In an item on the documentation page ( https://docs.indymedia.org) titled NottsGuidelineChanges ( https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/NottsGuidelineChanges) and dated 27 Sep 2006 details of proposed changes to the editorial guidelines ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/static/editorial) are listed. These add further grounds for moderators to hide newswire articles and comments:-

• Comments that consist of unrelated personal rants
• Articles or comments that consist of large amounts of copy and pasted text from elsewhere. It is good practice to quote a few lines, to illustrate meaning, but link to any 'main-body of text'. This so to aid with the readablity of material added.

The proposal has been implemented as the new lines can be found in the editorial guidelines.

For those who aren’t subscribed to the features mailing list (most readers, I would assume) this was brought about largely as a response to one individual’s posts, and, in my opinion, was an attempt to restrict that person’s posting behaviour. Those who made the proposals suggested that this was in accordance with the Mission Statement’s ( https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/NottsMissionStatement)
grounds for intervention: “to maintain [Notts IMC’s] usefulness as a media resource and welcoming community space”. The posts in question frequently promoted ‘conspiracy theories’ and seemed to consist of lots of links and copied and pasted text from other sources.

For Indymedia to be truly grassroots and horizontal there needs to be a minimum of intervention on the part of collective members. Any such mediation creates a hierarchy of access, where moderators have the power to pick and choose what they do and don’t want on the newswire, and even in the comments.

I think that the idea that the collective should police the newswire, to make sure it’s a useful media resource and a welcoming community space is problematic. What constitutes a “useful media resource” will be different for different people, and will depend on what their agenda is. That agenda may be to selectively promote certain issues and causes, and to seek to hide certain others. The corporate and state media organs are already packed with such hidden agendas – something I think Indymedia should be trying to avoid. Indymedia is meant to be “based on the priniciples of free participation and association, mutual aid, open-source software, open publishing, and transparent decision-making”. Bringing in changes to the editorial guidelines by the backdoor (sorry, the documentation page) is not transparent, especially when those changes have the potential for serious restrictions on “free participation” and “open publishing”.

There is a similar lack of clarity regarding what a “welcoming community space” is. In the eyes of those proposing changes it seemed to be a) a space free from the “personal rants” of anyone with a threatening or uncommon political perspective and b) well written. Even aside from the fact that, if universally enforced, such changes would eradicate a lot of the most interesting material from Indymedia overnight, this is a dangerous and conservative path for a supposedly independent media to take. Indymedia should be a place where radical ideas can flourish, regardless of whether or not they upset a few of the punters. It should reflect a wide variety of different viewpoints rather than pandering to a mainstream that might object to certain content. In addition, by stressing “readability” the guidelines exclude those who are less confident that their writing styles will fit with what the moderators expect.

It is a dangerous development that new and potentially very restrictive guidelines can be brought in by those privileged in the hierarchy (moderators) to hide the posts of others at a less privileged level (posters). If you object to the content why not intervene on the same level by posting a comment, rather than pulling rank and hiding the comment? So far this development hasn’t caused much damage (other than the persecution of the individual for which it was intended), but now there are new ‘laws’ on the books that can be invoked at any time. Get rid of them! They only encourage the petty to continue with their censoring game. It's a good thing that the IMC encourages people to organise horizontally, but they should start practising what they preach.