Many Neighborhoods Find a Voice Online

Josh Gibson, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Adams Morgan, said there was never any question about how he would announce his recent decision to relinquish his seat. He went directly to the Adams Morgan listserv, which he created in 1999.

"There is no better or faster way to target 1,500 key Adams Morgan residents," Gibson said. "It's required reading for neighborhood politics and business."

In recent years, more than two dozen neighborhood Web sites have cropped up across the District, from Brookland's listserv, which has just more than 1,000 members, to M. Marie Maxwell's homespun blog that covers issues relating to the eastern edge of Shaw. There are Web sites devoted to Foxhall, Georgetown and Petworth. There is Elise Bernard's blog for the Trinidad neighborhood, including photos of stray cats and talk that Harris Teeter is mulling over a move to Third and H streets.

A few sites seek a broader view of the city, including DCist, a Web site that features a daily news and sports roundup and reviews of rock bands, trendy restaurants and cafes. "Good morning, Washington. There's a 70 percent chance of showers today in both the morning and afternoon, so remember to bring along an umbrella," the site announced one morning last week.

Rob Goodspeed, 23, who develops youth programs for People for the American Way Foundation, started DCist a year ago, after concluding that young professionals in the District were yearning for a Web site devoted to the city.

"There's a void of information," said Goodspeed, who oversees a volunteer staff of five editors and 30 writers who put in a few hours a week, sometimes more. "It's very difficult to find your way around the city if you're an average young person."

Many of the neighborhood sites are Yahoo listservs, in which members can read and post e-mails on an array of topics. Among the largest is Cleveland Park's listserv, which was founded in 1999 and has more than 3,000 members. Bill Adler, 48, a writer who started the site with his wife, Peggy, said they hoped it would "be just like walking into the supermarket and post office and talking to your neighbors."

At first, the Adlers imposed few rules. There were lively discussions, such as when Giant Food sought to expand on Wisconsin Avenue, or when traffic congestion at the National Child Research Center private school spilled out into the neighborhood.

Sometimes the dialogue got unruly. When Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who sought sanctuary in the United States, was staying in Cleveland Park, a slew of e-mails from Miami appeared on the site opposing his return to his homeland.

After that, Adler and his wife prohibited name-calling and mass e-mailing of news releases to members, and they stipulated that moderators had to review all messages before they forwarded them to the site.

"We work to make sure that the tone has a neighborly feel to it," he said. "People can criticize, but only over substantive matters."

Several years ago, Laurie Collins, 52, a systems engineer, created a Web site for her Mount Pleasant community that has nearly 900 registered members. Recent topics of discussion on the site have included development projects and rumors that President Bush's daughter, Jenna, had applied for a job at a neighborhood charter school.