By Don White
You will notice a few changes in Visioning Nanaimo today, if you look around the website. These changes were made to accommodate a new feature. Readers can now comment on all posts.
Enabling readers to comment on posts expands the functional purpose of the website. Issues that significantly impact cities like Nanaimo require sustained discussion and consideration. While social media sites can play a part in this discussion, they tend to fall short in sustaining ongoing dialogue for the simple reason that posted topics quickly disappear under a barrage of new material.
Consequently, we also need online venues where continuing discussion and consideration of important topics is supported and easily possible. With reader comments enabled, Visioning Nanaimo can index the comments by topic posted making then more easily accessed.
The same applies to enabling comments on posts made in the past. Very few are time sensitive. The large majority of topics and issues raised continue to be as relevant and important now as when originally posted. I suggest that So Nanaimo Council’s big change is to opt for no change? is a typical example. With the municipal election slated for October, incumbents who choose to run may well stand or fall on their demonstrated willingness to prepare our city for the future.
As for the accompanying layout changes, the sidebar appearing on the right side of the page now contains a short chronological list of links to the comments/articles. A second list of links to the most recent columns/viewpoints follows. (Page sidebars do not always show up on small screens like smartphones.)
To accommodate the new sidebar features, the Subscribe widget, directory of Post Categories, and links to VN on social media are now located in the page footer. The directory of Post Categories is also still accessible as a drop down window in the upper menu bar. Either location gives the same easy access to all posts categorized by topic.
Overall, these changes are small, but hope for reader involvement is bigger. Sometimes, small changes trigger large outcomes. Who knows? With readers engaging in ongoing discussions with others on the posts, turning on reader comments may turn out to be one of those instances,
June 5, 2022 at 3:40 pm
I agree with your idea Don. I am more doubtful of the benefit of Facebook in terms of resulting in “real” change than you are. I often turn to messenger if I want to have a more thorough discussion of a topic than Facebook results in. Sometimes I even use email or the phone or face to face conversation (although COVID has impacted that choice)!
I have to say that in Nanaimo, I am not sure how real change can happen. Even those of us who try to advocate directly with the City about different issues are not always acknowledged. Visioning Nanaimo can result in more meaningful and hopefully respectful exchanges of opinion, ideas and potential solutions and if enough people agree on what needs to change, perhaps that will help.
You will note that I put the same comment on A Better Nanaimo!
June 5, 2022 at 4:21 pm
I don’t disagree with any of your observations, Darcy. But I wonder if “making real change happen” is the best goal for most of us. Achieving that objective can be such a long shot (and in the hands of so many others) that personal success seems unobtainable. As a result the situation can seem hopeless and we can feel paralyzed. What about it we modify the objective to be “doing the best we can to make change happen”?
June 5, 2022 at 7:41 pm
Yes, I do know what you mean about modifying the objective to “doing the best we can to make change happen” Don. Part of me totally agrees with you but then I have the “idealist” shadow that says “if we don’t do something better, faster we are headed to disaster” show up. (I didn’t intend for that to rhyme!) AND then the paralysis and hopelessness of depression show up (and have for 40 plus years). Even though I know better.
If we can get enough voices and enough discussion that would be great. At least knowing that there are people out there who might not totally agree with your viewpoints but have a concern\interest in the issue is certainly a benefit.
June 6, 2022 at 12:01 pm
Well, perhaps the one true certainty in life is one’s own death. But that inevitability doesn’t really seem to form an argument for packing it in today. Perhaps the one can inform us something about approaching the other.
It will be interesting to watch whether the online discussions on VN grow. A lot may depend on people spreading the word of the venue to others. I guess we will see.