Alert: LUS Direct Terry Huval will answer questions in a live chat at the Advertiser’s on-line forum tomorrow evening. Take note, those of you who’ve asked questions in the comments section of this blog: you can get your answers straight from the horse’s mouth.
Particulars:
Where: online @ theadvertiser.com: Access Page
When: Wednesday, 1/14/08 starting at 6:00 PM
Mode: “Live Chat”
Huval has already been doing a great job of modeling how a really open and responsive community-owned telecom would act in the comments section of the Advertiser. He’s come on and answered questions from everyone—for pages and pages. (See, for instance: Announcement story, Advertiser Digest.) I’ve been gratified by the generally respectful tone of the commentors there; it’s a noticeable contrast to the ugly, uninformed approach that too often dominates in that and other anonymous forums. (The fact that Terry is speaking without the “protection” of anonymity seems to help. I recommend that participants who want to be taken seriously follow suit.)
Kudos to the Advertiser and Bill Decker. These Q&A sessions are proving useful to the community.
Update: 1/14/09: I just went to the access page and found an interesting and I think encouraging set of rules about the Advertiser’s “Live Chats.”
- There’s nothing to do during a Live Blog other than read, watch and occasionally send in a comment or vote in the polling questions.
- It’s not a chatroom. You go to largely find out what the writer has to say. An open chat with thirty or more readers turns into poor, disjointed content very quickly.
- Your comments are published at the Writer’s discretion. The Writer can view all comments sent to them but only they can publish your comments for everyone to see.
- Our ‘autoscroll’ feature ensures you’re always shown the newest content without having to refresh or scroll your screen. You can turn this on or off by using the controls at the bottom of the Live Blog.
- Subtle sound effects alert you to new content as the writer publishes it. This can also be turned on or off as needed
Nice; particularly the “It’s not a chatroom” caveat. The Advertiser has already taken care of much of my concerns. The net evolves.
