Welcome to the new Friends of South 12th Street's Neighborhood Blog. This new communication format is designed to better engage residents by replacing the emails you currently receive with regular blog posts. Neighbors are then able to add comments and feedback to each post, thus encouraging a neighborhood conversation about upcoming events, crime, and helpful tips and information.
To stay connected and receive email messages instantly letting you know a new post has been added. To sign up, simply enter in your email address into the box below "Follow
Us By Email" and click the submit button. Finish the subscription page, and you will be signed up. It is as easy as that.
Over the next days and weeks, we will be moving information and resources from the website, to our blog, so check back frequently for new content and features. Remember to share your comments and feedback in the Comments box under each post.
Looking forward to your comments and feedback.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a blog. It makes it so easy to keep informed. I would love to know who lives here and what you do. It is way more friendly if you know that people are around you that you might like to meet.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Sharika Roland and I am an artist living on south 11 and Anderson. My husband Jim is a home inspector and we own a small store downtown called iota.
What do you do out there. Any more artists??
We have three chihuahuas and like to walk the neighborhood.
My smallest chihuahua recently got out of the yard and someone from this neighborhood took him to the pound so I found him the next day. I was so happy.
Anyway lets get to know each other.
Hi Sharika! It's great to learn more about you. I'd love to check out your store sometime and see your art. I'm not an artist but it runs in my family and I have a few creative cells. :) I knit and crochet fashion accessories such as handbags and cowls, and create home decor items such as pillows and vase covers. I also sell vintage fashion accessories - I can spend hours shopping at antique stores. Here's my site if you want to check it out (I also have a Facebook page): http://www.etsy.com/shop/BelleAdora. Other than that, I love to spend time outdoors and recently went hiking at Tiger Mountain. I think I might have seen you walking your dogs around my house.. do you put sweaters on them? I live on S. 14th, near Junett. I'm glad you found your dog at the pound... I have an interesting story about my experience at the humane society as well. :)
DeleteKristin
Shakira, I just went and saw your art online. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone wants additionally to set up something more private where we can directly communicate - either reviving the direct group mail we used to have before the centralized website, or in a private group on Facebook - count me in.
Discussing neighborhood events and plans should be good here on the open public blog, but I'm not sure that sharing illegal activity or responses to criminal or suspicious activity would be be good to post publicly.
I won't harp on this. I'm just putting it out here in case there are others who miss the old way of immediate direct communication. We would have to rebuild our list but I do still have the old one.
I ran a search and see there is another PUBLIC page for our neighborhood already established on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteFriends of South 12th Street
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Friends-of-South-12th-Street/116811208397337
Hi there! Yes, you're right, we do have a Facebook page for Friends of South 12th Street. I hope you will follow it so you can be up to date on events and participate in community discussions. This blog will be an additional tool for us. Do you think there is an advantage to having a blog and Facebook page for discussions, or would you rather see them serve different purposes? I ask because we will be discussing this at our next leadership team meeting and your feedback is appreciated.
DeleteKristin
Above I wrote,
Delete"...I'm not sure that sharing illegal activity or responses to criminal or suspicious activity would be be good to post publicly..."
If you feel differently, I would like to hear your perspective. We now have 2 public pages, no more private updates.
INITIALLY, we had a group email chain. It was an intimate communication between neighborhood folks - mostly aimed at crime prevention - that was direct and immediate. Some of us also joined the email list for the 6th Ave group because the neighborhoods overlap. We'd hit "reply all" on our last email and report to neighbors directly. I don't know why that was a bad idea. It worked. There was a lot of involvement. We knew if bikes were being stolen, cars broken into, houses burglarized, and alerted to take action or be watchful of bands of individuals or locations.
Then a few years ago someone replaced our direct communication with a website that we had to go to but that wasn't updated with neighborhood details as we had been receiving prior. Perhaps the complicated submission process (we were given a list of email addresses to submit different kinds of info) lessened the community's involvement. I don't know. Instead of frequent direct communication emails from each other we only were notified of what the organizer knew and shared. At least we still got private updates and could email that person privately to have him privately distribute the info to the others.
