Evolution and changes to IMC UK

Thanks to all who put in the great efforts to make Indymedia work. I think its essential and offers a great service and goodness knows how many times a day I log on to check the real news.

No here's my very small 'but'.
I'm not a techie and only got to grips with the publishing page by trails and error and finally asking someone. I know you've changed it but it still contains the key problems.
What the hell does the following mean in plain english?


"Number of Media Items (max 20)

(Enter the number of files you want to upload and press the button before you enter data into the other fields."

and

"FTP uploads

Select the files that you have uploaded using FTP."

I suggest what you mean is "if you have some piccy's you want to include with your story state how many, were they are, and do you want them to have a title" or something along those lines.

Even the story abve slips into this common IT expert's error. How do I know if I want some sort of 'cloud' - your speaking some exclusionist langauge.

The subtext is that contributing to Indymedia requires specialist knowledge and skills. I now know it doesn't - but how many people with something valuable to contribute have been put off.

Sorry if this is a bit negative (reflecting many years being patronised by IT people at work!)

So, again my immense thanks for all the hard work the IMCers put in. I do intend to get more active in my local IMC.

Sadly, most people involved actively in Indymedia are not techies and most of the work isn't really technical either. People do info stalls, give talks or presentations, train people to publish, organise local screenings, write reports and features, maintain the newswire service, chat on IRC, engage in email decision making and consensus building, suggest improvements etc.

The shortage of techies is actually one of the major bottlenecks in implementing improvements. Proposals get made, thrashed out on email lists and perhaps eventually lead to consensus but then nothing happens due to a lack of people with the time or skills to make it happen.

Nether-the-less, your concerns about the publishing page are being addressed and it should soon be the case that there are publish pages written specifically for different users needs and with context based help.

I didn't know what a tag could is either BTW but I googled it -  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=tag+cloud+&btnG=Search

Can I just say a big thank you to the people running indymedia, unpaid, for running a great news service for anti-capitalists in a away that provides me and lots of other people with loads of useful information for action.

I know the nutters love to have go (and I'm not saying anyone who disagrees with something or other about indymedia is a nutter, but you know what I mean) but I don't think the loads of people who love indymedia, and people like me who have you as their home page, say thank you enough.

So well done!

And lets stop the war on Iran...

Re topics

Well always thought "Indymedia" should be Media Activism or Media

Don't know why Zapatista is there really.

Would be great to have Sustainability as a topic - somewhere to post about more positive projects and focus on these issues rather than "ecology" in general, which I assume to be enviroment.

And yes it would be great to have something to peg reposted articles too, both mainstream media and progressive website content. Indymedia ireland have a new improved code base and it looks great. They deal nicely with reposted content in its own newswire section -  http://indymedia.ie

while you are writing to each other congratulating the yourselves perhaps you could find the time to tell everyone else where that new donation just came from.

Stories by section - does anyone use that? What is with the show half the page and then click again for the comments idea? Did anyone really find that change to be an improvement?
Also, Mr Web Wiz, how d'ya get a printable page of just the article, sans pages of links? There is no printer friendly version and 'we' should have that, prominent.
And finally, why does it take so long for comments to upload?

Here is an attempt to explain in a fairly non technical way the reason that it takes a while for submissions to appear live on the website...


Indymedia UK switched in 2003 to a new program that generates the website. All articles are stored in a database when submitted and the program generates new webpages for each new entry. It doesn't do this immediately an article is submitted, the program has many tasks it has to handle so it has a to do list and goes through it one item at a time.

This means that it might be just a mater for seconds before the program deals with new articles or it might be several minutes as it is currently dealing with something else such as updating the regional start pages so that their newswires contain all the latest articles etc.

However, this is not the major delay in the system. The most significant delay comes from the fact that Indymedia UK uses a large number of mirror sites to distribute the burden and expense of bandwidth. Mirror sites are exact copies of the website but stored on different computers on different internet connections in different locations. These mirrors also provide security since taking indymedia offline completely would require shutting down a dozen different computers on a wide variety of different service providers both in the UK and beyond.

