Evolving IMC UK

Here are some ideas I have about the IMC UK websites:

It is a work in progress.... Some of these ideas I have raised before at Network meetings or in the lists or IRC. Others are evolutions and developements on those ideas and new ones.

Perhaps other people would like to coontribute their visions also.

Anyway, this document will basically consists of three parts:

1. I had a dream - you could skip this

2. My (Indy)media - an attempt at summarising my vision

3. Proposals that might move indymedia towards those vision in small steps

1. I have a dream

Five full years ago, a fledgling collective of media activists (on whose efforts we are all indebted), setup Indymedia UK. This momentous website came as a great beacon light of hope to thousands seared in the flames of withering media coverage for their campaigns and concerns. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of media exclusion. But five years later, we must face the tragic fact that our new media is still not free.

Five years later, Indymedia is still sadly crippled by the manacles of hiarchy and the tyrany of the most comitted. Five years later, Indymedia remains a lonely activist ghetto in the midst of a vast occean of corporate controlled mass media. Five years later, Indymedia is being pushed from it's corner of cyberspace and increasing exiled by the rise of 'the BLOG'.

Indymedia promised we would all be guaranteed the inalienable right to 'be the media'. It is obvious today that Indymedia has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as failing to fully reject the conventional 'them and us' model of the mainstream media. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, Indymedia has formed editorial and admin collectives that alienate the very people we are apparently liberating. But we refuse to believe that the Indymedia concept is bankrupt (even after buying a new server) or that the great vaults of opportunity to evolve the code have been closed.

So we must remind ourselfs of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of the regional collectives to the sunlit path of user freedom. Now is the time to open the doors of administration and moderation to all of Indymedia's children. Now is the time to lift our newswires from the potential quicksands of 'elitist censorship' to the solid rock of 'letting the user decide'.

It would be fatal for Indymedia to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the fast pace of developement taking place beyond Indymedia closed walls. The peoples legitimate discontent and distrust in the media will drive them onwards until they find an invigorating media outlet that really lives up to it's revolutionary name. The introduction of regionalisation was not an end, but a beginning. Those who hoped that switching to the MIR codebase was all that was needed will have a rude awakening as the collectives hunker down to media business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in Indymedia until all users are granted their freedom.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our website until the bright day of true open publishing emerges. But that must be said to those who stand within the warm threshold of the collectives. In the process of gaining our own media we must not fall into the ruts occupied by our mainstream rivals. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness, hatred and censorship.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of openess and accountability. We must not allow our revolutionary media to degenerate into the reproduction of the other. Again and again we must pull down the hiarchy and rise to the majestic heights of our own rhetoric.

The marvelous new MIR codebase that reinvigirated the network must not lead us into to loose touch with 'the users', for many of 'the users', as evidenced by their emails and comments, have come to realize that their open publishing is not simply restricted by our collectives but also inextricably bound by our personally interpretation of editorial guidelines.

We cannot moderate alone. And if moderate we must, then we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead in providing the tool or moderation to all the users. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of media activism, "When will you be satisfied?". We can never be satisfied as long as grassroot independent news is swamped by crap on the newswire and cannot gain lodging in the short attention span of busy surfers. We cannot be satisfied as long as the our regional collectives form yet new ghettos from a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a conspiracy theorist cannot post nonsense and an busy moderator feel the need to take the lonely move to hide the article.

No, no, we are not censors, and we will not be satisfied until everyone is aware that the responsibilty is everyones and rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of the great beast of the mainstream media. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells after being arrested for filming at a protest. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the rioting of police. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive (especially if you sue the bastards).

Go back to Manchester, go back to Oxford, go back to Sheffield, go back to London, go back to the social centres and activist ghettos of the regions, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of IRC. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the movement, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the Indymedia dream.

I have a dream that one day this website will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "Don’t Hate the Media. Be the Media." I have a dream that one day in the newswires the sons tories and the daughters of businessmen will choose to read and publish together on an IMC website. I have a dream that one day even the county of Essex, a cultural desert, sweltering under consumerism and sun readers, will be transformed into an oasis of Indymedia users. I have a dream that my children will one day publish on a website where they will not be judged by a small clique of self-appointent moderators but by their peers for the content of their articles. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the corporate states of America, whose presidents's words are presently dripping out of the lips of Fox News etc., will be transformed into a situation where everyone will be getting their news from each other and walk together as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every collective shall be collectivised into the community of users, every hirachy shall be made low, the rough code will be made plain, and the hidden places will be made opaque, and the glory of open publishing shall be revealed, and all shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the lists. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the methods of desparity, a kernel of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our network into a beautiful symphony of open protocols. With this faith we will be able to work together (or apart as we so choose), to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that one day we may be as free as we have made our media.

