Over the last five years the indymedia open publishing concept has exploded throughout the internet, not just in the form of new indymedia collectives (of which there are now over 160) but also in the creation of many other non-affiliated 'citizen media' sites.
The model has been adopted in different forms and evolved along with new communications technologies such as RSS feeds which transformed the personal journals of the Blogging world into a global syndication network for content producers of every sort.
Indymedia however remains mostly uneffected, or does it?
The model has been adopted in different forms and evolved along with new communications technologies such as RSS feeds which transformed the personal journals of the Blogging world into a global syndication network for content producers of every sort.
Indymedia however remains mostly uneffected, or does it?
When indymedia was first launched during the WTO summit Seatle, it was widely regarded as a revolution in news reporting. The internet has made it possible and work the previous year during the J18 carnival against capital in London had paved the way for these grassroots activist journalist. The idea spread quickly and people praised the quality of the reporting.
The network expanded rapidly but as it did idelogical differences began to emerge between different groups and splits occured. Meanwhile, Indymedia had contributed to a major shift that was occuring as even the mainstream media began to provide forums for 'citizen journalists'. The BBC launched their iCan website and websites that had previously been discussion forums added 'open' newswire like features.
Different Indymedia sites implimented the principles of open published (now often refered to as open editing) in different ways. Editorial guidelines vary widely and some sites have hardly any moderation and in others all posts moderated before publication. Some remained entirely anonymous while other provided the option for users to register a user name if they wished. In other sites, not considered official indymedia sites, registration is compulsory.
With all the differences The strapline on the top of most Indymedia sites says it best, "A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues."
Network appears to be the key word, but what does it mean?
What is the Indymedia network and what is the common thread that holds it together? In theory all Indymedia sites go through a process and sign up to a set of principles of unity. Ironicly however, no concensus was ever reached in formulating these principles of unity and not all 'Indymedia collectives' have gone through the process or agreed to the draft principles. The common thread it appears is simply the goal of creating an independent platform to allow everyone to publish the news that the corporate media are incapable and unwilling to provide.
The Indymedia Network is not the only collection of people working on reclaiming the media and creating platforms for real news and communication. A few months ago a new website was launched under the name 'Our media', it is just one of many emerging citizen media sites. Like Indymedia, Ourmedia is an open-source project built and run by volunteers. It freely hosts grassroots video, audio, music, photos, and text.
The project was started by members of the creative and technology communities who have managed to obtain the co-operation and vast resources of the Internet Archive. Their partners share a vision the grassroots media which is scattered across the Web or hidden away on laptops and closed networks, deserve a wider audience.
Like indymedia, Ourmedia describes itself as a global community but there are many major differences. Ourmedia doesn't set out to be a news service - although it's users are free to turn it into one. While Indymedia moderators struggle with guidelines and dicisions about whether something is news or a rant, Ourmedia doesn't care. While indymedia is seen by many as an anarchist activist hangout, Ourmedia applies no overt political ideology.
Ourmedia insists that all contributors are registered. Of course that doesn't mean that the contributors can't choose to protect their actual identity. Conversly, Indymedia seeks to protect the anonymity of it's contributors, (although strangly, due to it's dedication to openess, the moderators don't enjoy the same protection).
The number of people using the internet has increased massively since Indymedia was born and being open and anonymous has it's problems. Posts are frequently spammed by trolls chucking out dissinformation and distraction. You get people prentending to be campaigning groups announcing fictional events or cancelling real ones. You get people creating fake personars to reinforce their position in an arguement.
While most users see only a fraction of these distruptive comments as moderators quickly hide what they can. However, moderators can't catch them all and the process is a political nightmare generating additional strains in the collectives and across the network.
Meanwhile, the quality of the posts on Indymedia is widely considered to have gone down. People just don't spend so much time and effort writting for indymedia since their posts quickly slide off the newswire under the volume of other posts. Within different indymedia collectives there have been many proposals about how to addres the issues. However, reaching consensus and making dicisions is not one of the things that Indymedia is particulary good at and so change is slow and painful.
