Oops. I guess you're closed for the day...or something.
But kudos for making your registration process for joining your web site community easy -- and making the civic task of voting on various proposals an *open* one -- on this "open gov* site -- by not restricting it only to organizational/business emails, as other gov sites do.
That's really unfair to people who wish to write on their home email addresses, who are independent consultants, or who don't wish to write with a work address that may not be relevant to the discussion. Yeah, I get it that anonymous jerks and spammers are a challenge, but with all the verification and community reputation services out there today like Disqus, gov sites shouldn't be so picky. Registration shouldn't involve a political and class distinction like "yahoo addresses can't come here". So good! (Unless...the reason I can't vote is because I have a yahoo and not a gov or org address...)
Ok, now I'm ready to make a proposal, both one very specifically involving your Second Life presence and projects and how to make them more searchable, attractive, etc. but also to write to you with a question and comment about a SL controversy.
And I can't do that anywhere on your site because it's "not active". I will try to remember to come back and vote on some of things about Mars and stuff soon.
Meanwhile, here's a copy of what I wrote to you on email. I notice your community liaision, Andrew Hoppin, is on gmail, not nasa.gov mail. Is that because it's kind of scary having people from the general public write you on nasa.gov, and you need to kinda put it off campus somewhere? Or is the community liaison not a government employee? or?
Dear Andrew,
I am writing to get your comment on a recently-revived controversy in Second Life regarding the Colab presence in SL.
I've made it a public discussion because these issues are far larger than SL.
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2010/11/is-nasa-civil-society.html
It stems from a debate last year when NASA CoLab applied to an SL contest for a $10,000 prize, but it's a larger issue and was revived again during a recent community discussion about law and virtual worlds.
It regards the question of how to view the work of volunteers on your NASA-funded island (server) in SL, and whether they can claim any affiliation with NASA, quite simply, but also, whether it is ethical for people in NASA-supported projects apply for contest prizes in SL.
It involves the larger philosophical issue of whether open gov, open source, open etc is still willing to make the ethical distinction between government and citizens in an open society, and be accountable to that.
These issues are debatable. There are pros and cons. What I'm interested in doing above all is making sure that this stays an *open* debate and that people like your anonymous volunteer project lead "Archivist Llewellyn" in Second Life does not place a chill on this discourse, and doesn't get away with pretending that people who question a government-driven perspective are journalists who should be fired.
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
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