Co-founded by Ben Smith and Gur Tsabar, Room Eight is the imaginary neighbor to New York City Hall's legendary press room, Room 9. Technically speaking, it's a group blog, or an online community. It's a place for insiders and informed outsiders to have a running conversation about New York politics.

Anyone can write -- just set up a blog here. The editors, Smith and Tsabar will, at least initially, choose which posts appear on the site's homepage. The headlines for all blog items appear in the left hand column in the Recent Posts block.

We encourage bloggers and commenters to choose a "handle" or two -- like some in our first group, "Gatemouth" or "Yoda" -- and stick with it, so we can get to know you. Or just use your real name.

The house rules boil down to this: Don't be defamatory or hateful. We'll delete offending content and ban its authors without notice. Kos has a pretty good, fuller set of guidelines for the blogs on his site.

The software we're using, Drupal, has an almost unlimited capacity for user participation, so we hope the site will change and grow as readers figure it out and suggest improvements. Enjoy!

Editorial Contact: editors (at) r8ny (dot) com

Advertising Contact: adverts (at) r8ny (dot) com

Full Disclosure: Gur is employed by the PR agency, Ketchum.