The consequence of this is that people get disillusioned and give up. This included visitors, contributors and active members of the collectives and it becomes a vicious circle as people take their efforts elsewhere.
Anyone looking to jump ship might like to check out Ourmedia - it's far from what's needed to replace Indymedia. It has no direct equivilent to the newswires but with it's integration of RSS syndication, personal and group blogs, podcasts, video archives, video RSS etc. it has great potential.
In many ways Indymedia has no equal. It is an anti-authoritarian network and it has without doubt contributed a great deal to our common struggles. However, in my opinion, in it's current form it's days are numbered and the cracks are starting to show.
The network expanded rapidly but as it did idelogical differences began to emerge between different groups and splits occured. Meanwhile, Indymedia had contributed to a major shift that was occuring as even the mainstream media began to provide forums for 'citizen journalists'. The BBC launched their iCan website and websites that had previously been discussion forums added 'open' newswire like features.
Different Indymedia sites implimented the principles of open published (now often refered to as open editing) in different ways. Editorial guidelines vary widely and some sites have hardly any moderation and in others all posts moderated before publication. Some remained entirely anonymous while other provided the option for users to register a user name if they wished. In other sites, not considered official indymedia sites, registration is compulsory.
With all the differences The strapline on the top of most Indymedia sites says it best, "A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues."
Network appears to be the key word, but what does it mean?
What is the Indymedia network and what is the common thread that holds it together? In theory all Indymedia sites go through a process and sign up to a set of principles of unity. Ironicly however, no concensus was ever reached in formulating these principles of unity and not all 'Indymedia collectives' have gone through the process or agreed to the draft principles. The common thread it appears is simply the goal of creating an independent platform to allow everyone to publish the news that the corporate media are incapable and unwilling to provide.
The Indymedia Network is not the only collection of people working on reclaiming the media and creating platforms for real news and communication. A few months ago a new website was launched under the name 'Our media', it is just one of many emerging citizen media sites. Like Indymedia, Ourmedia is an open-source project built and run by volunteers. It freely hosts grassroots video, audio, music, photos, and text.
The project was started by members of the creative and technology communities who have managed to obtain the co-operation and vast resources of the Internet Archive. Their partners share a vision the grassroots media which is scattered across the Web or hidden away on laptops and closed networks, deserve a wider audience.
Like indymedia, Ourmedia describes itself as a global community but there are many major differences. Ourmedia doesn't set out to be a news service - although it's users are free to turn it into one. While Indymedia moderators struggle with guidelines and dicisions about whether something is news or a rant, Ourmedia doesn't care. While indymedia is seen by many as an anarchist activist hangout, Ourmedia applies no overt political ideology.
Ourmedia insists that all contributors are registered. Of course that doesn't mean that the contributors can't choose to protect their actual identity. Conversly, Indymedia seeks to protect the anonymity of it's contributors, (although strangly, due to it's dedication to openess, the moderators don't enjoy the same protection).
The number of people using the internet has increased massively since Indymedia was born and being open and anonymous has it's problems. Posts are frequently spammed by trolls chucking out dissinformation and distraction. You get people prentending to be campaigning groups announcing fictional events or cancelling real ones. You get people creating fake personars to reinforce their position in an arguement.
While most users see only a fraction of these distruptive comments as moderators quickly hide what they can. However, moderators can't catch them all and the process is a political nightmare generating additional strains in the collectives and across the network.
Meanwhile, the quality of the posts on Indymedia is widely considered to have gone down. People just don't spend so much time and effort writting for indymedia since their posts quickly slide off the newswire under the volume of other posts. Within different indymedia collectives there have been many proposals about how to addres the issues. However, reaching consensus and making dicisions is not one of the things that Indymedia is particulary good at and so change is slow and painful.
