Above: You may be interested in a newsletter put out by the Town. You may also want to know that the Town does have an active twitter account, despite a confusing message their website,. (images cropped from newsletter and Town website.)
The Town Administrator’s office asked me to share with readers their new newsletter for residents/the community.
While I’m at it, I’m also sharing information about a misleading image some readers may be seeing when they visit the Town website.
The semi-monthly newsletters first launched in September. They include highlights on new Town employees, recent and upcoming events, project updates and grants. It’s part of the Select Board’s continuing initiative to try to keep residents better informed on what the Town government is up to.
Click here to open the pdf of “Volume 4” dated October 20th. (You can also view issues 1 & 2 here.)
As part of this year’s goals discussions this summer, the board asked Town Administrator Mark Purple to create and issue a newsletter. They referred to apparently similar updates he sent the board on a regular basis. They encouraged him to put it in a format that could be shared with the public.
Based on their interactions with residents, they believed it was the kind of news that they would like to hear about. During a follow up conversation at their October 10th meeting, member All Hamilton suggested slipping them into future tax bills.
Hamilton had asked about how the newsletter was being promoted. Purple answered that they used the website and twitter. (Although, actually, only the first issue was tweeted on September 1st.)
Speaking of twitter/X, resident Tim Litt informed the board about a problem with the feed on the Town’s website.
The twitter feed is prominently displayed on the homepage. That’s fine for visitors who are logged into twitter. They see the most recent tweets issued by the town. But those who aren’t logged in through the platform they are using to visit the website, see:
Nothing to see here – yet
When they Tweet, their Tweets will show up here.
(You can view the different feed views by clicking on the image above right.)
The message gives visitors the incorrect impression that the Town hasn’t tweeted any news. The Town usually sends out at least a few tweets per week (and sometimes 2-3 in one day.)
Town Technology Manager, Jason Montijo, was in attendance. He explained that the issue is due to changes made by twitter under Elon Musk. It’s a known issue that the Town has no control over and the website vendor hasn’t found a fix for yet.
In my research of coverage of the issue, it appears that Twitter began displaying the inaccurate messages this summer after Musk tweeted:
To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:
– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
– New unverified accounts to 300/day
As a result, some twitters were seeing, “Rate Limit Exceeded. Please wait a few minutes and try again.”
If that was the message on the Town’s feed, it would be less confusing. But it appears that twitter has known for months about the inaccurate message that makes embedded accounts appear to be inactive for users not logged in. I couldn’t find a public comment from the company on the problem, let alone a promised fix. (And I’m guessing that if one comes, it won’t be free.)
With no fix in sight, I personally think that it would be less confusing to residents if the Town simply included the twitter link rather than an embedded feed.
As for the newsletters. . .
The website did include a recent News Flash with a link to it. So, if you register on the Town’s website to receive those notifications, you should get an email/text when future issues are released.
Having first hand experience working with a company owned and operated by Elon Musk I have absolutely no desire to join Twitter. I guess the towns attempt to keep all of us informed is just going to fall short.