Central District News was the first neighborhood news blog in Seattle (maybe world?) that allowed anyone to participate and have their stories placed right on the front page of the site. All it takes is a quick sign-up and then you’ve got full access to report the news that’s important to you. Our editors take the best user content and promote it up to the front page.

One of the many things we’ve learned over the last 22 months is that there’s a lot more of you out there that would like to participate, but don’t have the time for a detailed story or are afraid of cluttering up the system with smaller issues.

So we’ve added a new feature: discussion forums. It’s a open space for you to post whatever you like (within a few rules), big or small, and have a conversation about it with your neighbors. And if something big, we can still promote it up to the front page.

You don’t have to have an account to reply to a forum, but only members can create new forum topics. So be sure and create your account if you don’t already have one. All it takes is an email address and a few minutes.

Check it out. Have a chat. Continue to build our local online community.

And remember that we’ve not multiple ways to participate on CDNews:

• Post an event to our community calendar
• Review local businesses in our directory
• Trade, buy and sell items and services in our classifieds
• Post news and community stories
• And you can always leave a comment against any of the above