Topix website
 

I live in a college town with an obvious divide between the Townies and the Transplants. The Transplants are predominantly associated on some level with the university - faculty, students, administrators, etc... For the most part, the university is its own little microcosm, and has typical college-type communication/gossip channels. But the town, on the other hand, doesn't really have such channels available beyond the local newspaper Op-Ed columns and the conversations held at the local coffee shops and hair salons. This seems to have resulted in the town's Topix website being overrun with negative gossipy threads. The anonymous keyboard courage is prolific, and it's embarrassing to see my town's public display of dirty laundry airing and the like.

So, just out of curiosity, my question is this: Does your community have/utilize a Topix website? Is it used in a positive or negative manner? Do you contribute to your community's Topix board?

Yes my town has a Topix, and yes it is nasty. Topix is the nastiest (in terms of keyboard courage) discussion forum on the web period.

I've never been to Topix, but I just looked up my city (Dallas).

I picked a seemingly controversial post, but it was filled with scriptures. This website looks stupid lol

Random sidenote: I never knew what a townie was until I started watching the show GREEK. I guess that's what happens when you go to school in the middle of a huge metro *shrug*

Just looked at my town - the only really pertinent thread was about the Mayor, and he fired back with as much keyboard courage as the rest.

Otherwise there were a couple polls about OWS, legalized pot, and K-12 education for illegal immigrants. Each poll was very obvious which side the author was on.

Our townies were referred to as "Macombie Hommies". (Macomb, IL)

I'd never heard of Topix until this thread. Took a look at it -- feel absolutely no desire to look at it again. I can see how people could get nuts on it.

Since my city shares a zip code with another city, my city doesn't have its own Topix page. I was familiar with Topix from a time when my brother lived in a small town and I found his name on it in reference to something that had happened in his town. It seems like sites like this one and the comments sections of our local newspapers have some real crazies on them.

I prefer patch.com personally.

The newspaper in my hometown and the one my husband used to work for used Topix for their online comments sections. Hubby always says they'll make you lose faith in humanity.

Dee seriously have you ever read the comments on The Newsherald's site? Horrible. The only time I used Topix is when those "thugs" murdered and burnt down the house in Riverview then got away with it. BTW a friend lived there in elementary school so it was really weird.

Yeah, I have.. and they are horrible. The Free Press comments were horrible too until they recently required you to use your facebook logon to comment. Now they are much better because people aren't anonymous.