The consequence of this is that people get disillusioned and give up. This included visitors, contributors and active members of the collectives and it becomes a vicious circle as people take their efforts elsewhere.
Anyone looking to jump ship might like to check out Ourmedia - it's far from what's needed to replace Indymedia. It has no direct equivilent to the newswires but with it's integration of RSS syndication, personal and group blogs, podcasts, video archives, video RSS etc. it has great potential.
In many ways Indymedia has no equal. It is an anti-authoritarian network and it has without doubt contributed a great deal to our common struggles. However, in my opinion, in it's current form it's days are numbered and the cracks are starting to show.
Comments
Hide the following 21 comments
I don't get it!
06.10.2005 16:37
It's just some commercial website for you to store stuff on.
If you put anything ilegal on there then they would roll over and pass the cops your details without bating an eyelid.
Indymedia might suck in many ways but it is OUR media!
defender
Interesting
06.10.2005 16:53
Many IMC sites and collectives are now employing more RSS, some are using and indexing blogs, some are producing podcasts, and others are looking and experimenting with tagging - while the numbers are low at the moment, in these terms i think the future looks bright for indymedia as integration expands.
Many of the tech developers are working in other areas and projects, in fact developing and implementing many of the tech tools you mention.
IMHO indymedia was never meant to be the be all and end all of this stuff - the more people doing their own media the better :-)
Pete
Clearly advertising ourmedia spam!
06.10.2005 17:05
It's interesting to look at things like wiki news which are trying to replicate / experiment with collaborative participatory news publishing, and things like open source radio:
cac
My take on OurMedia as an indymedia like platform
06.10.2005 17:14
Ignoring pretty much everything on the site I'll draw your attention first to the 'groups'.
These appear to be just like the standard personal blogs found elsewhere in the site (and all over the net) but they allow multiple people to join them just like a discussion forum. Unlike a 'proper' discussion forums they can not be broken down into additional subjects and threads (as far as I can tell) and it would probably be stupid to try to use them if a discussion forum is what you are after (althought lots of the groups do appear to have been set up for discussion). The groups are more like Indymedia topic sections, either subject or regional based. You could define a group to replicate any or all of the existing topics in Indymedia. Unlike Indymedia, anyone can set up a new groups (topic) and become the moderator.
OurMedia groups are always moderated by the person that set them up and they can add additional mederators. I don't know yet what different options are available to these moderators, for example, can they decide whether stuff is pre moderated, open or members only etc. I imagine that you could form 'collectives' just like in the indymedia model to manage OurMedia groups and apply guidelines agreed by consensus similar to how it works with the IMCs
Now, this is where it gets interesting. All OurMedia users have a personal blog. When they publish something they can choose to post it to any group to which they are a member. This is basically a syndication process rather than cross posting as such. If the user edits their post in their blog it is updated everywhere since it is the same database entry. If somebody leave a comment, that comment shows up in all the groups where the post appears and also in the users blogg.
I think that this arrangement may encourage more productive contributions than are often seen on indymedia, but I haven't really explored that much yet.
open to possibilities
Thanks for the open source radio link
06.10.2005 17:28
I remember an open publishing internet radio stream which I think was a dutch indymedia. Being open publishing there was no quality control and hence it was pretty bad whenever I listened to it.
I've yet to find much on OurMedia to convince me that it is the next big thing but it certainly looks useful and I imagine I'll be using it soon. That doesn't mean Indymedia is dead.
radiohead
Blog off
06.10.2005 17:58
wot good would it do for indy to offer blogs to people?
indyfan
from indymedia to folk media
06.10.2005 18:15
(orginal article can be found at
I’ve been pondering a bit lately why Indymedia has stumbled and faltered, while blogs continue to flourish and grow in their reach. Shouldn’t media communities, learning and working together, be able to accomplish more than individuals working alone?
Up until now I’ve been drawn to looking at structural problems in Indymedia as the roots of its floundering, if not failure.
