First, we have a new moderator on the Topics.AreaVoices blog. As many of you know, Topics is a blog where we post stories published by our newspaper partners in the Forum Communications Company. Members of the AreaVoices community can comment on these topics to share their thoughts and opinions on today’s top local news. You may also have noticed that sometimes it gets a little…rowdy. So the AreaVoices moderators are on hand to keep things in check. Your Topics moderators are:

Lindsey Guajardo (that’s me!). I’m the Support Manager for Forum Communications Interactive.

Zac Echola. Zac works with me at Forum Communications Interactive.

Ryan Babb. Ryan works for The Forum newspaper in Fargo, ND.

Aaaaaaand introducing…

Kari Lucin! Kari joins us from The Daily Globe newspaper in Worthington, MN.

So if you run into troubles on the Topics blog – like if you see something that’s definitely not appropriate, or you feel a discussion has gotten out of hand, drop one of us a line!

It’s important to note that none of us are able to be “full-time” moderators, unfortunately. We don’t have a ton of time to devote to Topics, so it’s really helpful when you let us know where there’s trouble! We do appreciate the assistance.

The second announcement I have relates to the Community Guidelines we’ve recently posted. You can find them via the tab at the top of the Topics.AreaVoices blog, or the link at the bottom of the main AreaVoices page. (Here is a direct link for you.)

You’re all grown-ups. I’m quite sure you can read them, understand them, and understand why they’re necessary.

AreaVoices is getting to be a big community and we have people of all kinds here, which is awesome. We really do want this to be a place where people can blog about anything they want. But – and please, take this to heart, folks – we also want it to be a place of respect.

I realize these guidelines don’t really do anything to actively promote respect, kindness, and the feeling of community that we want in the end. But that can come from you. We need your help in making this community the best it can be. Treat others how you want to be treated. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t say in front of your grandmother and 5-year-old niece. Let your behavior be an example for others.

If you have any questions about the guidelines please do email me at support@areavoices.com.

Thank you for your participation in our site. You guys are cool.

–the team @ areavoices

We’re inviting you to join us via phone to learn more about areavoices blogging. In addition to getting your questions answered you’ll also learn about what other areavoices bloggers are doing and see how they’re making the most of their blog. Joining me will be Zac Echola and Lindsey Guajardo, two employees of Forum Communications Company’s Interactive Division. Lindsey and Zac are the BEST people to talk to regarding technical questions relating to areavoices and your blog. Whether you’re an experienced blogger, just getting started or are still deciding whether to take the plunge this webinar is for you! It’s easy to join the conversation.

Register at this link: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/126940618

Then on Tuesday, November 9th from 12:00pm to 1:00pm

call toll free at 866-237-8308

Punch in Access code: 407174#

If you can’t make it this week, join us next week. We’re holding these webinars every Tuesday at Noon. Just use the same information to register and call in.

Hope to hear from you then!

Also, stats will be rolled up and made available to all remaining blogs. Again, thus far the new stats module has been well received and we hope the rest of you will also enjoy it. To reiterate an earlier post on the subject, as the stats module initializes, it may display some odd information, such as a login screen or simply a blank page. Just ignore it until it starts showing fancy graphs and charts as illustrated in the attached image.

Happy blogging!

A screenshot of the stats module from the AreaVoices blog dashboard.

Why leave it alone, you ask? Because it can take up to an hour to synchronize with its remote stat-collecting servers as it’s being set up. If it’s not quite done syncing, then it’ll either be blank or will display a login screen for WordPress. Once it’s ready, it’ll display something similar to the following image:

A screenshot of the stats module from the AreaVoices blog dashboard.

When it’s available, you can go nuts and start basking in the glory your blog readership statistics provides.

We believe 2MB is sufficiently large for all of our users at this time, considering 2MB is enough to hold, for example, a 2340×2381 JPG (with 300 ppi and an RGB colorspace) such as this picture of Neil Armstrong: link.

Certainly, most images coming from a high-quality digital camera will need to be resized prior to being uploaded to the web: this is common across the internet to accommodate the file-upload limitations on web servers as well as mitigating the effects of the computationally expensive operation of resizing large photos. As this is a free service, there are certain limitations that must be placed to prevent abuse. This is one of those limitations at this time.