I'm not sure why you have drawn the conclusion that Indymedia is "just one more authoritarian censor like the rest of the media". It would be nice if you could put some examples in your article. Indymedia volunteers have always edited under the editorial guidelines, please refer to the link Editorial guidelines, top left of the page.


You say you can no longer publish on this screen yet here is your article, maybe it was a technical fault. The website does belong to the public to me there is no doubt.

Can you please provide examples to back up your argument then we (the public) can see what your complaint is.

Yours confused

Andy

i see where you're coming from janice but people reading this should know that it isn't as simple as you're making out. and you CAN discuss it - it's currently the headline on www.indymedia.org and people can go and visit it now and take part in a continuing discussion that has been going on for quite some time.

the concept of 'freedom of speech' is a very liberal one if taken too simply. for example, in this country it is perfectly legal to voice radical views, it's just that no-one hears them because of all the corporate spam advertising and 'news' coverage - in other words some of us (the rich/government) have more 'freedom of speech' than others.

indymedia was set up to provide an alternative forum in order to combat this - but if the right fills indymedia with spam just like everywhere else then the news on indymedia will be just like the news everywhere else. many indymedia users believe that this point has already been reached on the international site, and they are trying to do something about this. you may disagree with their opinion, but consider this - what if those in power decided that indymedia was a real threat to them. do you think they would hesitate to follow a deliberate policy of completely spamming up indymedia in order to make it completely useless? i don't. we may as well allow business leaders to participate in decision-making about what actions we are going to take on demonstrations - after all, that would be free and democratic wouldn't it? they are people, after all..

the alternative that seems to have been decided on isn't some top down authoritarian thing, it's showing stories from local indymedias all over the world - and it's very easy to go to open publishing as well.

like i said, i DO see where you are coming from janice, but i think that readers should see for themselves what is happening (visit www.indymedia.org) before they condemn it.

YOU CAN STILL POST YOUR CRAP SO SHUT THE FUCK UP BITTCH!!!

just to make everyone aware that things in indymedia are decide publicly. this one has been voted on. read the original proposal on  http://internal.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=538&group=webcast
check the voting at  http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/vote/

as the previous poster i think the concept of 'free speech' is crap and liberal. i happen to be involved in indy uk and we had a global vote on what to do with www.indy. there was a proposal to prevent it from being spammed (and the newswire there was very full of crap). the idea was why having an unlocalized site with a newswire that would be mostly used by people who crosspost on local imcs anyway? so the idea is to empower the local wires. www.indy will be having the features of the local sites instead of a lot of self-important postings.

dear original poster, if you're really engaging with things you'd better do something more than just complaining about censorship. is your posting censored in uk.indy? no it is not. so shut up. if you're serious about contributing then contribute, and think about where it makes sense and where you reach your right audience. posting to www.indy was always a weird thing to do - who reads that? post to the uk if you have something to say which makes sense here - otherwise join a newsgroup.

Someone posted something similar on the international indymedia site, just kept going on about how imc had lost the 'don't hate the media become the media' thing.

Well, don't hate indymedia become indymedia.

Volunteer, start your own site, or whatever.

As far as I know, nothing is censored, some things are hidden.

If you had posted links to whatever it is you think had been censored it would help us to understand your point.

I think the changes are a great improvement on what was there before - the site was floating - it served the US audience mainly and was not a Global site - so nw we can see quickly what is going on around teh world and as indymedia spreads this will be amazing.

Things move on - so get involved and stop moaning

Mmm, not sure what i think, yet..


Just been to the open section of indymedia.org and all it took was a click, it's just like its on page 2 instead of page 1. While i can see the 'slippery slope' argument,they had to do something, the level of crAP WAS DESTROYING ANY SENSE OF COMMUNICATION AND CREDIBILITY and now the right wing, spam, racist etc post seemed to have disappeared , for now?. However, the fact remains that the front page is now editorially controlled, this still must be a defeat for free speech.

btw, DD, the nature of your insulting post is one of the reasons why this has happened, go away!

The refurbished indymedia.org site is a good move as it brings together the highlights of local IMCs. Granted, it involves editing, but as far as I can see you are still able to upload stuff to your local IMC. This is just what indymedia needed and helps filter out some of the repetitive posts as well as the offensive ones that slip through. It also de-Americanises the whole thing, giving it a more international appeal. Undoubtedly, this will attract more people to indymedia and this can only be a good thing. BTW, well done IMC volunteers for your hard work.

furthermore, i do not even think that we should do anything about spam. the rational user may feel affflicted sometimes about it in terms of thinkin' that it -spam- might sufice to scourge the aim of indy -info: nothin' beyond reality. spam is a necessary tool for us -anticapitalists- if "used" the right way: let the newcomer develop his-her intellectual abilities by contrasting a discourse, and propaganda, a consistently scientific text and laughably conceived "ideas", the artisanly, laboriously written work of a cast of student/workers alike against those of mercenaries.
long live semiology.

This is great. For a long time the 'global' IMC site  http://www.indymedia.org has been too USA dominated, no doubt 'cos most people who work on it are american - by default rather than design.

The newswire (which is still there just one click away) was mostly full of crap, not news. A lot of stuff was the just rants that peole uploaded to all IMC sites.

This makes the site much more of a global IMC site reflecting the news from IMCs around the world.

IMC itself is still an experiment where innovation and new ideas are needed - this is a great example of such ideas in action.

Onwards...