Editorial: Do unto your neighbor

Thursday, Nov. 1, 2007 | 7:35 a.m.

People around the world are flocking to an Internet site to post their rants and raves about their neighbors.

A San Diego entrepreneur has created a Web site that allows neighbors to settle their scores anonymously online. Using Google maps, RottenNeighbors.com allows users to search for specific ZIP codes and neighborhoods to either post or read what neighbors are saying about each other.

Much of it isn't good, as Abigail Goldman reported in Monday's Las Vegas Sun.

One Las Vegas resident writes of the "wrath of Tom and Tammy," adding, "White trash tweaker leaches. Avoid at all costs."

Revenge is no longer best served cold, but on the Internet where the world can see.

The site's founder, Brant Walker , wants to provide neighborhood information to people planning to move before they relocate. However, he also sees another purpose of the site - mediation.

He plans to send postcards to addresses that are targets of complaints, letting them know that someone else sees them as the neighborhood problem, with the hope that will open up a neighborhood discussion.

"This is the first step toward mediation to resolve any kinds of problems," he said. "We want to be the first step and the last step."

The site's success is hardly a surprise. Give people a forum to complain and they will. Once upon a time, however, that forum used to be the front porch or the back yard fence where neighbors could kvetch or catch up.

Of course, it can be difficult to know who your neighbor is in Las Vegas. Thousands of people move in and out of the valley every month, and it is tough to see, much less talk, over the tall walls erected in the ubiquitous gated communities.

Still, wouldn't it first be better to go knock on a neighbor's door to talk about a barking dog before dishing the dirt on the Internet? Isn't that what a good neighbor would do?