When UK Indymedia was first set up on Mayday 2000, only few people knew about the website, and judging from the early postings on the newswire, most of them posted right along the lines of the IMC UK Mission Statement: "The focus of the Indymedia UK collective is on grassroots politics, actions and campaigns." What has been practiced by numerous fotocopied zines and newssheets now moved to the internet by using Indymedia as an open publishing platform on the internet. By publishing reports directly from their actions, activists further eroded the "dividing line between reporters and reported, between active producers and passive audience".

In the beginning, Indymedia users were mostly connected to the global protests against global governance (G8, WTO, IMF etc), to environmental protests and to the (dis)organisational principles of the PGA: No leaders, no formal structures, striving to abolish any hierarchies. This attitude is reflected in the editorial guidelines: "Indymedia UK reserves the right to hide postings that contravene these guidelines". Hidden postings disappear from the open newswire, but can be viewed via the link to the view all posts page contained in the Editorial Guidelines. The process of hiding is transparent, and often needs to be negotiated within the Indymedia mailing lists.

As the project grew, social movements in a much wider sense started to use Indymedia. Traditional NGOs and left-wing political parties started to be interested. Conspiracy theories about September 11 and various other events started to appear on the newswires. Right wing groups started to spam the newswire. People started to send re-posts from corporate media, and to advertise their blogs on Indymedia, or repost their entries. Disinformation about actions and events started to appear. Not to mention racist, sexist or other discriminatory newswire articles and comments.

We are aware that there is a tension between our commitments to open posting and to the non-hierarchical, grassroots type of activism. As Indymedia United Kollektives, we feel that we are not responsible to provide a platform for everything. Everybody can set up their own blog, website, mailing list or wiki on the internet. Nobody has to rely on the Indymedia open publishing newswire and the comments function to publish their opinions. At the same time, Indymedia volunteers and collectives in the UK are a varied bunch of people with different political and social backgrounds. Some of us encourage more "art" on the newswire, others are hiding poems. Some of us hide every corporate repost, others argue for keeping some of them. One person's "disruptive" is another person's inspiration. As a result, the threshold of what is seen as unacceptable is quite high. Decisions to hide an article are often challenged.

Dealing with this tension has always been a crucial debate within the United Kollectives that maintain www.indymedia.org.uk.

In some IMCs in the US, people adhere to a radical free speech point of view, where the commitment to free speech is more important than any political content. In the UK, we discussed the notion of "radical speech", and decided that we clearly state our bias to radical, non-hierarchical grassroots politics: "While the mainstream media conceal their manifold biases and alignments, we clearly state our position. Indymedia UK does not attempt to take an objective and impartial standpoint: Indymedia UK clearly states its subjectivity."

Our Editorial Guidelines are fluid, subject to constant re-interpretation by the dozens of volunteers who maintain the website. These volunteers don't always agree with each other. Viewers of Indymedia can watch an article being hidden, unhidden and re-hidden, and follow the discussions on the imc-uk-features and local collectives mailing lists. Definitions of non-news, hierarchical, advertisements etc are constantly being negotiated.

The Editorial Guidelines have room for many opinions.

We also noticed an increase in comments that were not additions or grounded discussion of the newswire articles, but disruptive to the point of trolling. As a response, we implemented changes to the way comments are displayed that gives users the choice to see all comments, or just the headings.

On a wider scale, we all agree that the newswire is the backbone of Indymedia. But then there are different interpretations: some of us want to see the open newswire as a running commentary on the website, fast and chaotic, like a messy free radio station. Others want a newswire that features straightforward Indymedia news from the streets: A slower medium that gives each posting more time on top of the newswire, and that allows people to see what is happening on planet activism at one glance, rather than having to sift through miles and miles of other postings.

Being a diverse network of people with different political and social backgrounds, we will not resolve this tension. In fact, we think that it is part of the dynamics and the success of Indymedia.

This is why we have come up with an optional promoted newswire. We have discussed this option since August 2005, exchanged arguments, revised specifications and code, until we were ready to implement it. We have started to promote older articles to this new promoted newswire. What exactly gets promoted will depend firstly on those volunteers who participate in the process. It will depend on local collectives, and it will depend on your input in the comments to this article, or in communication with your local collectives. In this process, patterns of promotion will emerge, and they will be discussed on the mailing lists.

At the same time, the open newswire will remain what it is now. Possibly, less postings will be hidden. Those who want an indymedia-type filter can use the promoted newswire.

This is something that other Indymedia sites have done for a while, for example IMC Germany: "promotes articles which are not dates (like: demonstration Tuesday 6pm... please come!), leaflets, crosspostings, press releases, articles with just 2 sentences, articles which are just personal opinions".

The introduction of a promoted newswire is an experiment, one more effort to keep Indymedia as a powerful tool for radical social change.