New Ideas:
BimcFuture
Table of content :
BIMC Future
Ideas for the Future of BIMC (Written 2006)
This document looks at possible directions that Bristol Indymedia (BIM) site could take. It is intended as a discussion document for people to have their say on what ideas here seem good/bad, how they might be implements or modified and so on. The ideas in this document have come from various meetings of the Bristol Indymedia collective (BIMC), but many of them would alter the overall 'feel' of the site and there for it is important to consider each fully before moving forward.
BIMC Wiki Public Pages
Bristol wiki with resources that groups etc. can use to put info about them, somthing to distil the info that gets posted to BIMC on! BIMC would mod the pages and anyone could contribute. It would list projects, groups, contacts, useful links etc.
- I think this is a good idea to add to the site. We would need to add a wiki-system to the site plus instructions and also moderate this too. However if done correctly, it could become a vital resource for the area and for people to use.
Hardcopy BIMC
This is the idea of having a button which would generate an automatic PDF of the front page articles on Bristol IMC. - other IMCs (e.g. Cambridge) do this process every month by hand. A monthly hardcopy version of the IMC could help to raise its profile and reach those without net access.
- This is a technical challenge to do, but is a good idea. If we could not do this (or even if we could) and there was an appetite to do print; Ideally we could get a sub-group going who would print and distribute paper copies. We could also look to join with another project to get news out who are already doing paper stuff, e.g. a page in the cube's pro gramme or in bristle each issue?
This project now has its own wiki page at ImcBristolOffline
Freecycle-style page
The aim is to provide an online version of freecycle, but without the hassle of having to sift through hundreds of emails to find the stuff you want. A
test site has been developed.
Below is an example of how indycycle looks as a very basic module on the main site:
Calendar
Currently BIM has a small calendar page in the top corner to the site. This links to a larger calendar page that allows users to enter their own events. Events can be entered either through the calendar or by selecting 'event' as a type article. This system updates itself and so keeps the frontpage up-to-date with the latest events. This system was implemented because the newswire was becoming clogged with people posting reminders of events.
It is clear it is a popular feature, as most days feature at least one event. Currently the guidelines that cover the calendar are slightly different to the rest of the site in that minor commercial events that are non-commercial (e.g. Local gigs) have been allowed. Currently the vast majority of events posted are still non-commercial in nature. For example in July there were 32 events posted, 25 were non-commercial and 7 were commercial. It is proposed. For the moment, to keep the current calendar guidelines and monitor the types of postings, as has been agreed at a number BIMC meetings before.
It is proposed that the calendar be made a far larger component of the front-page. It is suggested that the front page has 14 rather than 7 date slots and each slot has around twice the space for text. This suggested change is to reflect that fact that Bristol seems a busy place and there is always lots on it! It seems that plenty of users of the site put on events and want to let others know.
Feedback
- Is there any chance of proposing to make the calendar downloadable by making it ICAL-able?
- Why should the calendar be 'larger' rather than more visible by using different colours or something? The reason I ask is that Bristol has a relatively high rate of feature turnover, which means that stories get demoted quite rapidly - the implication of which is that
- the stories rapidly lose importance
- only one thing is important (and at the top of the page) at a time
- My preference would be to find some way of having two feature columns or perhaps something like the BBC site - http://news.bbc.co.uk/ - whereby several stories are visible without needing to scroll down.
- new site has a new temple, so an opportunity to re-design the look!
- I feel that this is a vital feature for the site. I think an enlarged calendar with more space given over to it on the front page is vital. Lots of the news of the site is events and the calendar is a big part of that.
Blog-Feeds
When the Indymedia (IMC) project began in 1999, users posting their own content onto the Internet was far from a common thing. Since then that has been a growing shift to users both creating their own content. Users having their say was initially the domain of tech-savy people who could create websites or found on leading tech sites such as Slashdot.org (started 1997). Today users generated content is a mainstream process with sites like News Corporation's
MySpace? or Google's
YouTube? entirely dependent on users posting news. In addition mainstream news outlets actively solicit users comments and content. The BBC posts users comments and asks for images and videos while the Guardian makes a virtue of it's 'Comment is Free' systems for user content. In general, people writing their own news and comment and making their own video, audio and images is a good thing from BIMC's perspective.
