Stonington — In February 2014, former selectman Stephen Bessette launched the Stonington Community Forum Facebook page with about 200 initial members.

Now, three and a half years later, the forum is closing in on 5,000 members and has become the daily go-to site for residents looking for information ranging from whom to hire for dry cleaning or plowing a driveway to debating the proposed school budget, beach fees or vandalism to a high school soccer field.

It also is a popular place for postings about lost pets.

“The idea was to have a place where people could go to share information and find information,” said Bessette, who remains the moderator of the forum. “I try to let people dictate what’s going on. It’s not my forum. I just try to manage it.”

Bessette said he came up with the idea for the page after discussions with former Selectwoman Glee McAnanly and Linda Davis, the moderator of the popular Ledyard and Gales Ferry Community Forum Facebook page.

“Facebook was just getting started but there was no forum for people to express their ideas. Other pages were closed or were very politically biased. We’ve tried hard to be non-biased,” he said.

At the time of the page’s creation, there was also controversy over former First Selectman Ed Haberek posting official town information on his personal Facebook page while the town did not have its own official page. The town has since created one, and it currently has 949 followers.

The 55-year-old Bessette, who is married with a daughter in college and runs his own data consulting business, said that unlike other community forums he’s tried to focus on news as opposed to postings for bake sales and other community events, although they are welcome.

One example is the extensive coverage Bessette gave to the widespread opposition to a proposed Amtrak bypass through the region that would have cut through the rear of Mystic Aquarium and Olde Mistick Village as well as the Elmridge golf course while bypassing the downtown Westerly and New London train stations.

He said the forum gave residents a place to rally their opposition.

“It was a great example of how the community could come together,” he said.

Since the page’s inception, Bessette has had some simple guiding principles.

One is that he asked forum members to “contribute what you think can make Stonington a better place. All ideas are welcome.”

He also asks for civility as the conversations can run from friendly to heated.

“I try to let the conversations run but we want civil discourse,” he said.

He said forum members let him know if things are getting out of hand on a certain topic and he reviews posts several times a day.

“If I see something on the edge, I’ll send the person a private message and ask them ‘have you thought about that or how the way it sounds?’ ” he said.

As the page administrator, he can also remove an offensive comment or stop a person from posting, but that happens rarely.

Bessette said he spends about 30 minutes a day administering the site, checking in with his second cup of coffee in the morning, at lunch and again at night. He looks for stories in The Day, the Westerly Sun and the Hartford Courant that have interest to Stonington residents and posts links to them.

He also spends time reviewing the 10 or so requests he gets each day to join the forum.

He said he rejects requests from people who have no connection to the town, either as current or former residents.

He also asks them some questions. The first, designed to prevent computer bots from joining, asks what exit do you take to get to Mystic.

He also asks what their connection to the town is and to identify their favorite Stonington location. He does not allow members who are not real people such as “Jane’s dog” or politically active people using fake names.

As for why he spends the time on the forum, Bessette said, “I enjoy doing it. I enjoy keeping abreast of what’s going on in the community.”

He has also expanded the forum past Facebook. Last winter it sponsored “The State of Stonington & Legislative Update” with speakers such as First Selectman Rob Simmons, state Rep. Diana Urban, D-North Stonington, and state Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, who represents the 18th District.

He said he plans to hold a similar event this year.

As for how big the forum can get, Bessette said there was a time when he would have been happy to just have reached 1,000 members.

“I think that 12,000 might be the tipping point. That would mean we have a lot of people with connections to the town,” he said.