* There’s Indymedia’s ambiguity of purpose. Is Indymedia about creating alternative media or distributing alternative media? Is it a media tactic, spontaneous media convergences that are coupled with large political actions, or a global network of permanent, community-based “imc collectives”? Is it mainly about the web sites, or do print, radio, and video projects share equal importance? The usual answer is “yes, it can be!” to all of these possibilities, which sounds great when you’re lost in the clouds of complexity theory and theoretical musings about flexible organizing, but that ambiguity and lack of focus has sure had its real world costs in conflicts arising from different visions of what Indymedia can and should be.
* There’s Indymedia choice of consensus-based decision making. I’m a fan of consensus decision making where it fits, but as someone with years of experience in group facilitation and a pending PhD in conflict resolution, as someone who’s spent years doing Indymedia process work, and as someone who doesn’t like claiming to be entirely sure about anything, I’m absolutely sure that the requirement for consensus based decision making in Indymedia decisions is a rotten, dysfunctional fit with the organization. Worse yet, the ill fit artificially creates polarizing conflicts that actually erode any genuine culture of consensus that could exist within Indymedia.
* And finally, there are the internal inconsistencies and cleavages within the left that have played out in Indymedia in the same way that they have in every other sweepingly broad-as-can-be umbrella group that shirks away from the tough but needed conversation that starts with the honest fessing up that, “our beliefs, goals, and tactics are fundamentally at odds, and maybe this alliance doesn’t make sense.”
Those were all the reasons I kept coming back to for why Indymedia falters, and I still think they are substantive problems. But it doesn’t entirely get at why blogs are so very successful in comparison. And I think part of the answer is related to an entirely different missive I have about blogs:
Blogging is a genre, something other than its structure and its backend technology. The heart of blogging, what makes it unique and compelling, isn’t that it’s updated frequently, or that it follows a linear format by date, or that it has comments, or rss, or long lists of links, or any of those bells and whistles. I hear people defining blogs by those standards and shake my head in disbelief because it’s so patently–and I’m sorry to have to put this so bluntly–stupid.
When you hear “media source that’s frequently updated in reverse, time-linear format with user comments and links” do you get excited? No, not really. Who would? What’s made blogging popular and compelling isn’t its structure or the technology behind it, it’s blogging as a genre: the juxtaposing of the very personal, even mundane, with broader life, politics, and community.
And it’s finally dawned on me that, for no good reasons, that’s what’s been increasingly missing on Indymedia. There are spammed press releases. There are angry and yet somehow disembodied and impersonal rants and accusations. But all-too-often missing is that spark of humanity, decency, and personal honesty you can often find in blogs.
And I realized that I don’t particularly want Indymedia. The purse strings of media’s production matters, but only so much. What I really want is more Folk Media.
What do I mean by folk media? Consider this observation by David Clark, writing on folk music:
“In a rather revelatory chapter of Chronicles: Volume One, Bob Dylan tells, as a young man, of finding one Thelonious Monk sitting alone at the Blue Note with a large, half-consumed sandwich on top of his piano (’in his own dynamic universe even when he dawdled around,’ according to Dylan). When the young singer mentions that he plays folk music up the street, Monk responds as if commenting on the weather: ‘We all play folk music.’
Folk. Now there’s a good word. It manages to lift a burden somehow. Folk is just folks trying to tell other folks what’s happening in their heads as they try to remember or forget stories or feelings; folk is trying to tell truthfully what happened by telling it a little slant. What isn’t folk?
A folk song, after all, is not an edict from on high, but often a disruptively truthful word about the way things are. It expands the sphere of sanity little by little, and it breaks into monopolies on truth. It opens the doors of perception. Will we settle for anything less than that? Do we want to be changed? Do we want release?”
Blogs work because, at their best, they’re folk, folk media. And they’ll keep working because there will always be a thirst for folk truth. Corporations and interest groups probably will keep on trying to mimic the blog format, as if that’s what’s important or defining about blogs, but they’re not going to be able to copy what they’re not.
