"A note from the Ottawa Indymedia editorial collective

Though some readers may not have noticed, there is indeed an editorial collective whose members take turns sorting through material posted on the site to toss out stuff that is unacceptable, move items from the local to the global newswire, and generally ensure that free speech ≠ chaos.

The recent war in Lebanon caused the collective some headaches, and led us to update our long-standing editorial policy (see below). Our overall principle is that although we wish to encourage a diversity of voices, we do not wish to become a forum for hate speech. Strong criticism of governments (e.g. Israel) or organizations (e.g. Hizbullah) is acceptable, but rants about the bloodthirsty or inferior nature of entire religious or ethnic groups are tedious to read, offensive, and often downright illegal.

Please take note of the last sentence of our updated policy: calling people “Nazis”, “Zionazis”, “fascists”, “islamofascists” etc. is usually a quick ticket to getting your post deleted. In part, this is simply in response to Godwin’s Law of Internet discussions (“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one”). These terms are often nothing more than random terms of abuse. Obviously some judgement is required here — a posting about links between Swiss bankers in the 1940s and the Nazi regime, for example, would not fall under this rule.

Also, at various times in the last few months people have posted quite alarming statements that were presented as translations from languages none of us can read, such as purported excerpts from Arab-language newspaper articles. It is obviously very easy to quote people out of context, or even fabricate material entirely, when the original source material is not accessible. Unfortunately, it appears that as part of the general misinformation campaigns that accompany wars, some groups do systematically try to make ‘the other side’ look bad through such tactics. Hence our decision to stop allowing “unverifiable translations”.

We are posting this editorial policy for two reasons. First, contributors to this site may wonder why some material gets deleted and other gets left up. Second, we want your input: are there other types of posts you think should be hidden? Or are some of our criteria too broad?

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Editorial Policy

The editorial collective will “hide” postings that:

-- have been requested hidden by the poster;
-- have been posted by someone who is found to be impersonating someone else;
-- have been posted by someone who claims a false affiliation with an organization;
-- are duplicates;
-- have no content other than advertising a business or another website;
in the opinion of the collective, directly or indirectly (via web link) incite hatred against a specific ethnic or religious group or against an oppressed group of people;
-- in the opinion of the collective, directly or indirectly (via web link) constitute an explicit or implied physical threat against any individual or group of people;
-- in the opinion of the collective, contain unsubstantiated and very damaging information about an individual or group (such as false event info);
-- are in a language other than French or English, or are unverifiable translations of controversial material into either French or English;
-- are garbage (e.g., pictures submitted as text);
-- are deemed by the editorial collective to be spam, incoherent or gratuitously abusive;
-- are relevant mainly to a jurisdiction outside Ottawa/Ontario/Canada, as these posts should go to another IMC, or to the global newswire;
-- are comments that are unrelated to the article being commented on;
-- are organizing specific illegal acts (e.g., saying to meet at a certain place and time to go do something illegal).

Posts that label groups or individuals as “Nazis” or “fascists” are liable to be hidden, depending on context."