weekend discussion

School is out and it’s officially time to kick off summer break.

It looks like a great weekend weather wise for graduation parties, trips to the pool and other end-of-school celebrations. Saturday and Sunday will be sunny with pleasant highs of 83 and 84, perfect weather for going to the Animal Adoption Fair or other weekend events.

One place that was particularly toasty this week was the Market Common Clarendon shopping center, which suffered a devastating electrical fire Tuesday. While the Whole Foods across the street reopened the next day after regaining power, many of Market Common’s stores remain closed, including the adjacent, stand-alone Starbucks (pictured above.)

Feel free to discuss the big fire or any other topic of local interest in the comments.

Enjoy the nice weather while it lasts — cool and soggy weather returns to the area this weekend.

As long as you’re staying indoors during Saturday’s rain storm, we would love your feedback about the comment change we made last month. When we polled readers a week after the change, which requires that commenters have a Disqus account, most people were neutral to positive about it.

Has that changed at all? Let’s find out. Consider both your experience as a commenter and as a comment reader — overall, have the comments improved? — when casting you vote.

In the meantime, feel free to discuss this or any other topics of local interest in the comments.

Well, we hope you enjoyed your brief glimpse of actual May weather, which ran from about Friday afternoon to a couple of hours before this post was published.

Now it’s time to revisit fall weather for a day and a half.

The good news, for those heading to Taste of Arlington tomorrow — have we mentioned Taste of Arlington enough this week? — is that the weather will be dry and sunny, if a bit cool and blustery.

So put on your button-down plaid shirt and meet us at our booth from around noon to 6ish. And feel free to discuss any topic of local interest in the comments.

After a rainy week, it looks like we have a pleasant weekend in store.

The mercifully dry weather and mild temperatures will benefit tomorrow’s Walk for the Animals in Bluemont Park, which was included in this week’s Arlington Agenda.

Speaking of events, we’re letting our weekend readers hear first about a cool event we’re holding this month. It’s called WeWork, WeLive and the Future of City Living and it’s taking place on May 17. Book your ticket now, as space is limited and we’re expecting a lot of interest. For more on what we’ll be talking about, see our article on WeLive from earlier this week.

With that, feel free to discuss WeLive, the weather, the just-announced Metro maintenance surge, or any other topic of local interest in the comments.

It’s looking like a pretty dreary weekend, weather wise. The good news: it won’t be a total washout, and there’s a lot to do this weekend, both indoors and outdoors.

And that’s not to mention the Washington Capitals playoff game Saturday night or, for a certain set, the excitement around the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

Feel free to discuss the Caps or any other local issues of interest in the comments.

It’s Friday. It’s 5:00. And it’s looking like a perfect spring weekend, weather-wise.

If outdoor activity isn’t your thing, you could spend your Saturday morning at the Arlington County Board meeting. Or, if you like being outside and like art, you could head to the Arlington Festival of the Arts in Clarendon.

Either way, enjoy the weekend and, as always, feel free to discuss any topic of local interest in the comments.

Flickr pool photo by xmeeksx

Last weekend, we announced that our comment section was no longer open to comments from unregistered commenters.

Anyone can still register to comment, and do so anonymously, but the change gives us an upper hand in battling trolls and spammers.

The overarching goal is to restore civility to the comments section so that thoughtful community conversation — and yes, witty and irreverent banter as well — can once again flourish without being drowned out by a bunch of jerks.

We want to hear from you: what do you think of the change so far? Also, feel free to discuss any other matters of local interest in the comments.

This week was, quite frankly, a disappointing week for comments on the site.

Without going into detail, there were way too many assumptions being made about groups of people, way too many off-topic political trolls and way too much mean-spiritedness.

Moderating comments after they’re made can only do so much to rein in the trolls. It’s a big task when you get more than a thousand comments per week — especially when you’re trying to report the news at the same time.

So starting today, we’re taking a proactive measure to try to improve the conversation in the ARLnow comments. We’ve turned off the option to comment as a guest, without registration. From now on, all comments must be made by registered users.

We know there are some long-time commenters who are not registered. We know there are some insightful comments that come in from unregistered users, who perhaps cannot register to comment during working hours due to the nature of their job.

However, we also know that there are sites like DCist where a community has developed and there’s no shortage of comments, despite only allowing registered commenters.

Our ambition is first and foremost to have civility in our comments. We also hope that the comments are consistently interesting, thought-provoking and entertaining. We hope that our comments help engender a sense of community. What we don’t want is comments that are mean-spirited, monotonous or off-topic.

With registered users we will take a more hands-off approach to moderation. However, we will not hesitate to wield the banhammer for trolls, racists or spammers.

Feel free to discuss this change, or any other topic of local interest, in the comments.