When you go to www.indymedia.org.uk you are automatically redirected to one of the mirror sites. The mirror should be providing an exact copy of the data held on the master site but it takes a while for the latest changes to trickle down. There is a scheduled task on the program's 'to do' list which involves synchronising the content on the mirror sites. If the program is busy doing something else then obviously it will take longer for the mirror sites to get updated.

The mirror sites are not all updated at the same time so when you visit a page you might get sent to a mirror that doesn't yet have the article you are looking for. Sometimes you might have already seen the article on one mirror but find it currently unavailable on the next mirror site you get sent to.

There is little we can do to vastly improve the issue, it is inherent in the way the system is designed. We can make things a little faster with optimising the program and by upgrading our servers so that it can go through it's to do list faster than it is currently able. If it can get through it's general tasks more quickly it will also be able to dedicate more time more often to the task of syncronising the mirror sites.

Anyway, I hope that is a good explaination of the system and the problems.

I would suggest you read the documentation on the indymedia documentation site but ironically the server (in the USA I think) is currently dead and has been for the last 3 or 4 days. I believe people are working on it but this just goes to show that there is not only the UK network to consider when talking about raising money and contributing time and effort, but also the global network that provides not only the global www.indymedia.org site but also much of the shared infrastructure such as the translation tools and the documentation site.

Beyond that there are also sub projects such as video.indymedia.org and radio.indymedia.org which all need volunteers to help develop and maintain, and people to help pay for the enormous bandwidth required.

> What is with the show half the page and then click again for the comments idea?
> Did anyone really find that change to be an improvement?

While personally I find it really annoying, some people really appreciate the change and it does seem to have helped a little in reducing the flame wars and slagging matches within the comments sections. Many contributors had expressed concern that the site was being hijacked by idiots and that it discredited their efforts. There are a lot more places on the net these days were you can publish you own work than there was when Indymedia was launched so when people get pissed off with having their articles hijacked they simply go elsewhere to publish.

Personally I value the contributors of original first person reports much more than I do the lame comments of a handful of regular disruptive characters that plague any open forum. So although I dislike the inconvenience created by the one extra step require to make the comments visiable, I am glad that many contributors seem to appreciate that they efforts are not so obviously distracted from with petty flame wars and personal abuse.

> how d'ya get a printable page of just the article, sans pages of links?
> There is no printer friendly version and 'we' should have that, prominent.

Ah, yes indeed, you should NEVER try to print a webpage from indymedia as you will use at least six sheets of paper thanks to the long columns printing individually. There is however a VIEW AS PDF option on the bottom of everypage which will generate a printer friendly version. It is not perfect and is on the long long list of things that need to be sorted out. But it does work.

> And finally, why does it take so long for comments to upload?

Looks like somebody else dealt with that question although I'll point out that the system doesn't differentiate between comments or articles when it comes to how quickly they get updated on the mirror sites.

a 'user' above wrote:

> while you are writing to each other congratulating the yourselves perhaps you could find the time
> to tell everyone else where that new donation just came from.

Well, not sure which donation you are talking about so it is kind of hard to answer but I for one recently made a twenty quid donation and have been thinking about making a regular standing order but my income is often a little haphazard so it will probably wait until I have a longer contract or more savings.

I know that there was a big 'donation' from Sheffield IMC recently which was part of a move from the regional collectives to cover the debts incurred by the IMC UK network as a whole during the G8.

I don't think the G8 spending has yet been covered and I know that a couple of hundred pounds was spent recently modernising one of the servers in order to try to deal with some of the speed issue so if you were thinking about making a donation it would probably be much appreciated.

I noticed on the tech list some talk about a separate server somewhere to handle indexing the database so that the inbuilt search facility could be switch on again without adding high loads to the already stressed publishing server.

There's a list of income and spending on the IMC UK sections of the global documentation site somewhere but as somebody said, that server fell over earlier in the week and techies in the US are still trying to sort out a replacement motherboard or something.

Now that the site is all laid out using css stylesheets, couldn't you add a stylesheet for print which just has the main article and hides the links down the left hand side?

How about linking up the site with google video so that it is much much easier for everyone to watch video?

I hardly ever managed to get any videos working on indymedia, it is far too complicated.

