I agree. The newswire sucks and I think it is a liberal pandering and fetishizing of free speech and open publishing by the moderators that allow this service to be so abused.
There are romours (read the mailing list archives) that a multiple wire system may be introduced so that non news items go on a seperate wire. But the collectives have also talked about geting rid of the guideline that currently says that non-news items should no be here.

I for one have seriously considered giving up with indymedia, the newswire is a joke.

Have I heard this before?

Liberal housing policies, social policies, immigration policies ..... now liberal newswire policy!!

These issues were throuroughly discussed at the UK network meeting the other week.
Multiple newswires is one solution. The problem is, by splitting and rigidly defining 'news' and 'opinion' as separate discourse, we would only be replicating the ideology of the mainstream media, which is exactly what we don't want. In my opinion, even a split into 'news' and 'analysis' would be dangerous for similiar reasons.

I think it really takes discipline from users and clearly defined guidlines to solve this problem. It seems to be felt that the 'non-news' element of the guidlines needs *rewording* (not removing); but its a thorny problem. I think a 'forum' wire in addition to the 'news'wire would be cool, a simple solution.

Just reporting on the meeting anyway. My advice to this thread would be, don't leave if you're pissed off, get involved. Remember, we're supposed to be 'being, not hating, the media'.

As things stands, the process list is the right place for this discussion, amongst other channels of communication.

For people interested in anti-authoirtarian ideas the enrager.net forums at  http://www.enrager.net/forums might be a good place to chat!

I disagree. I think the quality of the Newswire is much better than it used to be and I don't find that much stuff that you mention.

But getting rid of the non-news guideline sounds worrying. Also the new analysis topic could do with some explanation. Analysis could mean pretty much any old rant and like you say there are hundreds of forums. Maybe get rid of that as a topic?

You all seem to *LOVE* the idea of the "common man" or woman getting to voice their discomfort with "the system"....until you come across posts made by commonners who DON'T AGREE WITH YOU! *laughs* And then you get your knickers in a twist and want to end people's right to voice their opinions!

How priceless!