This will be the day when all of earth's children will be able to publish without hinderance, and truely say "My media. Sweet forum of liberty. I am the media! Let freedom ring." And if Indymedia is to be the great liberating forum, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hippy clad hilltops of the West Country. Let freedom ring from the golf courses of Scotland. Let freedom ring from the evolving social furum of Merseyside! Let freedom schRing from the beer soaked beaches of Brighton! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous aspires of Leeds! But not only that; let freedom ring from stone ramparts of London! Let freedom ring from the bassement of Manchester! Let freedom ring from every hacklab and cyber-cafe. From every web browser, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every library and every home, from every region and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of broadband's children, PC user or Mac, Windows or OX X, Linux or BSD, will be able to join protocols and download the prophetic words of Jello Biafra, "There's always room for Jello".

2. My (indy)media

Ok, lets face it. Open publishing, in the shape of the current Indymedia sites, finds itself between a rock and a hard place. It sets it self up as a new revolutionary medium in which everyone becomes the journalist, able to tell their own story without censorship. However the sad reality is that it's not really working out like that. We know that without moderation the newswire is swamped with nonsense, irelevent, non-news, personal rants, adverts, spam and porn. We know that when that happens the data overload makes the service worthless and people turn away, unable or unwilling to waste their time find articles of interest and importance to them. So we set of editorial guidelines and procedures 'enforce' them.

We try to make the process open, transparent and accountable but we still get accused of censorship - one of the core ways in which Indymedia claims to differ from the corporate press. And much like the mainstream media we sought to bypass, a 'them and us' devide is formed by our processes. It's not true that 'everyone is a journalist', there are contributors, trolls, spammers, members of collectives, regular features writers, an elite trusted with passwords and admin access, and a further inner-circle of those with access to the code and the knowledge to fix and shape it. There are people who are thought of as 'working for' Indymedia, people go to events specifically to cover them for Indymedia or are called up by others to parachute in to cover an action. Is this what we had in mind? Perhaps it is, but I think we can go further, much further, towards building a new form of media that retain less of the problems inherent in conventional media.

So here is my vision, My (indy)media... a website shaped by me and moderated by myself and those whose opinions I respect and trust but populated with content supplied by anyone and everyone on every subject and issue imaginable without censorship. How would this work? Much like indymedia. Anyone could post (not just on one website since the data feeds from multiply sites would use one standard open format) but it is the user who decides what they read. The user customises their own 'My (indy)media' homepage to display the newswire feeds of their own choosing. Their choices would probably change over time or perhaps be different on their home PC than on their work PC or in the evening or weekends. They would decide what 'regions' they were interested in and what topics. They would decide whether they wanted recent local, national or international news listed at the top, or analysis and commentry listed lower down or not at all. They would decide whether they wanted coming events listed: parties, no parties or just actions. They would decide whether their wanted editorial features that attempted to sum up clusters of articles around a common theme and if they did choose to display such editorial, they would decide which collectives or individuals editorials would be displayed and which they would filter out. Likewise, they would be able to choose to filter out articles by any specific author, or articles containing words that they thought might indicate an article of no interest to them.

Now all this customisation would be pretty daunting to new users so there would be predefined defaults, standard templates from which to choose and then modify at will. Anyone could produce and export such templates and offer their custom templates to others. A group might produce a template customised for a region. It might have the colours of the local football team and contain a background photo of a local event. It might list local events and local news and offer editorial from a local collective. Somebody from that town might choose to use it but replace the editorial with a national newswire and additonal newswires and filters to provide them with news from the country of their birth from which they are currently exiled.

To do all this, every post would need meta data that acurrately catagorises the content in order that filtering can work effectively and 'newswires' or 'feeds' be produced for specific areas or subjects etc. The contributor of every artcile would be expected to provide this information but obviously people would try to abuse the system in order to get their article into as many feeds as possible. So how would this be avoided? Who would watch over the system to spot abuse and act to fix it?

The answer is that every user of the system would be responsible for spotting and acting to prevent abuse. It would work much like some of the most effective anti-spam systems that use a shared database of spam emails that have been identified by users. In these systems, when you download your email each message is checked against a database of emails previously reported as spam and if any of your email matches then it is marked as potential spam and placed in your spam folder. If you receive junk email which isn't already on the database then you report it and a 'finger print' of that email is stored on the database so in the future it will be identified as spam for anyone else downloading it. The system works incrediable well because spammers send the same email to tens of thousands of people. It can be abused, for example, somebody might subscribe to a popular mailing list and then report it as spam so that all other subscribers using the system would have the emails incorrectly catagories as spam. However, there are ways to safeguard against these problems, for example, having a threshold greater than one for reports or even giving the users the choice of level for the threshold of reports required to trigger an email being classed as spam. Additonally the user can check their spam folder for false postives and report them as such. The handling of false spam reports could also work on a threshold level and can be accompanied by unique IP checks, or better yet, unique registered user checks.

Anyway, that's how such a system works for email and it should be clear how it could be adapted for reporting and correcting miscategorised articles in the 'My (indy)media' system. If a user spots something in a newswire that they think shouldn't be there then they report and reclassify it. There could be a threshold of number of people required to trigger reclassification and that threshold could be controled by each user. There could be the option for people to choose to ignore the reclassification reports of specific individuals, or to specifically trust speciffic collectives that volunteer to moderate specific feeds (although nobody would be forced to trust their judgement and there could be multiply collectives moderating the same feeds and all having their own opinions about what should or should not be included in their version of the feed).

