Madison.com web discussion forums: Another data source?

I suddenly noticed last night that our local Madison.com site, shared between the two local papers and NBC 15 news, has online discussion forums for "interactive" community feedback on local issues. Lots of the talk is quite ... shall we say ... superficial? But there are moments when issues get discussed and this might be an interesting Web-based contrast to schoolinfosystem.org.

You can get to the forums at http://www.madison.com/post/forum/ and from there you can click "Search" to enter a keyword search of all the postings. If you search, for example, on "school board," you get some chatter about the upcoming board elections and the upcoming referendum (two separate elections, remember). One poster wrote:

PLEASE VOTE NO IN MAY. THE REFERENDUMS WILL COST THE AVERAGE TAX PAYER 250.00 THE FIRST YEAR 350.00 THE SECOND YEAR AND 500.00 THE THIRD YEAR. WHAT THE SCHOOL BOARD DOES NOT TELL YOU IS THAT THE 3 YEAR WILL GO ON FOREVER. YOU WILL PAY THAT AMOUNT EVERY YEAR TILL YOU DIE OR GET OUT OF THE AREA/YOUR HOME. THEY HOPE FOR A LOW TURN OUT AND THATS WHY THE VOTE IS HELD IN MAY. MAKE THE MMSD TOW THE LINE AND BALANCE THEIR BUDGET JUST LIKE WE HAVE TO DO. REMEMBER NEXT YEAR THEY WILL WANT EVEN MORE. ALL YOU ELDERLY FOLKS BETTER GET OUT TO VOTE. FIXED INCOMES WILL BECOME NO INCOMES IF THE MMSD HAS THEIR WAY. ALL YOU RENTERS GET OUT AND VOTE NO ALSO. MIGHT JUST KEEP THAT RENT INCREASE DOWN IN THE YAERS TO COME. REMEMBER YOUR LANDLORD PAYS PROPERTY TAX AND EVENTUALLY YOU PAY THE BILL.

VOTE NO ON ALL 3 REFERENDUMS
VOTE NO
VOTE NO
VOTE NO

The only reply so far was:

All caps typing is only used by people who are trying to railroad their opinion as fact. Calm Down.

Prove your numbers or don't talk.

What is perhaps more interesting than the content of this particular exchange is that the search results page shows the number of times each post and its replies were viewed; so even though this exchange was brief, it was viewed 105 times (probably counting my own viewing of it by now).

Don't know how long these exchanges are kept -- a week? a month? So it might be useful to do some targeted searches and archive what we get over the next month. We should consider what use we could make of this data ... or if it would be useful talking to the Madison.com folks who designed, maintain, and police these boards.