It seems that today, more than ever, people rush to judgment too quickly and without hearing both sides on issues.  Sure, in this age of the Internet, it‚Äôs easier than ever to form an opinion based on information you can download from a number of websites, but that doesn‚Äôt mean we are any better informed than we were in the first place.

The problem becomes magnified when you are trying to run a city government.  You put people to work and train them and hope and pray that they do a good job ‚Äì and you put faith in the system ‚Äì and sometimes it doesn‚Äôt work out.

Our online website/weblog offers people the ability to post anonymous comments about stories published on the site and to comment about the commenters themselves, which ends up being more entertaining 75% of the time.  If you want to see examples of people rushing to judgment and being able to put a false spin on issues, just sit back and watch a hot topic on the site and see where the comments take you.

For example, there are as many people who truly believe in their heart of hearts that the Green Line will make it through Somerville, and then there are those who wouldn‚Äôt even dream of believing it.  It‚Äôs all based on assumptions ‚Äì good and bad ‚Äì positive and negative.

Another great example is if you were watching our site during the Scott Trant situation, you saw a lot of people who got very aggressive on both sides of that issue – that one story alone caused a number of mostly negative comments on a wide variety of different issues which were mainly aimed squarely at the present mayoral administration.

That seemed to wane for a while once that particular situation came to a screeching halt didn’t it?

This Spring there will be a whole host of topics (some new and some old) that will undoubtedly be cause for some aggressive and oftentimes insulting rhetoric and virtual chest thumping – from finally moving forward on MaxPak and Assembly Square to the idea of hotels in Union and Davis Squares all the way down to the non-stop drama both inside and outside the Public Safety building – including the federal lawsuit filed by Joe McCain the other day.

Let‚Äôs celebrate the digital age by absorbing all the information we can and maybe exercise some restraint before rushing to judgment.  Instead of being intellectually pedestrian, we can be part of the process without having to invest so much energy into the drama that precedes our actions.