And it would be great to see at least some more of that folk media on Indymedia. What if Indymedia contributors and editors started thinking less about What Must Be Covered, about process, and about technological backends, and instead started thinking more about a folk media genre and ethos that gets away from the anger, the posturing, the personal attacks, and the vitriolic rants of this or that that fill the newswires. What if, instead of placing the highest value on stories that were about something Very Big, or Happening Right Now, or that Have The Right & Righteous Politics, the deepest value was on stories that were simple, and honest, and rang true. What if everyone just did what they could to make and support folk journalism? I’d sure like to see how that would turn out.
blog search
OurMedia not the right approach
06.10.2005 18:42
Ok, it an open-source, all-volunteer, not-for-profit project, with claims to be "as transparent as possible" but it's focus is more stuff like photo galleries (done better by flickr) and video stuff (but dedicated video blogging site probably work better).
It doesn't (yet) have the ability to browse by subject, in fact it's search engine is really basic as the moment.
But most important is that it doesn't really do anything that the global indymedia network isn't already providing.
news agregator = www.indymedia.org
blog agregator = indyblogs.indymedia.org
Podcasts, audio archiving, streaming etc = radio.indymedia.org
video archiving and distribution = video.indymedia.org
peer2peer file sharing = www.indypeer.org
torrent seeding = indytorrents.org
etc
Yes, indymedia generally can be slow to evolve and adopt new technologies but it is often bits of the indymedia network that are behind pioneering and developing these same technologies in the first place.
Umah
open comment is good
06.10.2005 18:48
I have seen the register-required sites OVER, and OVER, and OVER. They suffer from the same universal sicknesses that render them useless.
-Regulars (assisted by ludicrous ranks given to people based on their number of posts) stating successfully that time spent registered and posting = authority and wisdom. God, one could write a whole thesis on this phenomenom alone.
-Moderators who NOW are visible in discussions, and act as gods.
-Vast time and space lost between regulars (state agents and brain-dead individuals) endlessly arguing the same non-points back and forth
-auto extermination of new voices that clearly post in a more sophisticated way than the current degenerate standard
-mutual arse-licking by the regulars of each other (which soon grows, amazingly enough, to cover regulars of completely opposing viewpoints)
-posters chained to their onscreen nick, so that if a poster makes a post that is reviled or troublesome for any reason, the poster will find it hard to recover, or improve.
-from above, the points made by a poster inevitably are attached to the reputation of the poster, no matter how stand alone they really are.
-most people will just plain give up posting to such forums, because in the end it is NOT what you want to say, but issues of forum politics, not being thick-skinned, and feeling that the sad list of regulars reflects the lurkers (which isn't the case, but will seem to be so).
TONY BLAIR WANTS ALL 'PUBLIC FORUMS' TO BE LIKE THE ONES PROMOTED IN THE ARTICLE. HIS PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POSTING INSIDE AND OUT, AND KNOW HOW TO EFFECTIVELY DISENFRANCHISE AS MANY VOICES AS POSSIBLE.
Free anonymous comment, with moderators acting to honestly delete the SPAM, is the best form of open debate. Anything else is CLOSED debate, with participation strictly limited.
BEWARE the alternatives. Even if some of them are well intentioned (and that is a hard thing to prove) their potential for stifling debate is immense.
-are regulars praised for being regulars?
-are regulars awarded rank for numbers of posts, or length of membership?
-are people allowed to post under multiple nicks?
-do promising newcomers disappear quickly?
-are there rules that bias or stiffle debate?
-can one group easily close down the arguments of another group?
-does the site have a 'flat' format allowing ALL comments to be easily read?
-are disruption techniques identified and prevented?
