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August 09, 2007

You Asked: Why Can’t I Post Comments?

I’ve received a lot more comments than I expected for a new blog. One person pointed out this is the first ever ongoing blog by a Presidential appointee. If true, they think that may be one reason for the attention. Regardless, I appreciate your feedback and questions.

Some of the questions I have received are similar and are best answered en masse. Today I’d like to answer, “Why doesn’t your blog give readers an option to post comments and questions on the site for everyone to see?

As noted above, this foray into blogging is a bit on the leading edge. Folks have been blogging for years, but there are not that many federal blogs and, as a government entity with a fairly high profile, EPA faces different constraints regarding everything from security to determining a protocol for a moderator to use to sort out inappropriate comments. It would be ironic indeed if an effort to increase transparency was perceived by some people as resulting in unfair censorship. That is not to say we won’t eventually allow the posting of comments. But we are on fairly new ground. As far as I know Dr. Jay Bernhardt at the CDC is the only other active blogger from a Cabinet agency who provides for the posting of comments (see http://www.cdc.gov/healthmarketing/blog.htm). We are going to be somewhat careful in how we go.

Another concern is resources. Posting comments would require more of my time as well as someone else here to actively manage the site on a much more frequent basis. Once again, that doesn’t preclude offering this option but we would need to figure whether the additional time is worth the feature.

Overall, regardless of the comment system, I hope this blog will show other senior federal officials that if it can be done here, it can be done elsewhere.

[Note: Flow Of The River has been migrated to a blog system handling comments.]

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