Indymedia: 'How to publish guide'

Imc'ista | 28.07.2007 13:01 | Indymedia | London

Here are two versions of a 'How to publish on indymedia guide'. It leads you through the process of reporting your news on the newswire, how the publish forms work and how best to navigate them.

Generic media How to - text - application/pdf 436K

Generic media How to - Booklet - application/pdf 432K

There are two pdf's - the first is to be read as a computer document "Howtotext-as text[sm].pdf" and the second is for printing out "IMC - how to text[booklet][sm].pdf" and is laid out in such a way that you can photocopy it on A4 sheets to produce an A5 booklet.

Imc'ista

Additions

brilliant leaflet

19.09.2007 12:30

Ta for doing this, this leaflet is really useful.

Gilligan & anyone else interested, all the organising & development of Indymedia is done via the various imc-uk mailing lists, most of which are publicly archived on the web. Anyone looking to get involved as an admin or simply as a user wanting to follow/contribute to decision making processses should take time to familiarise self with & join these mailing lists.

Features - where centre column features are proposed and moderation is reported & discussed. (Lots of messages on this list, mainly about moderation - it's hard to pick out which message is about which article, so if you are trying to find if/why your article is hidden, best tip is to look through messages right after the time/date you published)

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-features | mailto:

imc-uk-features@lists.indymedia.org

Process - discussion of policies & development of Indymedia (I think there is also a propose list, where things are proposed, & outcome is posted after discussion & consensus reached)

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-process | email

imc-uk-process@lists.indymedia.org

Technical issues

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-tech | email

imc-uk-tech@lists.indymedia.org

Making indymedia as user-friendly as possible

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-useability | email

imc-uk-useability@lists.indymedia.org

Outreach - promoting Indymedia

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-uk-outreach | email

imc-uk-outreach@lists.indymedia.org

The full list of mailing lists is here

http://lists.indymedia.org/#Local%20Europe - scroll down to the ones starting "imc-uk"

imcliverpool
Homepage: http://www.liverpool.indymedia.org.uk

Comments

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This isn't good enough

28.07.2007 18:49

Your guide doesn't explain the basics. It assumes a prior knowledge of the software indymedia uses. Explain the basics like if indymedia is compatible with HTML. Explain how to not only post images but how to position them. Is it possible to position images within a report? If so how? Is it possible to emphasize certain parts of a report. If so how? You understand what I mean?

no one

Indeed comrade no one

28.07.2007 19:44

Tell me how to put the fucking links to my references in the writing ;-)

Barbara

This isn't a public service!

29.07.2007 07:58

This isn't good enough? What are we? A f**ing public service? Indymedia works on the principles of Do It Yourself! and is entirely kept afloat by people giving some of their spare time for free. Stop complaining and get involved:

https://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/contact.html

In answer to your question, no it is not possible to position images within a report and secondly as far as I understand your question it isn't possible to 'emphasize' certain parts of it either.

In response to Barbara who wonders how to put the 'fucking' links in, well if html is used it needs to be manually activated backstage, otherwise the links wont show up at all. This is probably the reason it wasn't included in the guide. Especially as there aren't people around all the time to activate it.

All these things are restrictions of the current software the site is run on. There is a process of moving to a new system, but this takes time etc. For more info about that please see this site that explores the idea of using drupal:

https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/ImcDrupalDev

imc person

Hidden Comment

This posting has been hidden because it breaches the Indymedia UK (IMC UK) Editorial Guidelines.

IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

Further elucidation from IMC person please?

29.07.2007 12:01

A3 .jpg version on request...

Hi,

You say IMC is, in theory, user driven and not a public service. I agree entirely.

If this is TRULY the case, then why do certain moderators take it upon themselves to act as gatekeepers? Why do certain Indymedia sites block IP numbers from posting?

The latter often leads to hilarious (or frustrating, whichever way you take it) results. I know of a case where three entire villages share a single IP number through a radio link - when one person got banned for daring to mention 9/11 on NYC Indy, some 400 active net users in these villages were unfortunately barred from posting.

You may imagine how rapidly their opinion of the Indymedia concept changed!

Now multiply this by all the users in the world and what do you have?

Ground reality is that sites who have biased (arm-twisted, bigoted or blackmailed) 'moderators' merely become indicators as to how that particular country is faring in the never ending fight to get Truth and Justice out to a mainstream that has been lulled into a sense of false security by a blanket of narrowly focused control media.

Can UK Indymedia honestly state that there is NO biased controlling cabal that prevents them from 'permitting' the publishing of controversial articles (eg. Who dares mention r e n s e d o t c a r m here?) ?

Thank you for your (spare) time - and yes I do remember what it is like from the inside.
.

Hopeful

for no-one

29.07.2007 18:54

No-one: It says on page 6 that you can't publish to the newswire in html. As mentioned above, this is technically possible but doesn't happen automatically.

Actually, the guide is aimed at people who don't have a lot of experience with computers or using html, who want to know how to get their news on the newswire without all the background information about the content management system, the software and so on. There's loads of information about that in documentation for anyone who's interested.

Barbara: If you want to put effing links in your article, you just need to type the full url including http:// and it'll appear in the newswire as a hyperlink. This information should have been in the document - sorry. Hopefully we can add a sentence to explain this.

Bias and publishing guides

29.07.2007 19:13

The guide is useful - thanks. But, let's face it - with Open Source/Free Software, documents need to be developed by the user group who volunteer their time and effort. Some is pretty good, some is ... mmmm ... . How can a community of erstwhile documentation writers be encouraged to apply within for a chance to boost the user-experience of IMC?

One way of doing this is to set the rules of engagement out in B&W (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) and getting that ratified. At present, from Userland IMC does seem rather arbitrary in how it applies its "editorial policy". This *does* equate to gatekeeping ... and we in Userland do not know what the agenda is for informing and shaping the aforementioned "editorial policy".

I'm not proposing paranoia, conspiracies, etc., just asking for more explicitness about how these policies are defined, interpreted and applied. Also, what are the arguments *for* gatekeeping in the first place? Does this function *have* to be applied?

Gilligan, ex-island

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