None of this is easy. As I said above, an open site with ONE good moderator is superior to any other solution, but this is not always possible. Member vote moderation, perhaps best seen at SLASHDOT shows massive problems, both in terms of member taste/intellect/preference, and problems with massive abuse (anti-, Israeli, US government, RIAA posts are regularly scored downwards, regardless of content, by a program of well organised 'block-voting, and the opposite point of view, no matter how badly made, scored upwards likewise).
On a day when the BBC began another episode in its Psy-Ops program "look at us, we're fighting with the Government, so OBVIOUSLY we are NOT Tony Blair's MOUTHPIECE when we continuously bash Iran, and muslims in general", we need all the alternatives we can find.
twilight
Thank god for the irregulars
06.10.2005 19:11
As for his list of things to look out for when assesing alternatives, I note that many indymedia sites have given up having a 'flat' comments section and some sites use a codebase that provides user ratings.
I agree that there are problems with handing over ratings to the user like slashdot sites, but isn't that an argument against anarchy and democracy?
sunlight
Sickening coverage
06.10.2005 19:39
"Just emerging now is a raft of citizen-media sites, which encourage people to offer up their own stories. .. Some, such as Ourmedia, still in test mode, even let you upload video files.", BusinessWeek Online, June 20, 2005
"It's a website intended to promote the personal-media revolution, supporting individual content creators (writers, podcasters, videographers, photographers and the like).", Hindustan Times, India, Aug. 13, 2005
"'We see an opportunity to help kick-start the grassroots media revolution,' said J.D. Lasica,", CNET News.com, June 14, 2005
"Ourmedia has the potential to become the cornerstone of an alternative media system. It's also suggestive of where activism may go in the months and years to come.", WorldChanging, Aug. 13, 2005
"The successful citizens media sites will mimic Ourmedia.org, a portal which offers 'free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches.'", Forbes, June 21, 2005, Citizens Media Entrepreneurs.
"Ourmedia plans to roll out a social-networking service called Groups, which would let people create their own private circles for sharing and discussing their videos or other creative works.", TechWeb, June 17, 2005
"Once people see what they can do with media, they get very excited about it. They want to be engaged and not be passive consumers of Big Media content.", Online Journalism Review, April 26, 2005
"This is the most ambitious attempt at free media we’ve ever seen.", Mike Davidson's blog, March 23, 2005
"It's not every day that you get to watch the birth of a new media genre. This could be such a moment.", David Bollier's On the Commons, March 21, 2005
oh well, I know I could find the same kind of stuff refering to Indymedia if I looked but it is still really anoying. Wonder if it will catch on.
MyMedia Rules!
Blogs rule - bring them on
06.10.2005 19:51
Estimates indicate that almost 23,000 new blogs are created every day, with the "blogosphere" doubling in size every five months. "Blog" was even named 2004 word of the year by Merriam-Webster, Inc. (Webster's Dictionary).
Digital cameras, camera phones and blogs have put the tools of the news trade into the hands of the public. The news isn't a private club anymore.
How should indymedia adapt to the massive growth and interest in blogs?
blogger
My thoughts
06.10.2005 22:40
I think somebody earlier in this thread hit the nail on the head, why should people waste their time and effort putting together a well written piece when it will be pused off the newswire with a day or two? The features are generally quite well written and help to maintain a focus interesting newswire pieces but a lot of stuff is missed.
Perhaps it is because there are so many other places for people to post their work these days that Indymedia is left with a few die-hards and trolls. There used to be journalists posting their unpublished work on Indymedia. Now they use their own blogs. There used to be campaigners placing their content on Indymedia, but now most campaigns have their own content managment website with RSS feeds etc feeding directly into other sites.
I don't know what the answer is (and I doubt it is Our Media) but I agree that Indymedia has generally been slow to react to the changing online culture and is in danger of becoming an irrelevence beyond the usual suspects.
Old timer
Twilight mistakes Indymedia for a discussion forum
06.10.2005 23:52
are regulars awarded rank for numbers of posts, or length of membership?"