The site is great BTW thanks. I would be good if you could promote more articles as I find I still read both newswires and I get so fed up with all the b******t spam on the open wire.

I know there is some prat running around trying to insist that Indymedia is secretly funded by Bill Gates. If this is so, why doesn't indymedia use MSN instead of Google?

No, sorry. Seriously now.

Is it true that Apple have approached the individual who owns the patent, copyright and trade mark on IMC with a view to making an as yet undisclosed settlement that will hand over all rights over the indymedia brand, domains names, server infrastructure, content, free labour (including all current, future and past indymedia users, even the trolls) and see the website relaunched as iMC or the iMedia Centre?

I have seen evidence of this leaked on the mobile.indymedia.org.uk pages so don't try to deny it.

There is a print.css - for the UK site styles anyway (regions may be different). You should find with any browser newer than IE 5 or whatever that it prints the page not as you see it but without the left and right hand columns and just a simple middle column.

When I worked on indymedia which I did for 2 years, on the features lists, there was a shifting group of about twenty people, with about ten long timers, and everyone held each other together. Everyone also seemed to be under the impression that we were acting freely to publish local, national and international news and perspectives which weren't being covered by current media, an act which hardly needs anyone to "mastermind it"; and not much funding, since the work was being done for nothing. If, as this post suggests, we were actually being held together by a cabal of masterminds with a private agenda I would have demanded some money, for a start.

"Progess was slow" indeed, poster. Measured by who, precisely? You tell that to those of us who were up until four in the morning. At least you say at the end that you don't speak for the whole of indymedia, even if you have the cheek to sound like you do.

Hey Tabitha,

I didn't say "Progess was slow" I said it CAN BE slow, which is very different. The reason that progress can be slow (perhaps even painfully slow) is because the Indymedia collective is much bigger than it has been in the past and this means dicision making is far more likely to reach impasses than with a small group. On top of that you have only a small handful of people who have the skills to make changes to the code (and some of those are working not only on UK indymedia but dozens of others!). Further more, the demands onve. the techies from the much large collective are greater than before since not only are there ideas to improve indymedia UK generally, but each autonomous collective has different ideas for their own particular part of the site.

"You tell that to those of us who were up until four in the morning. "

What would I need to tell them? I don't think there is anyone currently active in the collective who would seriously deny that progress can be slow. There is no need to take that as a criticism, it is a statement of fact. Of course it is all relative...

"At least you say at the end that you don't speak for the whole of indymedia, even if you have the cheek to sound like you do."

Again I feel you are miss-quoting me. I said that, "I don't speak for Indymedia UK or the Indymedia Network in general - no one person can". I felt that when writting about Indymedia as an 'insider', it is important to make clear that any views expressed do not AND CAN NOT represent the hundreds of individuals that make up the network.

Having gone out of my way to point this out you then have the 'cheek' to suggest that I 'sound' like I do speak for the whole of indymedia. I did not even sign the article IMC'ist as some people have a habbit of doing and neither did I feel the need to build a case for credibility by saying how long I've been involved with Indymedia or how late into the night I work.

I think it is really important to draw greater attention to the editorial guidelines that can be found on
 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/editorial.html

For a start it spells out that the site is an open-publishing platform specifically for news, issues, actions and analysis reporting on GRASSROOTS, non-corporate, non-commercial social justice, environmental and political issues. So, instantly it is clear that open publishing refers to the ability for ANYONE to publish rather than the publication of ANYTHING

The guidelines go on to state that posts that met certain an desirable critieria will be hidden (although also states that such posts can still be inspected via the View all posts page).

It is worth noting that it also makes clear that any concerns about editorial guidelines or queries about moderation are dealt with on a publically archived mailing list and therefire newswire posts and comments on the subject are normally hidden.

The criteria for what articles or comments may be hidden is quite specific and the reasons why such criteria have been choosen should be obvious to most people using Indymedia.

Repeated posts are hidden. If something has been published on the site before then there is no need to repost.

Indymedia aims at enabling and encouraging original first hand reporting. While it is often useful to link to articles elsewhere on the web and quote from them, indymedia is not a place to simply cut and paste from corporate news sites etc.

