In recent years, various neighborhood listservs have popped up across the District, serving as hyper-local sounding boards and electronic community forums. There’s NewHillEast, WoodleyFriends, cleveland-park, HillcrestDC, AdamsMorgan, columbia heights, FriendsOfSligoCreek, gloverpark, MPD-1D — you get the idea. So much commentary is exchanged on these many listservs that the City Paper’s blog, City Desk, has taken to publishing twice-weekly excerpts of the best and weirdest that gets exchanged.

But one new listserv is looking to fight against this balkanizing trend — with a citywide listserv. Announced today by Bill Adler and Peggy Robin, both moderators of the WoodleyFriends Cleveland Park listserv, TalkingDC aims to see the District as a whole instead of a sum of its many neighborhoods and their local quirks. Write Adler and Robin:

This is the place to discuss everything and anything having to do with the District of Columbia. Politics, the arts, transportation, gripes, discoveries, living-in-the-city tips — if it has to do with the District of Columbia, you’re welcome to talk about it on TalkingDC.

We applaud the initiative, but we have to ask — Is a citywide listserv hopelessly ambitious? Will it get too big too fast, overwhelming its members with emails on everything from D.C. politics to gripes about public services and garage sale announcements? Or can it truly seek to build electronic bridges among residents living on opposite sides of town and with very different perspectives on local issues? We’re curious to see. Thankfully, Adler and Robin have had the foresight to lay down some strict ground rules — no anonymous posts, no spam, no personal insults. In short, no Jonathan Rees.