These are all features of forums which Indymedia AFAIK is not.
"are people allowed to post under multiple nicks?"
Regardless of whether a system uses registration or not, people can always find ways to posts under different nicks.
"do promising newcomers disappear quickly?"
How could you tell if people use different nicks? You couldn't tell if somebody was a newcomer or whether they had disappeared.
"are there rules that bias or stiffle debate?"
Indymedia has rules. The guidelines differ from IMC to IMC as does the level of enforcement. There is also a clear bias towards a 'left leaning' anti-authoritarian anarchist perspective. That isn't a bias that comes from the user base but a 'top down' decision from those who imlimented the idea.
"can one group easily close down the arguments of another group?"
That is the case both in all forums and here on Indymedia. Try posting articles promoting the activities and policies of the SWP and see how long they stay.
"does the site have a 'flat' format allowing ALL comments to be easily read?"
Interesting that s/he should raise that as it suggests s/he has been following discussion about changes to the way the IMC UK deal with comments. Is twilight one of the moderators?
"are disruption techniques identified and prevented?"
Any open forum that aims to be useful to it's user will need to be able to identify and take action to prevent disruption. However, with the level of distruptive comments on indy at present it seems that perhaps this IMC is lossing the battle.
iTune
NYC approach
07.10.2005 00:52
"In the last year and a half, the NYC IMC Open Publishing Newswire has been besieged with neo-nazi postings, and other items and commentary which are far away from what the Newswire is meant to be: A vital space of progressive and radical breaking news, commentary, articles, and announcements."
They say that as it stands, moderating requires at least 3 hours a day, by any given moderator. They continue, "There are no easy or perfect solutions to moderating an open newswire, rich with a healthy democracy of views."
As a result they appear to have clarified their editorial policy and formulated new guidelines. They say, "We believe that these guidelines will help to make the moderating process a clearer one for IMC volunteers, for anyone who self-publishes, and finally an unencumbered, useful and open newswire for readers worldwide."
Their new guidelines start by stating what they encourage people to publish:
Well researched, timely articles - Eyewitness accounts of progressive actions and demonstrations - Coverage of New York City metro area issues - Media analysis - Investigative reports exposing injustice - Stories on events affecting underrepresented groups - Media produced from within underrepresented groups - Local stories with national or global significance - Stories on people or projects working towards social and economic justice - Original, underreported stories of local, regional, national, or global importance.
They then continue by reminding us that an open publishing system is founded on trust. "The editors of and participants in this project trust that other participants will use the newswire to publish news, or, at the least, intelligent and insightful commentary. But as New York Indymedia's popularity has grown, so has the abuse of our open publishing system. Some of the abuse seems to be juvenile in nature; some it amounts to a deliberate attempt to destroy the project. "
They then list types of posts which they say merit close scrutiny and may be hidden.
- Spam posting; i.e., post deliberately designed to disrupt the newswire and its basic ability to function. These are posts that are deemed to be devoid of content or analysis and appear to be published with the sole purpose of disruption.
- Posts the author has requested hidden.
- Posts which are obviously incorrect or misleading. This includes attempts to spread dis-information or to impersonate another individual. For example, a poster once posted a cartoon under the name Latuff when in fact it was drawn by another artist.
- Posts that contain generalized and negative assertions about any race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc.
- Posts that advocate the mass physical elimination of a specific race, nation, creed, class, ethnic group, sexual orientation, etc, or that link to websites that advocate the same.
- Posts that treat the newswire as a personal 'bulletin board' with non-political content directed at one or another newswire participants.
- Unreadable formats (i.e. photos posted as text)
- Posts titled "test."
- Duplicate posts (including duplicate photographs)
- Advertising of products or for-profit services.
- Pornography, excepting sexually explicit satire.
The list appears to cover pretty much the range as the UK guidelines yet seems longer somehow. One notable exception is any guidelines relating to using the newswire as a platform for a hirachical organisation or political party which I find very interesting.
