Yang Dacai, former director of the Shaanxi Administration of Work Safety, castigated on Weibo for sporting luxury watches, has reportedly been dismissed from the Party and turned over to the judicial authorities because of alleged severe violations of discipline and law during his tenure. Score another one for microbloggers.

Yang's downfall started with a picture of him grinning at an accident site, which led to netizens taking a dislike to him and exposing his penchant for fancy watches, and eventually his wider corruption.

Like many cases of online supervision, this was not only a crusade, but a kind of entertainment. Some microbloggers even offered rewards for actions proving or disproving his corruption.

Recently Jin Zengmin, an entrepreneur in Ruian, Zhejiang province, promised a reward of 200,000 yuan ($32,000) on Sina Weibo to the head of the local environmental protection bureau if he dared to swim in the polluted river for 20 minutes. Most such reward offers have been targeted at food or environment officials.

Such offers show both the playful and yet committed nature of netizens toward official accountability and the imbalance of power between ordinary people and the government. Thankfully, though these targeted officials didn't take up the challenges directly, most of them have responded actively by guaranteeing to take immediate action.

In a display of stubborn pique, however, the Wenzhou Environmental Protection Bureau published a full-page advertisement in the Wenzhou Daily to show off its "seven major achievements" in 2012. This kind of move cuts off any chance of productive interaction.

The officials in charge of environmental protection should embrace new approaches, for example, by opening official accounts on microblogs and offering small rewards for information about pollution, or examining the conditions of rivers in person and disclosing the information on microblogs.

The constant disclosures of environmental problems and official corruptions, entertainingly displayed on microblogs, are offering ordinary people a channel to supervise the authorities to advance social progress.

As for the authorities, it is high time for them to respond to the criticism in a professional, devoting and willing manner. It is high time they face, address and uproot the existing problems, and start addressing things from a grass-roots perspective, not an official one. Only by solid action can they avoid online criticism turning into real rage.

The author is a professor at the School of Information Management and the School of Journalism and Communication, Wuhan University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn