Friends,
Last night on the Open Thread (Thurs May 8) there emerged a Critical Issue that HQ would be well-advised to address as expeditiously as possible - the difficulties experienced by visitors to the Obama Website who have a dialup connection to the Internet. The connections are too slow to load up the Blog pages, and a Thread with 800 or 1,000 comments freezes up folks's computers, effectively SILENCING people who want to participate in the Blog but can't because of technical limitations. There MUST be a simple technical fix for this problem. HQ, it seems to me that you ignore this issue at your peril . . . . .
Birdalone began the discussion by posting the following comment:
Those of us poorer - older - rural with slow dial-up cannot possibly post the way you guys do here. Obama's website is still difficult for those of us with dial-up - the type of voters who aren't voting for him because we cannot watch videos or open a blogpost with 1,000 comments.I actually wrote a snail mail letter about this a few weeks ago and then they at least changed the homepage posts so that you can read them without all the comments. Once there are 800-1,000 comments, my PC seizes up.so, you want older- poorer - rural voters, make a dial-up friendly home page.my village doesn't even have cell phone service.
Her sentiments were soon echoed by others, including MaryAnnInVA:
I can't imagine still being on dial-up and trying to keep up with the blogs. We're in a very rural area of VA (they almost didn't give us our mortgage because of it) and it was either $9.99 for dialup or $79.99 for satellite. After 3 years of dialup (after being on cable in the city), we bit the bullet to "catch up". That's not an option for a lot of people these days.There should absolutely be a way to do a "Low-Bandwidth Version" of this site and it shouldn't be hard to do at all.
And Cherie:
I kept repeating that during the PA primary. dial up users, rural, aren't going to wait till a page loads. Internet! there should be one way to log in and that's it!
And finally, OhSusannaforObama:
I just blogged on this because I think it is VERY important also, but I also asked how many people are 55 and older on this site. This is also VERY important. If we are going to move on with this campaign, this is a #1 issue like you stated, but how do we reach all of these people -our seniors are very important to us, as well as their thoughts and insights. This is not only a young campaign it's all ages. What are your suggestions? :) sue P.S. I'm contacting HQ.
Prompted by this discussion, the next morning I sent the following note to HQ:
Dear HQ,Last night on the Open Thread there developed a brief discussion about an issue that your Web Team would be well advised to address, and as quickly as possible - i.e., the difficulties and problems experienced by people who use Dialup Internect Connections when they try to participate on the ObamaBlog or use the Obama Website. I've written a brief Blog Post about it to which I direct your attention: * http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/MichiganMike/gGCNqL * This seems to me an absolutely critical issue, for obvious reasons. I hope your Web Team can come up with a technical fix that addresses this problem for dialup users. As things stand it really is unnecessarily exclusionary and prevents many people from making full use of this Website. Thank you.
Dear HQ,
Last night on the Open Thread there developed a brief discussion about an issue that your Web Team would be well advised to address, and as quickly as possible - i.e., the difficulties and problems experienced by people who use Dialup Internect Connections when they try to participate on the ObamaBlog or use the Obama Website. I've written a brief Blog Post about it to which I direct your attention: * http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/MichiganMike/gGCNqL *
This seems to me an absolutely critical issue, for obvious reasons. I hope your Web Team can come up with a technical fix that addresses this problem for dialup users. As things stand it really is unnecessarily exclusionary and prevents many people from making full use of this Website. Thank you.
This seems to me a CRITICAL issue about democratic participation and deepening & broadening support for Obama that HQ would be WELL-ADVISED to address and foolish to ignore.
Thanks for listening.
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