Jeff, who reads DCUM?

[Anonymous]

Other than "us", do you have any evidence that government officials come to DCUM to get an idea of what is being said, or possibly schools and so on?
Just curious.

[jsteele]

Your question can be answered a couple of different ways depending on whether you mean people who are DCUM users that just happen to work for schools or the government or whether you mean school or governmental officials who are keeping tabs on DCUM. There is a fairly large number in the first category. Our demographic is skewed heavily toward well-educated professionals. As such, many of the users are employed in government, professional fields such as law, and education. I can't say how often such users come across something on DCUM that informs their work. However, I know that it does happen at least on occasion.

In the second category, I know that most of the popular private schools keep an eye on DCUM, though I am often curious whether their concern is that their schools will be discussed on DCUM or won't be discussed. I know they don't like being bad-mouthed, but they probably don't like being ignored either. BTW, I know the schools watch DCUM because I am frequently contacted by them in regard to various discussions. Universally, these schools are very tolerant of criticism but they are sensitive when some lines are crossed (and rightly so).

However, by and large, I don't get the sense that anyone cares too much about what is said on DCUM. As such, not much of an effort is given to monitoring what is said here.

[Anonymous]

It was interesting to see references to the DCUM forum in a recent Petula Devorak column in the post -- an article about the DCPS OOB lotteries, referencing a specific thread and specific posts.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:It was interesting to see references to the DCUM forum in a recent Petula Devorak column in the post -- an article about the DCPS OOB lotteries, referencing a specific thread and specific posts.

Yes, she has actually posted here before. Interesting statistic. 106 users clicked on the link she provided. It's nice to see the Post starting to link to sites in that manner.