We have made some changes to commenting policy on the site. In the past no comments could be made on the site unless you have previously created an account with us and signed in. For at least the time being, comments can be made by people without accounts, but they will be held for moderation until an editor approves them. We hope this will promote a lively discussion in the community without allowing a free-for-all of spam and other problems.

Winter continues to unleash upon us. More stories are coming on about barn collapses, accidents, and more caused by the incredible weather we have been experiencing. Today almost all of the area schools are closed due to water covering the roads, making them impassable. I am at the moment sitting out at the farm and wondering if I will be able to get into town tomorrow for the Red Cedar Watershed Conference.

Wis.Community is a member of LION publishers. We receive multiple benefits from this, one of which is receiving full coverage with Cloudflare for our site. This protects the site from DDOS attacks and hackers, and improves the site performance. This should work out great, but we are currently tuning some of the parameters for the web firewall.

You may have noted that postings have been slow recently. I am off in Chicago at the LION Publisher Summit at Columbia College. This is always a great experience for learning the latest in technology, strategy, and everything else about publishing local independent news.

You may or may not have found yourself sitting on the porch on a beautiful summery/fallsy day like today, and asked yourself "How can I help out that nice Wis.Community site?" Well, maybe not, but the fact of the matter is that I'm going to tell you anyway. 

It's been there for a while, but I thought I would point out the Chippewa Valley Tweetstorm on the front page at https://www.wis.community. It brings together the tweets of lots of people in the Chippewa Valley and across Wisconsin.  Go take a look!

In preparation for tonight's Planning Meeting, I've put together a slideshow about some of the goals for this site, where we've been and where I hope we are going. I'm putting up a copy of the slide show to give you some idea of what the first half of tonight's meeting will be like and  what the current plans are.  We're hoping that members of the community will show up tonight and give us their ideas. We will be meeting at 6:30 at Lazy Monk Brewery in Eau Claire.

We're working on incorporating a few more collaborative tools into the site. One has appeared on the front page this afternoon.  There is a "what we're reading" section on the front page. This is a test at setting up ways for people to contribute more content.  We will be inviting some of our editors and contributors to mark articles on the web that they have found interesting, and to contribute them into our team collection of interesting stories.  

We are sponsoring our first Wis.Community community film showing. We hope to do more of these in the coming months - films that enlighten and entertain, and that will not show in local theaters otherwise.

LOOK & SEE is a cinematic portrait of farmer and writer Wendell Berry. Through his eyes, we see both the changing landscapes of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture and the redemptive beauty in taking the unworn path.