In the previous entry I noted that we were carrying out all sorts of behind-the-scenes work, which is still ongoing – and will be for a long while.

But it’s a learning curve for us to see how quickly we have to change course, depending on blur v. focus. Yesterday, for example, we added a yahoo-based feed for the local daily paper in Victoria, a feed that was supposed to supply only “local” news.

Well, we let it “cascade” for at most 3 hours before throttling it. Why? Because first, 60-70% of the the feed’s content wasn’t truly local: there were numerous items for Nanaimo, Port Alberni, Parksville, and so on, as well as quite a few Mainland BC items about news in Kitsilano or Surrey. Clearly, that’s not what MetroCascade Victoria should be about.

The second reason we killed the feed, however, was because it inundated – drowned out – the truly local voices. There were so many items that this single mainstream media outlet threatened to turn MetroCascade into a platform for itself, the mainstream media outlet, which again is not the purpose of our site.

For us, it’s all a learning curve, a problem, and an opportunity to tweak, fix, and think. For example, the mainstream newspaper outlet does have the news, while many of the bloggers whose feeds we offer for you to explore don’t necessarily focus on …news.

It kind of throws up a larger question of “what is the community,” doesn’t it? Is the community defined by the mainstream news or by how people converse about it?

Sometimes when you’re trying to see something, you have to “let your eyes go soft,” sort of let them blur a bit so that you can get a hold of the object you’re trying to see. Then you focus.

- Yule Heibel