You may have noticed that Coastsider has been down since Thursday. Naturally, this happened while I was traveling, so it took longer than usual to diagnose the problem and come up with a plan of attack.

Coastsider now on a faster and more reliable server. I’m still ironing out problems and migrating some of Coastsider’s other services to the new server. Coastsider’s Gallery will be down for the time being and you may encounter a few other bugs in the meantime.

Once I’ve confirmed that the site is stable, I’ll email members to let them know we’re back. If you see anything that looks broken, please add a comment to this story.

Barry Parr

Coastsider’s list of active Town Hall topics now includes information about who made the most recent post, what the post’s number was, and a portion of the post itself.

Any trusted member can start a topic in Town Hall without waiting for moderation, so it’s a great place to quickly post news and ask questions that might not rate a full post on the home page.

If you haven’t already tried Town Hall, now is a good time to take a look. The Active topics list is about one page down in the far-right column, right next to Recent Comments.

If you’re not already a trusted member, just email with your real name. No one may post anonymously on Coastsider or Town Hall.

I'll bet that you or someone you know have a tire or two in the yard or garage that you've wanted to get rid of for years. You'll have the chance on Saturday June 21st, from 9am to 1pm at the Pescadero Transfer Station on Bean Hollow Rd.

In an effort to get green, and because grants have been made available, San Mateo County has hired a permitted hauler to pick up our unwanted tires of any size - with or without rims. Best part, the hauler plans on reusing and recycling as much as possible.

The last event in HMB actually rescued over 800 tires!! If you can't make it to Pescadero on the 21st, there will be similar events in the near future. I'll keep you posted.

Now anyone can create a page on Coastsider. Coastsider Insider is a place where Coastsiders can create and edit web pages about anything they’re interested in.

Insider is a wiki—a Web site that anyone can edit—pretty much like Wikipedia. Anyone with Town Hall posting access on Coastsider can create and edit pages in Insider.

You can keep track of new and changed pages using the Coastsider Insider updates box on the right side of most pages.

Right now, there’s not much in the Insider, except for a few pages about local government agencies.  But you can make of the Insider what you will. It’s a good place for information about local nonprofits, clubs, sports, recreation, activities, events, and issues. And, like other Coastsider pages, Insider pages should be prominent in Google search results for Coastside-related links.

Insider is unmoderated, but our Terms of Use apply and we will be reviewing pages and changes to make sure that things are kept civil.  You should also read the Frequently Asked Questions section of main page of the Insider.

You should be able to add text right away without any training. And it’s easier to format your text, add photos, or link to other pages than on a regular Web page. Click on the “Edit” link on any Insider page, and take a look at how pages are structured.  You’ll probably catch on pretty quickly.

For more information about how to use our wiki software, click on “Wiki Help” in the right hand column of Insider.

You may notice some new, non-local, advertising on Coastsider. We’re experimenting with an ad network, mostly because I’m planning to write about ad network optimization in the near future and thought it would be interesting to try it out. It’s unlikely to generate much real revenue.

I’ve set the filters pretty high on the network, so the ads shouldn’t be too obnoxious, but I’ve already seen one “jittery dialog box” ad, and I’ll probably take the whole thing down if it becomes a problem. If you see any obnoxious ad behavior, drop me a line at and I’ll add it to the record. If you happen to notice which network delivered the ad, you can include that information as well, but it’s not necessary.

At the request of some members of the Midcoast Community Council, we’ve started a new forum for Coastsiders to discuss the council and the issues they should address. There may be some overlap with other forum topics, but we thought it would be a good idea to bring together all Midcoast governmental issues in one place.

MCC members will read the forum topics and discussions, and can ask for clarification of comments. However, California’s open meetings law (the Brown Act) forbids them from engaging in a substantive discussion of the issues except with proper notice at an MCC meeting.

You can’t comment on this message, but you can comment on the associated topic in the MCC forum.

I made a couple of significant errors regarding MCTV in my recent postings. The errors were entirely mine, but I was working from inadequate information because MCTV had ignored my repeated requests for information. I still haven’t heard from MCTV, but I did discover these errors and wanted to correct them here and in the original stories.

My first error was to say that MCTV’s board of directors is selected by the board, and not by its members. In fact, MCTV does offer memberships and its members do get to vote on who can be on the board. However, with $20 per year membership dues and only $685 in membership revenue in fiscal 2007, MCTV may have fewer than 35 paying members.

My second error was to say that MCTV’s executive director Constance Malach is paid $45,000 for 25 hours of work per week.  My source was MCTV’s 2005 tax return, which was the most recent I had available to me at the time. I now know that in fiscal 2007, according to MCTV’s most recent tax filings, Ms. Malach’s salary was $60,970 for 25 hours per week, a 37% increase over 2006.

If you’re involved in our discussions on Coastsider, even if you’re reading and not writing, Paul Graham has written a good description of how to disagree in online forums and how to judge the quality of your disagreement.  This is a pretty sound framework for thinking about what you’re writing and evaluating what you’re reading.

We’re looking for a few Coastside nonprofits who are interested in some free advertising on Coastsider, so we test out our new advertising systems.  Email if you’re interested in participating.  To keep the overhead low, organizations that are able to produce their own Web ads will get priority.  If you’re selected, we’ll send you specifications.

Coastsider members can now post your items for sale, lost & found, public notices, garage sales, jobs and other classified-style ads in Coastsider’s new Unclassified Ads forum in Town Hall. If you have permission to post in Town Hall, you already have permission to post in Unclassified Ads. To check if you have posting permission, just visit Unclassified Ads.  If you see a “New Topic” button, you can post. If you don’t, email your username and email address, along with your real name to .

You ads will appear in the “Latest Town Hall Topics” box on every page.

Unclassified Ads replaces our old classifieds system, which was overrun with spammers (which you never saw) and required that every notice be premoderated.  All unclassifieds go up as soon as you click “submit post”.