The Official Hometown Blog

Recent Projects at HometownAnnapolis.com

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:09:21 -0400

Weekly Entertainment and Events E-Newsletter

HometownAnnapolis.com has one of, if not the best populated calendar of events in the Annapolis area. We also have a terrific Entertainment publication that goes out each week with printed copies of The Capital. Our new e-newsletter will deliver directly to your inbox some of the highlights of these two sources of happenings. To sign up, visit

Karma changes

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:13:14 -0400

Some months ago we instituted a "karma" system to our story comments. Registered users of the site who place comments on stories earn a karma score from up or down votes by other registered users. Depending on votes a commentator can earn a rating of: terrible, bad, neutral, good or excellent.

A user's voting weight depends upon their rating as a commentator. A vote from a user with an excellent rating carries more weight than a voter with a lower rating.

We've...

Abusive Behavior in Forums/Commenting

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:33:00 -0400

One of the many challenges we face here at HometownAnnapolis.com is handling the commenting portion of our website. Each individual article, blog post, and some other content pages have the capacity for comments to be appended by our web visitors.

Often times, differences in opinion will erupt heated discussions. Sometimes these lead to flame wars where a few participants begin personal attacks. While this is not a normally a huge problem, it can be exacerbated when someone intentionally...

Racist comments

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:39:23 -0400

We’ve had several, but not many, user complaints about what are perceived as racist comments on the various stories about the Crofton teen who was killed. While I personally agree with the assessment that a few of the comments have a racist tinge to them, should we start deleting them? If we do where do we draw the line? Leaving a “racist” comment up may be offensive to some readers but taking it down will be offensive to others.

Of course readers who are offended by...

Comments come and go

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:46:50 -0400

The stories about the Crofton teen killed over the weekend have understandably been lightning rods for comments. Stories that appear in “Most Commented Stories” drive traffic. Users want to know what’s got everyone commenting. In fact stories can live on in “Most Commented” even though they’re no longer available elsewhere on the site.

To date we’ve posted three stories about the Crofton killing. The first was posted Sunday morning. Early this morning...

Comment ranking gives the users authority

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:01:03 -0400

On Thursday, April 23 we rolled out a new comment ranking system. The system gives any signed-in hometown user the ability to participate in determining the overall value of a particular comment by giving it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. Over time, having one's own comments voted up or down will add to or subtract from their point level, affecting their karma....