
August 24,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood
Beverly NJ, In a recent report , “The Great Tech Panic: Trolls Across America” , WIRED magazine cited Beverly, New Jersey as home of the country’s most active internet commenters.
The WIRED article says that Beverly, a tiny city on the Delaware River between Trenton and Philadelphia with a population of 2,513, has 114 residents that were responsible for 150,151 comments in a 16-month period. That’s an average of 1,317 comments each., wow !
While the Ridgewood blog thrives on “comments ” and at times comments have been criticized for being highly controversial in nature , the exchange of information has had a net positive effect in the Village . The debate often centers around the balance between what is appropriate , politically correct and whats just too far .
The Administrators try to balance free expression without letting commentators devolve into 3rd grade name calling.Sometimes it works and sometimes not. With most of the egregious comments coming from allies of the former mayor ,who also happen to be the biggest complainers about the blog.
The Ridgewood blog has been criticized at times for not posting certain comments and of coarse the blog has its share of trolls and creepy stalkers . Several local stalkers seem to be suffering from deep physiological mental disorders and or drug and alcohol abuse issues.
Experience and data have demonstrated that often a troll on a particular topic , is a quality poster on many other topics.
The Wired article analyzed 92 million comments over a 16-month period, written by almost 2 million authors on more than 7,000 forums and did seem to have the traditional media bias .