Anyway, that's kinda it. How I'd like indymedia to work. I can clarify and explain better if any one has questions.

3. My Proposals

I'm certain 'My Media' as described above (and more) would be perfectly possible for clever programmers with loads or time on their hands. However, I also believe that a surpising amount of it (but certainly not all is possible using the existing MIR code (with maybe a little tweaking). The MIR code already contains a very flexible classification (or 'topics' ) system which combined with it's support for templates enable MIR to present information from the database in many different ways. If a users set up their own template in the way that the regional sites have then they would have taken a step towards the 'My Media' concept. However, the proposals listed below are really quite minor changes that in my opinion would help to improve the IMC-UK site without any major change in approach or significant modification to the codebase.

a. Analysis Topic.

Funny topic this one in my opinion as it is a meta topic - you may have analysis of globalisation stories or ecology related news etc. While analysis may be interesting it is normally not news and is often (at least on indymedia) about something quite old. I personally would like to have all analysis removed from the newswire and made available in a seperate wire below the newswire. (In 'My Media', users could decide whether to have it or not and where and how it should be displayed). Aditionally the link in the topics panel on the left column should be removed.

The reason I suggest this and the benefits I think might come from it are this. Indymedia gets lots of flack over 'censorship' - often of non-news rants and theories which moderators (quite rightly mostly in my opinion) would rather not have clutering up the newswire (which is after all meant to be for news). Now, instead of hidding them, if we catagorised them as 'analysis' (notice the word anal in there), and provided them with a seperate wire lower down the page, then I believe we would be being fairer and truer to the principles of non-censorship and open-publishing.

I am not suggesting that this change would end the need to moderate articles as we currently do, but it should reduce the number that get hidden and may end much of the complaints - many of which are quite understandable.

b. Orginal content vs Non-orginal (repost / cut & paste)

I think we should have a classification ('topic') that differentiates between '1st person' orginal content and 'cut & paste ' reposts from other media sources. Then we should automatically filter out all non-orginal posts from the newswire and place a dedicated 'non-orginal' newswire lower down the page. Now obviously we should according to our guidelines be hiding most of the 'cut & paste' articles and they are most likely subject to copyright. However much of this stuff does get left in and it's normally only the article that people take offence to that get hiden on the basis of being reposts from other media sources.

By doing this we would vastly improve the quality of the main newswire and encourage more people to write orginal content (surely the main point of indymedia). We would avoid having to make partizan decisions about hiding such posts and maintain coverage of stuff that is often important but nobody is writting orginal articles about. Much of this stuff is non-activist, overseas or mainstream political stuff which clutters up the newswire and swamps 'proper' local grassroot reports from the streets so moving it to its own newswire would be great.

On the issue of copyright.. we could include a disclaimer that says something along the lines that copyright remains with the orginal author and that its is included under fair use provision under copyright law but may be removed from the site on request of the copyright holder.. you know the kinda thing, it's fairly standard on many sites.

c. Events

Yet another new 'topic', this time for events. Now I know we have the protest.net thing but frankly it sucks and few people bother checking it. I also know that the publish page specifically requests people use protest.net and not post in the newswire, but everybody does (I know I do). No moderators seem to hide event announcements (they'd get stick if they did) and the guidelines doesn't really exclude them - anyone posting events annoucements could reasonable argue that it was news and write it as such.

By creating a new classification (sorry, 'topic' in MIR speak) we can automatically seperate events from the newswire and place them in coming events panel that doesn't require somebody to manually request an addition or trawl through protest.net looking for stuff that should be included. These events panels could on the regional sites automatically include only those events classified as relevent for that region.

This is a bodge and there are no doubt better solutions such as intergrating a decent diary system into MIR rather than using protest.net which is showing it's age.

d. Hidden posts page

Okay, final proposal (for now). Get rid of the hidden page!! Seriously, just rename it something like complete unmoderated or full open wire and include ALL posts, not just the hidden ones (and loose the stupid background). Also, instead of hidding the link away where people mostly never find it, place the link back on the front page, only right at the bottom of all the newswires.

Now, where is the censorship? Indymedia only ever delete posts which it is required by law to removed. Indymedia is an open publishing site set up to provide grassroots coverage of issues and actions often ignored or distorted by the corporate press. It is entirely legitimate that indymedia prioritises grassroot news reports over other contributions that may or may not fall neatly outside of the editorial guidelines. Some posts may fall outside of the catagories of posts displayed on the front page wires (eg. orginal news content, other news, analysis, events) but all are viewable via the 'open wire' link. "Censorship? Fuck off, you just missclassified your article and we fixed it for you!"

Comments

I'd love to hear comments.

Stick them below, or bend my ear on #uk, or email me if you know my address.

...

Interesting links on related issues

check this out http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/BIMCProposalsSiteRedesign

and this recent thread on imc-communication http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2005-June/0608-tj.html

-- BenUK - 08 Apr 2005
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