But it's a great title.

Adding a copyright notice to the site (no article may be reproduced in part or whole without the consent of the site) would stop articles being lifted verbatim, but there's nothing can be done about articles sourced from here and rewritten.

To be treated as serious media, Indymedia needs to be more objective. Instead of writing up events in such a way as to constantly reinforce the world-view of its fanbase. I often read things on indymedia and wonder how much is news and how much opinion.

From the help page:

Copy right
All contributions are considered availiable [sic] for re-use without seeking permission from author as long as those that re-use them allow further free re-use of the derivative work. This is know as copyleft. In future for clarity we may add a facility with which you can specify the terms of publication from a range of off-the-shelf licenses. You can of course specify this in a post now, perhaps by stating that your work is contributed to the public domain or by using specify licenses from  http://creativecommons.org/license/ and  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
( a link to that url should do rather than copying whole license ).

Note that the copyright belongs to the author, not Indymedia. I think this is the right balance. I think it's more important to get news out there rather than make sure Indymedia own the news that people post. But note that if somebody else uses that news you can re-use their derivative work for free (although you might need to give them a credit - I'm not a lawyer, and my comment here is not legal advice).

That said, it does piss me off when journos get a free ride without any credit to IMC (it really wouldn't cost them that much refer to IMC). I was scanning the Guardian story when they 'broke' it, and was at least a little heartened to see this comment:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/9077567

If it's a choice between copyrighting Indy or allowing free publishing, my vote is for free publishing every time.

"Indymedia needs to be more objective"

Don't know if you realise this, but Indymedia provides open publishing. Anybody can publish (and they frequently do) - so it's the people that post to Indymedia that, by your argument, need to be more objective. And who decides what objective is. I like the fact that Indymedia don't, on my behalf, decide what's objective - they leave that to me.

A 'fanbase' - sounds great - where can I get my t-shirt?

"To be treated as serious media, Indymedia needs to be more objective. Instead of writing up events in such a way as to constantly reinforce the world-view of its fanbase. I often read things on indymedia and wonder how much is news and how much opinion."

And yet here you are, reading, posting, commenting and opining to your hearts content.

And what does "treated as serious media" mean? By whom, where and for what purpose?

Ain't never met a "serious" mainstream journalist that I didn't routinely judge to be utterly and hopelessly biased in favour of "objective" journalism. And yet there ain't no such thing as objective journalism.

There is simply bi-polar political encampments horse-trading with each other to keep control. And it is the cartellian globalista that pulls the strings and reap the benefits.

IMC is the voice of the people, and has no need of being "taken seriously" by those it is destined to replace.

if you have found an objective media anywhere in the world then please do share it with The Rest of us.

Seriously.... pn indymedia
the news wire section takes any comments though moderated by volunteers as per the clear guidelines (as is found on all media sites) if nut-jobs post then they stay as long as they don't breach the guidelines......simple innit.

The central column on both this and most of the Indy sister sites undergoes an open editorial and verification process, As rigorous as,if not more than, any right wing media outlet.

For example my local indymedia pulled the Mark, shithead, Kennedy story at first through lack of verification. when it was shown to be backed up then they ran it. (three months ago)

Now my understanding is that google news blocks indymedia following statist pressure because they maintain that it lacks verification

yet indymedia has, for the features, an editorial process that allows for a clear record of how and why a given story is being featured. There is no “mainstream” media outlet that can claim this level of traceability of process.

I would love to hear if any indymedia features (central column) have been shown to be untrue, particularly when held against the constant stream of out right lies that is the mail or express.

Google will only crawl official government approved news feed sites, they even refuse to crawl small independent news agencies, whats needed is a indymedia rss crawler that list feeds and take them on at the game.
It is about time that Indymedia was dragged in to the present.
Who agrees ? RSS crawl from trusted sites

I notice it from time to time, for example here:  http://news.google.co.uk/news/story?pz=1&cf=all&ned=uk&hl=en&ncl=dfd3NBYgCwUz5FMo4FqYlcpMnCsOM (you have to scroll down to see the links).

It doesn't come up nearly as often as it should though, and although I have seen it in the top 5 articles listed i don't think its ever been number 1.

Anyone with more technical knowledge on what google news does in the background to put articles up know why some are featured?

Indymedia UK is one of the sites that GoogleNews aggregates, and someone must've requested that. Search on Indymedia within GoogleNews just now and the second story is "Rage against the Death of Jawaher Abu Rahma". Other regional sites may not be aggregated, I don't know, but they could be requested. The site rankings are based on an algorithm that can be manipulated much like PageRank, although if you are caught manipulating PageRank your page ranking will plummit.

The easiest and most legitimate way to increase your StoryRank is to have your stories Url quoted by other aggregated news sources. If the Guardian had included a link to your Mark Stone/Kennedy story within it's online story then your story would be higher in the rankings. For that reason, you could request a link when other news organisations use your work as source for their stories, and perhaps even licence this. For instance, this aggregated story happily name checks Indymedia and links to the original story:  http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/73561,people,news,undercover-cop-mark-kennedy-stone-berlin-sexual-activities-questioned
The reason the Google StoryRank algorithm doesn't rate the Indymedia coverage of this is because the original story here was more than thirty days ago, and the algorithm ignores any story older than thirty days. If the FirstPost story had linked to the latest article instead then presumably it would be rated. The algorithm isn't published though so this is mostly guesswork.

You may also want to reconsider whether having a higher google ranking is really desirable as you will be massively increasing your readership to people who have no idea about the site without increasing the number of moderators.

BTW, I assumed a Crustie Cutie was some sort of veggie pastie which is why I looked.
Mmmm, pasties.


