Ridgewood NJ, Board of Education candidate Dan Creed claims someone using “fake Facebook profiles ” has been attacking him and Board candidate Muhammad Mahmoud . Creed immediately called for you guessed it, “civility” .
Editors Note : several erroneous statements in this letter must be addressed , italics is mine PJ Blogger Founder of the Ridgewood blog and King of the Anonymous bloggers
to the editor:
While watching the council meeting last Wednesday, I was appalled by the rancor and allegations of harassment.
Our councilmen and councilwomen donate an inordinate amount of time and energy for the betterment of Ridgewood. There is a growing tendency on the part of our citizens to vilify some of our council because of disagreement with their positions on public policy and local law. This has got to stop.
Actually it is three members of the council who continue to attack and vilify the opposition ,
Anonymous blogging is an especially onerous method of this, seeing that a forum already exists at every council meeting by going to the podium and stating your name and address. Criticize the ideas if you must, or add constructive ideas regarding the dialogue or issue at hand, but do it openly and expose your views to public debate.
This is a perfect example of the previous statement , you are responsible for your own behavior , poor manners and an ill temper are no ones fault but your own
During the heated discussion of the residency requirement, it has come to light that one of the two dissenters on the council has a personal stake in the eventual outcome that was not previously made known. I find that there are few coincidences in life, and it appears that the catalyst for one of the dissenting votes bears this out. If you have three sons on the current village list with aspirations to pursue careers with the police force, a dissenting vote on this issue of civilian hires can be seriously construed as another dissenting vote down the road on uniformed employees, and a potential conflict of interest.
To our knowledge Public safety employee hiring was not effected by the “residency ” rule change making the hole conflict issue specious.
Regarding this question of residency preference, Deputy Mayor Pucciarelli summarized it best in voting against continuing the preference: The people of Ridgewood are best served by hiring the most qualified candidate for village jobs, whether they are residents of Ridgewood or not. The village does not need to fill civil service positions as a way of providing work for residents which could become a recipe for patronage and nepotism.
No one would argue that hiring the best for the Village , but it seems the change in the law will open the floodgates for importing more partisan hacks in in attempt to destroy the Village ie welcome to Hudson County .
Dear Readers after suffering a major “HACK” attack last week the Ridgewood Blog is under going a very major up grade to its servers .
After finishing our first phase of blog redesign we are also continuing a long term project for better indexing the 80,000 plus older posts making them easier to search . This includes a more usable streamlined set of categories as well as a simpler tagging system .
The second major project we are currently working on is fixing the 3000 or so broken , non working or inaccurate links . When finished this will give blog users faster access to blog posts and a more robust feel for surfers.
thanks for your patients , the blog should return to service sometime today ,
James aka PJ Blogger
www.theridgewoodblog.net
onlyonesmallvoice@gmail.com
Mayor’s Witch Hunt Continues for ,”anonymous bloggers”
February 25,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blogRidgewod NJ, According to Chris Harris of the Bergen Record ,”Anonymity has diminished the level of mutual respect exhibited in public discourse, community leaders said Tuesday in a panel discussion about civility in society.” Really ? Apparently only when it comes from so called “community leaders ” . https://www.northjersey.com/news/ridgewood-continues-series-of-panels-on-lack-of-civility-in-society-1.1277140
So who sent Councilmen Sedon’s job and anonymous email ?and which “community leader ” spams the Ridgewood blog with thousands of nasty messages daily using Anonymous IP providers ? Even issuing semi terrorist threats and attacking even student success stories?
A funny thing is that in the early days of this blog , a certain Ridgewood News ( North Jersey Media ) editor used to attack the Village of Ridgewood and its residents through anonymous posts on this blog . She was later outed and the rest is history.A Reader says ,(they)think they know better than the general public, guess this is one reason I stopped getting the record.This group in general strikes me as arrogant as hell and a couple of them with no clue what so ever as to why they are even there. I also wonder how many of them are anonymous bloggers?
While anonymity of blog posters took a hit as expected some pointed out that even on facebook were you know who everyone is the comments can be even nastier . A resident put it down to a type of “keyboard bravado.” https://theridgewoodblog.net/it-all-comes-down-to-keyboard-bravado/
Notice these social networks offer few options for anonymous functions and also notice Facebook (no anonymous functions) is a major source of cyber bullying clearly uncivil behavior .
CyberBullying and Social Networks
Facebook: of all youths polled, 75% of them use facebook and 54% of those experienced cyberbullying.
Youtube: of all youths polled, 66% use Youtube and of that number, 21% of that percentage experienced cyberbullying.
Twitter: of all youths polled, 43% use Twitter and 28% of them experience cyberbullying.
Ask.fm: of all youths polled, 36% use Ask.fm and 26% of them experienced cyberbullying.
Instagram: of all youths polled, 24% use instagram and 24 of those experienced cyberbullying.
Tumblr: of all youths polled, 24% use it and 22% of those experienced cyberbullying.
Myspace: of all youths polled 4% use it and of that,89% experienced cyberbullying.
Another Survey done by legal experts Slater and Gordon and the Anti-Bullying Alliance, reveals that over half of children and young people in England (55.2%) accept cyber-bullying as part of everyday life.
67% of children would turn to their parents if they were bullied online. However, 40% of parents do not know how to respond if their child is cyber-bullied or how to set up filters on computers, tablets and mobile phones that could protect their children.
49% of parents say that the amount of opportunities their child has to access the internet leaves them struggling to monitor online behaviour, with 51% saying this also makes them afraid for their child.
69% of teachers and 40% of young people said that more should be taught about cyber-bullying and online safety through the national curriculum. However, 43% of teachers said their school did not currently teach anything about cyberbullying and online safety. More than 30%of teachers said they didn’t have adequate knowledge to match the online behaviors of their pupils, with 44% saying they didn’t know how to respond to cyber-bullying.