Running in parallel with this trend has also been the ease at which a user can not only generate their own content, but also host it too. While sites such as Angelfire or
GeoCities? have allowed people to have their own websites for some time, the tech barrier to this was lowered considerably by the development of blogging software. This made it easy for users with very little tech knowledge to have a site and their their thoughts online. More recent sites such as
MySpace? and Bebo allow users to collate all their content – audio, images, video and text – in one place.
This trend would mean that increasingly people may not need to post content on BIMC. However, BIM is still a focal point of many users and a good place to share user generated content. To this end it is suggested that BIMC create a second newswire. This newswire would automatically pull news posts of related blogs, myspace accounts etc onto the site. To keep the regional focus of the site, there sites would still need to be either by people from the area or predominately about the area. BIMC moderators would need to 'ok' the sites into this process and would also need the ability to remove both sites and individual postings from BIM's blog-feeds if it broke guidelines. However for this to work the guidelines around commercial postings and regional related posting would need to be relaxed somewhat (as with the calendar), as it is suspected that the vast majority of blog-fed content would not fit the current guidelines.
This component would be a larger undertaking with lots of areas of uncertainty, but if BIM (and Indymedia in general) is to remain relevant as users and technology changes, then it too must adapt.
Feedback
- the blog-feed idea sounds great! Perhaps, though, a further improvement might be to increase the degree of interactivity with features and newswire items so that participants can add or correct information in a manner similar to wikipedia. I know that this will mean added admin duties, but I am looking to get more involved and could (with training) take on such a task?
- I have started to look at how many local blogs there are - and there's quite a few. Also it seems to be a growing number. This is an importnat area and I think we need this!
West Country IMC
The current West Country IMC, an offshoot of the United Kollectives system is currently closed as there were no moderators keeping the site running. Since then (and before) BIMC has attracted posts from the whole region – from Cornwall to Somerset to Bath to Cardiff. Such posts are still the minority of content; most hail from Bristol. There have been people who have wanted to resurrect West Country IMC, but the feedback has been that is such a geographically spread region, it is hard to get the sufficient numbers in one place to make it happen.
One proposal around this as been to change BIM to West Country IMC to reflect that diversity of content that the site has posted on it. This would be a major change to the site. Concerns include that it would dilute the sites focus and so leave it covering to wide an area. It is true that for this to happen it would need more people from around the region to aid the process and run the site. Existing IMC technology, such as secure chatrooms could be used to aid this process. It would also be important to have regular meetings around the region to allow site volunteers and users to discuss important areas in person.
The media access issues that drive BIMC are not unique to Bristol. However, this would be a large undertaking and could waste resources on something that is not needed, as it could be argued that UK IMC covers the area – should BIMC build on its experience running the site and expand the provision fully to the whole region or keep covering the area it was created to cover?
Feedback
- To me the main the issue of expanding/reforming BIMC to include the SW is not really one of content, so much as active, regular volunteers. Should such a course of action be taken I think that the first task would be to find people outside of Bristol - from Exeter, Plymouth, Cardiff or whereever, who would be able to facilitate the expansion. Otherwise it will simply be BIMC people taking on an enormous amount of extra work without any certainty that there would be user-generated content. It is clear that the SW region needs IMC expansion, but it should - ideally - be done by people outside Bristol - perhaps by putting out calls for participation via regional networks, universities, colleges, political groups etc.?
- felt to be a big jump as an independent project. - having West Country subpage(s) would be good. ARticles currently have an allocation for the region they're from. These regions could have their own individual page a la UK IMC's subpages. These subpages would also need front features presumably... - participation in this IMC would need an email list. how would people be eligible to join the list?
- It seems that westcountry IMC has finally been shut down, as they've now removed it from the listing on UKIMC...We have always included the South West, and part of our discussions have been on how far we can realistically take that. It seems that to an extent that decision has been made for us, as I'm sure we will now begin to attract more South West news by default. My only real concern is that the South West has always been cautious of being led in a Bristolcentric fashion, much like others reject excessively Londoncentric models. Making ourselves a little more welcoming and inclusive somehow would be helpful. I don't think we should consider changing our name, though.
- INTERNATIONAL NEWSWIRE? We can't realistically allow the newswire to be overrun by international articles, but along with our discussions about creating subpages for the South West, we could create an international subpage, if only to diffuse this issue. This would also almost completely solve the issue of hidden articles, the overwhelming majority of which are now international articles.
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