The newest message board in Baristaville is the Glen Ridge Forum, a yahoo group with 25 members. The forum comes with its own mission statement, and says that it got its start because of censorship over at NJ.com’s Glen Ridge forum.
WELCOME TO THE GLEN RIDGE FORUM THAT SUPPORTS TRUE FREEDOM OF SPEECH!
This is a general discussion forum about the daily news, activities and gossips surrounding Glen Ridge, NJ. Since the www.NJ.com forum has been censored beyond reason this board will be an alternative for residents to find out about town related issues, to express their opinions, or to ask residents/members questions about just about anything…
We’ll see. Already there’s been a suggestion that the group be moderated — like Montclair’s. A word to the wise, in Barista’s most popular poll ever, 51 percent of the respondents ranked the Watercooler’s Benevolent Despots the "root of all evil." And Dubya was one of the choices!
And one more thing, you could sex up the lingo a bit. There’s the Watercooler with it’s Cooleristas, the Waterheater, Montclair Unmod (also known as Radio Free Montclair), and Barista, which has introduced the concept of Baristaville. Glen Ridge Forum, with its drab two gas-lamp logo, is a little, um, dull.
That said, welcome to cyberspace. As soon as we have a moment, we’ll add it to the links on our left sidebar. And like our colleague Phil Read at the Star Ledger, will be watching the board for news and gossip.
I see that it’s “unsensored” !
Every truly unmoderated forum I have ever seen has dissolved into flame wars, spam and ads for porn. Some moderating is necessary. How much is cause for discussion.
LOL. Several of the Bloomfield Moms formed a Yahoo mail group some months back. Our first 25 messages (at least) consisted of writing back and forth to each other, compelling messages such as:
Did I do this right?
Can anyone read this?
I think I finally figured out how to post a message…
Sigh.