Additionally, the newswire is meant to be a news service so non-news posts which are clearly purely comment, opinion or rants UNRELATED to a recent event or action etc.

Posts which use language, imagery, or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination are hidden. If facists want an online platform, Indymedia has no intention of providing it for them

Inaccurate or misleading posts are also hiden. Occasionally people post deliberate lies in order to confuse and mislead readers about events, meetings or action etc. It is unclear whether such posts are the work of professionals working for the state or corporate interests, or whether they are malicious right-wing individuals with a personal vendetta. Either way, such posts obviously have no place on indymedia.

Likewise posts containing adverts for commercial events, services or products have no place on the site. If such posts were tolerated then the newswire would very quickly be swamped and loose any value as a news resource.

More controversially perhaps is the issue of 'hierarchy' posts. Indymedia was created as a news resource for grassroots struggles, not as a notice-board for political parties or any other hierarchically structured organizations. However the last bit presents a problem as many grassroots campaign have a hierarchical structure either by design or by default. Indymedia might be described as anarchist in nature and so in practice the guideline are about avoiding providing a platform to political parties rather than hiding posts from small NGOs or local campaigns that don't subscribe to the notation of horizontal organizing and consensus decision making.

Some posts are not merely moved to the 'hidden' newswire. Occasionally posts are blanked out to remove the content completely. This happens only very rarely, usually when their are legal or ethical concerns about content such as when child porn is uploaded, death threats or incitement to violence issued.

All these considerations amount to a desire to maintain the integrity of the newswire as a quality news service for and from the grassroots. Some people do not respect this and for whatever reason they habitually publish posts which breech the guidelines or 'spam' inappropriate posts within the regional and topic section of the site. Such individuals who's action degrade the site for others are likely to find their posts get moved off the open newswire.

The process of maintaining the newswire is done by volunteers in the various IMC collectives that make up the UK network. There are over a hundred such people and obviously there will be some disagreements about what should or should not remain on the open wire. The admin interface for the website will display the name of who is responsible of an administrative action and open publicly archived mailing lists are used to discuss and provide transparency and accountability.

Despite all this, sometimes people cry foul. Their motives are not as clear as the motives of the indymedia collective and they tend to hide behind the anonymity provided by the open publishing service rather than engage on the archived mailing lists.

If you are interested in helping to maintain indymedia as a valuable service then consider getting involved with your local IMC collective.

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

I thought afterwards that sounded a bit grumpy. Sorry for that. Perhaps you didn't realise how much you sounded like a teacher assessing students' progress, however.

I was not "boasting" about spending what was often a happy time on indymedia, just stating a fact. I am not hiding behind anonymity either, you notice.

Did you decide to put this post out on your own, or was it after discussions within the lists?

Why has the copyright of the Indymedia brand in the UK been sold to an intellectual property rights company in the USA with connections to the the Carlye Group and George W Bush?

What happened to the £250,000 donation by the Barclay brothers, and more importantly, why have all the posts exposing the donation been erased from the Indymedia UK site?

What is the involvement of former MI5 secret agent David Shayler and what is discussed at the secret indymedia media meetings being held at his house?

Why do only two people have the indymedia password and why do their route all accesses through Microsofts CIA uplink computer at BBC house?

These are the sort of bullshit questions being posted by one regular disruptive poster in a crude attempt to discredit the site. It's nothing new, he has been at it for ages, attempting to create devisions and distrusts with such bullshit as fictionally new groups like the IMC Monitoring Groups and Indymedia GB

Similar posts were made to discredit Disarm DSEi, Dissent and Smash EDO. These disinfo campaigns often involve multiple posts using different names in an attempt to build the illusion of credibility. Disinformation about events, people, meetings, and arrests are also made using the names of genuine groups or people.

Most are quickly hidden after being spotted and checked by admin or reported by the genuine campaigners. It is usually pretty easy to confirm things for yourself by checking information against campaign websites.

It is quite amusing really and the attempts are often so crude and pathetic that it would seem to suggest it is not the work of paid professionals but just some sad inadequate twat with no life and no friends.

As has already been said above, if you fancy getting more involved with indymedia and helping to maintain the site either in terms of technical development or admin duties, just get together with your local IMC collective.