Clearly NYC IMC has been trying to deal with the same problems besieging Indymedia UK and I'd be interested to know exactly how they are changing things to address the problem.
explorer
usenet
07.10.2005 01:50
Bored...for now.
What makes Indy irelevent is Googles not ourmedia
07.10.2005 12:29
Since indymedia (quite for totally understandable reasons) if not consider a news service by Google, it doesn't appear in the news searches. It does however appear in the blog search (well some IMC sites do).
jr
if only IndyMedia were truly free of censorship!
07.10.2005 14:00
but take a look at NYC Indy!
arguably the IMC that represents 10 million people in the greater NYC area should be an extremely important outpost for freedom of expression. but the fact is that exactly the opposite is the case!
does any rational thinking human being believe that the events surrounding 9-11 and the subsequent report of the so-called "commission" is a closed case??? and yet, for the millions of New Yorkers, and all the family members of those who died on that terrible day, NYC INDY has an ABSOLUTE policy forbidding any MENTION of 9-11! Most especially anything to do with the finding out the truth about what happened on 9-11!
regardless of whether you accept the government's report, or whether you ascribe to the idea of some complicity of the Bush administration in the events that took place, shouldn't NYC Indy be EXACTLY the correct venue to discuss it??
go ahead, try it yourself! no post, no comment, NO TRACE of discussion of 9-11 will be tolerated on NYC Indy, and in my opinion this is a signal of what we might call the "vanguard becoming Stalin's lackies" in the IMC adventure.
all I can say is thank all of you at UK IMC and Porltand IMC for discovering a means of allowing wide-ranging discussions and not applying your own ideological axe-grinding to your sites! more power to you, and long live the Indymedia!!
bugs bunny
UK vs NYC
07.10.2005 16:43
IMHO, discussion forums are the place to discuss 9/11 and indymedia is the place to post NEWS about 9/11. So, whenever somebody drags up their personally theories (which have all been raised before) then those posts are probably now news and should be hidden. When somebody posts something news, such as the publication of a medical report about the increase in lung cancer in new york which they say might be attributed to the pollution from 9/11, then that is news and should not be deleted.
I would be suprised if NYC IMC looked at the issued very differently.
"all I can say is thank all of you at UK IMC and Porltand IMC for discovering a means of allowing wide-ranging discussions and not applying your own ideological axe-grinding to your sites! more power to you, and long live the Indymedia!!"
9/11 material IS routinely hidden on IMC UK , it's unusual for somebody to write a 9/11 related news piece that is directly relevent to the UK. and ideological axe-grinding is applied every time a party political based post arrives in the newswire which the poster above pointed out is apparently not the case with NYC IMC
the comment about google is interesting, when it comes down to it, the whole thing with this new media explosion is who are the gatekeepers.
dandy
defender get your facts right
07.10.2005 18:46
> It's just some commercial website for you to store stuff on.
It's a not-for-proit open source site run by volunteers and is a lot more than just a place "to store stuff"
> If you put anything ilegal on there then they would roll over and pass the cops
> your details without bating an eyelid.
Probably, but so have indymedia and their ISP's
Besides, IMCs generally have a policy of deleting ilegal content.
> Indymedia might suck in many ways but it is OUR media!
True.
offender
Whats the problem?
08.10.2005 00:03
It's been pointed out that both have their pro's and con's so people can pick and choose or use both.
Why does it need to be about which is best?
OurMedia looks like a good place for people producing orginal content and looking for an audience beyond the activist crowd and Indymedia remains the toold for communication and discussing things within the activist scene.
Those people who want to reach large numbers of people who haven't already been exposed to the kind of info and analysis found on Indymedia sites would probably do well to start posting on OurMedia. Thoise people how wish to explore their politics in the context of the anti-authoriatian left will probably want to continue to hang out on the Indymedia chat rooms or Urban 75 or Libcom etc.
It's all about freedom to choose right?
confused