Recently, by the time we got an email about the garage breakins, according to a police sergeant who responded to ours, there had been close to SIXTY of them. Without direct communication we can't tell each other that.
We have two PUBLIC places now that we are supposed to check for info. It was a drag for me to have to check one when I liked the convenience of getting the updates directly from my neighbors while checking my email - which I have to do daily anyway. I didn't go there every day, and when I did I could see that it had only been updated occasionally and eventually stopped using it as a resource.
On the Facebook page, I see that helpful neighbors have to risk putting their real names on their reports of criminal activities. If someone breaks in my house and I report it on an open public page, the criminal can now also see my name. If I report local activity with my real name criminals could look me up. Our neighborhood thieves can watch the page. Who can share they called the police?
On the Facebook page only the moderator can directly post to the page. Everyone else's contribution is put up in a little box to the right where you can only see the first line of what they wrote so I'm thinking the purpose of the page is more community supportive of good things about our great area, downplaying the crimes in that right hand corner.
What I was asking above is whether there are others who want to be able to speak privately without being on display.
I think it's great to have a (1) public page to say when there are happy things going on, but I also think that we still have a need to watch over our neighborhood and speak to each other safely and more privately; a Facebook private group or back to the email chain.
If others don't think so, it's moot. And I'm okay with that too.
I'd vote keep the public Facebook page, drop the blog, and if anyone wants to get back to neighborhood watch, that we do that also, privately.
oh that makes sense. I get it now. Thanks
DeleteI think you make some great points! I can see how there is a need to have a private discussion to more openly communicate about crimes. I wonder if I can make the Facebook page private, after it's been created as an open fan page. The Facebook page was meant to facilitate community conversations, including both the positive aspects and areas for improvement, but I can see how the openness of it limits some info being posted. As for how it is set up, Facebook automatically switched these fan pages over to the new Timeline design, which resulted in posts by others being shifted to the right. You do have the option of selecting whether you want to see just posts by others or posts by the page. It's not ideal, but we didn't really have a choice in that.
DeleteWe have to make sure we are communicating timely and relevant info to our neighbors. We definitely need to consider the options you've posed. Thanks for helping us serve this community better!
what are we going to talk about on this blog here that is different.
ReplyDeleteWritten By: Tim Robertson
ReplyDeleteHello friends. It is great to see that the very first post has already sparked some great conversation. The question has been asked whether it is better to have a neighborhood website, blog, facebook, private email, so on. The answer is THEY ALL SERVE A PURPOSE AND FILL A NEED.
HISTORY LESSON
A few years ago, our neighborhood was being hit with a high number of home burglaries and car prowls. One afternoon, an innocent gentleman was assaulted and severally beaten by a group of teens at the little grocery store at the corner of S. 12th At this time, I did not know about Friends of South 12th Street. My neighbor and I were talking about the rising crime and decided to invite our neighbors over to meet and organize. Jessica Troy (former leader of Friends of South 12th Street) attended that meeting. Jessica told us about Friends of South 12th. Several of us gave her our email addresses to add to the "group email list".
I began receiving emails from Jessica and then would receive the same message with someone else's comment added to it. Anytime someone would read that email, they could comment and forward to the group again. It became difficult to follow the conversation unless I had time to read all the way through the email to catch up on the conversation. Sometimes, I would have 10 - 15 emails from Friends of South 12th Street and most would say "yeah that sucks" or "your right". Some would have profanity, some would have threats, and some just had ugly, untrue, factless information.
I recall one email that warned the neighborhood of a man selling perfume door to door. The "neighborhood conversation" started, and before you knew it, this man was labelled a sex predator, selling cheat perfume in order to see inside your house to rape and rob you. Finally, there was an email from a neighbor in our area who was helping this gentlemen out, who was his friend. He was down on his luck and homeless. The neighbor invited him to live with them and insured the neighborhood that he was not a sex predator and was harmless. I was embarruced for this neighbor and his guest. After that email, I stopped reading anything from Friends of South 12th Street that had been forwarded from the "neighborhood". I found it to be more gossip than factual The only mail I read was from Jessica. I began working with Jessica on how to improve the Friends of South 12th Street communications.
