articles presented may be submitted by either of two pathways:  The Reply forms at the end of each posted article, or by email to myinforvm@gmail.com.  We will periodically summarize and post results; although we prefer signed communications we will honor requests for anonymity when we publish results.

The first topic is transparency in RVM/PRS decision making.  Mark Edy has initiated RVMlist discussions on this topic more than once.  The editors considered his submitted compilation reasonable, respectful, and indicative of as much effort to find answers as could reasonably be expected of an individual resident.  We worked with him to produce a briefer summary of the issues he presented, and have added brief notes from the RVMlist discussion of the freeway off-ramp project, and a brief history of key actions with respect to that project.

Please let us and your fellow residents know your views on this online forum experiment and on the issues raised by Mark Edy’s and Pratibha Eastwood’s essays.

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