Google News indexes tens of thousands of articles a day, but not all of them are original. Publishers can now use two metatags to help us determine us which URL we should consider the original version of an article:

syndication-source indicates which URL is the canonical version of a syndicated article.

original-source indicates which URL should be credited with breaking a story. At this time, we will only be collecting usage data for this tag in order to determine its effectiveness. For now, no ranking changes will take place based on this tag.
How to use the tags

Both tags are standard HTML metatags, and should be added to the element of the article page:




Please note that in both cases, the content attribute contains a URL. The URL of the current page can be used to indicate that it should receive credit with either tag. Our expectation is that you should only need to use one of these tags for a particular article, since they address different scenarios. If a publisher uses both syndication-source and original-source on one article, we'll pick one of the two to use.
What the tags mean
syndication-source

If you are a publisher who syndicates content, or who syndicates content from another source, then you should use the syndication-source tag. The content URL should be a long-lived ("bookmark-able") URL referring to the syndicating source.
Example usage

* If you publish an article and syndicate it to other sites: You should use syndication-source and place your site's URL for that article in the content field. You should also instruct sites that re-publish your syndicated content to use syndication-source and place your site's URL for that article in the content field.
* If you publish a syndicated article: You should use syndication-source to refer Google News to the original URL.
* If you publish a syndicated article, but you don't know the original URL for the article: You can use syndication-source by including the home page of the originating site in the metatag's content field.

original-source

This tag should be used to identify the article that first broke a story. As with syndication-source, the content URL should be long-lived, and can be the URL of the current page.

Unlike syndication-source, however, a publisher can use multiple instances of this tag to point to any and all of the articles that deserve some credit for reporting this story.

Important note: At this time, Google News will not make any changes to article ranking based on this tag. We think it is a promising method for detecting originality among a diverse set of news articles, but we won't know for sure until we've seen a lot of data. By releasing this tag, we're asking publishers to participate in an experiment that we hope will improve Google News and, ultimately, online journalism.
Example usage

* If you publish an article that consists entirely of original reporting: Use the original-source tag and refer to your article's URL in the content field of the tag.
* If you publish an article and want to identify the original source that broke the story: Use the original-source tag and refer to that article's URL in the content field of the tag.

Frequently asked questions

Why should I cite my competitors? Doesn't that just make their stories more likely to outrank mine?
Publishers frequently cite other publications, but typically in the text of their articles. These metatags merely codify those citations so that our crawler can understand them. In that sense, these metatags correspond to current publisher practices.

If we detect that a site is using these metatags inaccurately (e.g., only to promote their own content), we'll reduce the importance we assign to their metatags. And, as always, we reserve the right to remove a site from Google News if, for example, we determine it to be spammy.

I added one of these tags, why aren't you showing my article?
Eventually, if we believe they prove useful, these tags will be incorporated among the many other signals that go into ranking and grouping articles in Google News. For now, syndication-source will only be used to distinguish among groups of duplicate identical articles, while original-source is only being studied and will not factor into ranking.

What's to stop a malicious publisher from claiming they're the original source of everything?
If we find sites abusing these tags, we may, at our discretion, either ignore the site's source tags or remove the site from Google News entirely. As with any other publisher-supplied metadata, we will be taking steps to ensure the integrity and reliability of this information.

Why didn't you use the hNews spec or the Canonical tag?
We felt that the options currently in existence addressed different use cases or were insufficient to achieve our goals. The more accurate metadata is out there on the web, the better the web will be.

@CaPital MaAaaN

found that objective media yet? I'm still waiting BIG boy

@sam

im not sure that's correct mate. im sure I have seen stories which google links too from all sorts of crackpot websites including far right ones, many with far less reach or impact than the indymedia network. (or “exclusives”)

@idontgetit

odd innit I notice that the story you linked to has indymedia UK after infoshop.org and the ISM which is kinda weird. Both of which are very clearly politcal sites from very clear positions.

Could it be something to do with whether the “mainstream” media is reporting it?

I do actually believe that google has an anti indymedia policy, Bristol indymedia used feature in the top ten hits for the term “Bristol”, for a period of time it disappeared altogether from the results this term could only be accessed through google if you were specific in your terms such as “protest, Bristol”. When I raised this issue on BIMC some people suggested that pressure from the Zionist lobby had conviced google to filter feed from the network.

Does anyone know if there is any truth to this allegation of blocking? If there is can we do anything about it?
(and if you want to post about Israel-palestine then please fuck off, im talking about the media here)

"In several recent stories about Mark Kennedy, the Guardian have falsely claimed to have 'broken' or 'revealed' this story, when in fact Indymedia UK, another Google aqgregated news site, broke this story months ago. (I am not associated with either site in anyway). I posted a comment to this effect on the Guardian website but it wasn't published, even though later comments I made were published.
This is not the first time this has happened, over a year ago I informed by email the Guardian of the newsstory that Ian Tomlinson was reported killed by police, from Indymedia UK news reports, yet the Guardian failed to credit Indymedia UK and claimed the story as their own. This is repeated plagiarism, and it skews Googles StoryRank inaccurately. Can you have a word with the Guardian and tell them to play fair and credit other aggregated Google sources where applicable please? Otherwise it makes a nonsense of your news rankings and their rankings should be downgraded appropriately. "

If you search for Mark Kennedy on GoogleNews today IndyMedia UK is the 6th ranked story listed, for the "Undercover and over-the-top: The collapse of the Ratcliffe trial" thread.

The Guardian
Mark Kennedy case: News of sexual liaisons may result in civil actions
The Guardian - ‎13 hours ago‎
News of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy's sexual relationships with environmental activists has fuelled speculation about the possibility of civil ...
Mark Kennedy: The Spy Who Turned Eco-Activist Ecorazzi
Inside stories: The art of infiltration Independent
Inquiry sought on Met's protest surveillance Financial Times
Morning Star Online - Indymedia UK