Continued By Tim Robertson
ReplyDeleteAs Jessica's family grew and they were looking at moving out of the area, Jessica asked me if I would be interested in taking over the leadership role for Friends of South 12th Street. I accepted after asking if there was anyone else interested, which Jessica indicated that there was not.
As I began to read the 150 or so emails that were saved in the group's email account, This pattern of everyone having access to the group's email account, access to all member's email addresses, and other personal information, I was concerned about this information and it's privacy. I immediately changed the passwords and let the group know why. At that time, there was a only a couple of folks that did not like, or appreciate the change. The neighbor who is posting as "Anonymous" is one of those few. We have talked before...
BACK TO TODAY
As the current leader of Friends of South 12th Street, I believe that your full name, your email address, your street address, your phone number, and any other sensitive information about you is private. I do not share, nor give access to anyone else to use it. You have confided this information to Friends of South 12th Street, and I choose to respect your privacy by not sharing your information.
As far as the timeliness of information, I guess that is in the timeliness of the person checking their email. As the leader of Friends of South 12th Street, I pride myself on how quick and timely information is shared. Most days, if I receive an email with information about a crime or a legitimate neighborhood concern, I put that information out THE SAME DAY. Yes, I am guilty of not sending out lost animal requests, or furniture for sale, but crime and neighborhood concerns is what Friends of South 12th Street is here for. It is my experience that if you send out a ton of email that clogs up people's inboxes, they tend to not look at anything. I try not to over communicate with members.
PUBLIC OR PRIVATE PAGES
Public or private pages, this is the original question? The answer is "all of them"... "Anonymous", if you liked the old way, great! Get a free gmail account, use the list of email addresses that you say you still have from that group (please take my name off of it) and start your own private neighborhood communication group.
For folks who prefer Facebook, great, communicate through our Facebook page. Our Leadership Team Members are easily able to share articles and information between the blog and Facebbok. A year ago we conducted a survey about how people preferred Friends of South 12th Street to communicate with them? An overwhelming majority still preferred email. Not everyone uses Facebook. Overwhelmingly, folks still prefer information in an email.
There is no single way for Friends of South 12th Street to communicate with it's followers. For this reason we maintain both email and Facebook. The change to a blog format is intended to encourage this very type of communication. Folks are already introducing themselves, talking about issues, and yes, we will discuss crime "PUBLICLY". Come on, crooks know where they have hit. I can go online and see EVERY crime that has happened in Tacoma, it is not a secret. I hope that crooks DO read this blog, because if they do, they will see that we are a neighborhood that is watching them, that does report suspicious activity to police, and that will protect and defend ourselves.
Continued By Tim Robertson
ReplyDeleteIN THE END
Friends of South 12th Street is simply a club that you choose to belong to. I am simply a member who has stepped up to provide leadership and coordination for information and events. If you do not like the club anonymous, then stop attending, start your own club. If you no longer like my leadership, then you step up and take over.
Friends of South 12th Street has a group of members that have done just that "stepped up". They help provide leadership and support to me and our group. Leadership Team is opened to anyone who has the desire to serve and support our neighborhood. If you are interested in joining the Leadership Team, you can email me at friendsofsouth12thstreet@gmail.com for more information.
Thanks Tim for all the good work you're doing. I'm off Facebook now for personal reasons and cause of all the annoying updates they keep forcing upon everyone. I like the blog idea. Thanks again, David
ReplyDeleteTim deleted my response.
ReplyDeleteMy email address <-- in case anyone wants a copy of what I would have said here if I could have. (It had no bad words.) :)
Anonymous, I did not delete your comments. Maybe you fogot to push the publish button. I will begin deleting your comments if you do not identify yourself at leasr by your first name as requested in the recent post titled "Posting Comments". If you cannot follow the rules and requests of this blog, please stop visiting and posting on it.
ReplyDelete