Posted to [facebook group] Norfolk's Fall Town Meeting starts on Tuesday, 9-Nov-2010. We are going to have a web-based, structured, discussion forum (similar to a bulletin board system, but more highly structured) for discussing the Warrant articles and their Recommendations prior to the Town Meeting. Since this discussion forum is intended to help voters prepare for the Town Meeting, we envision it being in operation from soon after the Warrant is finalized through the end of the Town Meeting. The interactive discussion forum will be a place where Norfolk residents can comment on Warrant articles or Recommendations, ask and answer questions about them, provide background material, or advocate in support of, or in opposition to, various articles. Everything in the forum (comments, questions, answers, and advocacy) is intended to be visible (read only) to anyone with internet access and a web browser, even if they have no connection with Norfolk. Interactive participation (i.e. posting messages) in the discussion forum will require a "login account". Login accounts will be available only to Norfolk residents. (There may be a small number of Town employees, state officials, or other experts who are given login accounts even though they are not Norfolk residents.) We want to encourage commenters to keep their posts courteous and relevant to the article under which they are posted. One way of encouraging this is that all participants' comments will be identified with the commenter's real name. (We will also have a way of removing inappropriate comments and of disabling specific login accounts.) So we are concerned that accounts can only be created by Norfolk residents, and only using the person's real name. In order to do this, we have obtained an extract from Voter Registration Information System and assigned an eight-character code (which we are calling a TMTC-ID Code) to each registered voter. On Primary Election Day (14-Sep-2010), we had a table at the polling place. People could show us a photo-ID (to confirm their identity and residency) and we gave them a sheet of paper with their eight-character TMTC-ID Code. The sheet of paper contained instructions to go to www.virtualnorfolk.org/warrant or www.frontczak.com/warrant or [norfolkma-survey.windigicert.com page] and fill in the web form there to request a login account for the Warrant Discussion Forum. Some of the required information is your TMTC-ID Code, your legal first and last names, a password that you choose, and your preferred E Mail address and phone number. Other information is required if it applies to you (for example, your middle initial(s) if you have one or more middle names). Other information is entirely optional. One example of the optional information is a name that you commonly use instead of your legal first name -- such as "Skip" instead of Otto, "Billy" instead of William, "Peg" instead of Margaret, etc. The other optional information is alternative E Mail addresses and phone numbers (if you'd like to give us a way of contacting you if we can't reach you through your preferred E-Mail address and phone number). After filling in the web form with the TMTC-ID Code and the other required information, we will verify that the supplied TMTC-ID Code is associated with the supplied name. After that is verified, your login account will be created and we will send E-Mail to the preferred E- Mail address you supplied, giving you your login name and details for accessing the discussion forum. If you didn't pick up your TMTC-ID Code on primary election day, you other opportunities are: 1) If you can get to the Town Hall during its normal business hours, show your photo-ID to someone in the Town Administrator's office and they will give you your TMTC-ID Code, or 2) If you want to wait on until General Election Day (2-Nov-2010 - only one week before the Town Meeting), you can show your photo-ID to the volunteer at the TMTC table at the polling place and they will give your your TMTC-ID Code, or 3) Send an E-Mail to "TMAccount@VirtualNorfolk.org" to make arrangements to show your photo-ID and get your TMTC-ID Code. We'd be grateful to hear any feedback you have about any part of the process - being aware that we were at the polling place on primary day, the process of getting your TMTC-ID Code, the process of requesting your login account, (after the Warrant Discussion Forum is operational) the process of participating in the Warrant Discussion Forum, and any other part of the process on which you'd like to comment. - DR Norfolknet.com your community, on-line