What I'd hoped at the start of 2021
Having observed the activity on Facebook during the Covid crisis, my view has continued and my distain has increased. The villagers in my immediate community seem to think that Facebook is "just great" and seem to prefer to use it instead of any other forms of communcation on the Internet. There is no interest in websites at all. The two sites that I administer have virtually no traffic.
Nonsense
The fact that bogus stories atill seem to proliferate on Facebook and there is much clamoring for more regulation to stop "fake" news, as that is the reason for all our ills, including Donald Trump and Covid-19.
Fake profiles in assumed names
This is something that I have been doing for a while now. Back in 2011 or perhaps before I created Andy Nagy and Marice Wombat. Since then, 2020 in fact, I have created even more false identities. This was mainly to see what was going on on the various Facebooks groups in the surrounding villages.
I did, for a very short time, create a Facebook profile in my own name so that I could see what was going on with respect to the Covid-19 support group. I also joined the adjacent villages Facebook group using a pseudonym when I closed the Facebook account in my real name as I had a comment on a test post that I made relating to Public vs. Private from the person who runs the village Facebook page. I am now pretty certain that the person here does not understand my point in this regard. I also raised the subject of Public vs. Private on the Community Facebook Group. The group was made Public for a very short period of time, the admin claiming that they were just looking to see how it could be done - yer right! Facebook have also been making changes in this regard in 2020, see link below. This is not the first time that Facebook have changed the rules relating to Public vs. Private, sometimes unintentionally (do a search for this).
I managed to get my "fake" profile blocked from the Community Facebook group!
I thought there may have been some take up
Not a lot had been happening during the Covid crisis and the Village was closed. I was looking forward to see how the booking and advertising of the upcoming events would progress now that I had control over the VH website. I had earlier decided to revert to the Wordpress only solution, this was in part due to the lack of interest and also the fact that the VH could be easily serviced by the Wordpress solution. Basic forms could be generated and posters for events could be posted if they were provided to me. I had decided that the webmaster, me, was not really the person with sole responsibilty for content. If and when events resume the bookings and communications will be sent directly to the committee member responsible.
I did, however, receive a communication via the VH website enquiring a possible filming location for a major TV and film series. I met with the Location researcher (co-ordinator) and the Production Director (an Emmy winner and multiple nominie). This was through the VH website and possibly prompted by my drone photography of the Church and Hall. This is still up in the air at the start of 2021, but the filming was supposed to start in the Spring.
I also expected there to be more takeup as was asked to post an link to the Amazon Smile support for the charity of your choice when you make a purchase. This was to possibly generate some funds for the Village Hall and the initiative was taken by a new parish councillor that is the Social Media co-ordinator for a major London force. Of course, this was also posted to Facebook and that seems to be the preferred choice for the village and the VH website has largely been forgotton. There was an initial interest in the VH site when the Facebook post was made but seeing that there nothing of interest there (due to the lack of interest of anyone putting it there!) this is not surprising.
The Parish Council Website and the Defibulator
I also completly re-designed the PC website and posted the details of the last meeting. As far as I am aware non of the Parish Councillors have bothered to go there {apart from the clerk and me) so I have not had any feedback.
I have done a fair amount of development in posting videos to websites and when the village difibrulator was installed I added the links to YouTube videos provided to us by Community Heartbeat. Again, no feedback!
The PC website and the defibullator were (or should be) mentioned on the village Facebook page. I am not sure about this as I am not a Facebook user and only go there occasionally. I certainly am not going to force the issue here as it is the hands of those that think that Facebook is "the way to go".