the global INDYMEDIA project: the good, the bad and the ugly...

[Backatcha Bandit]

Erm...

*"No IP logging at all, except in response.."*

If I expected/needed to post with impunity, that would mean posting on an IM server would be like playing 'Russian Roulette', with the 'moderators' not only spinning the barrel - but deciding how many bullets go in the chamber! That's a lot of 'faith and trust' you're asking for.

Fuck 'faith and trust'. I want to have confidence.

Especially if I were giving the appearance of advocating 'property damage without clear risk of injury' - which is still an offence in the eyes of the law - incitement.

I suppose I should also have 'faith and trust' regarding the judgement of the individual who deicides for me what deserves to be derided as 'conspiracy theory', too - but what if someone wanted to post an eyewitness report that they had seen 'chemtrails'?

If you keep a centralised, heirarchical model for moderation, you will always have the problem.

It irks me still that people speak of 'collectives' when a real technical opportunity presents itself that could make the thing work in a truely collective manner (e.g. 'scoop' above) - collective decision making regarding moderation tasks - yet this is resisted or ignored.

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[Munkee - please bear in mind I am criticising your ideas, not you personally. As you are 'probably quite well positioned to help encourage change', I feel justified in shaking down your ideas - and would hope that you will do the same in return. But I'm sure you're aware of that already. ]

 

[munkeeunit]

It's hard to take seriously the idea that none of this is personal when you pepper your responses with things like 'fucktard'. A lot of people would have put you on ignore, rather that voluntarily consume your 'backatcha' abusiveness.

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As mentioned in an earlier post (did you read it?) on the issue of 'conspiracy theories' we are very much between a rock and a hard place. A number of people complain about the surfeit of conspiracies, while indymedia watch criticise when they get hidden.

My point is for streams of sourced and unsourced articles as a marker. Something for the techies.

Collective decision making regarding moderation duties isn't rejected or ignored, there simply isn't time for the most part for every detail to go to a committe decision. This is unfortunately in the nature of most voluntary projects of any form.

But it's easier to jump to the 'conspiracy theory' that issues have being ignored or rejected, when quite often they have been tried, or considered, and fail due to sheer lack of volunteer time.

 

[gurrier]

It irks me still that people speak of 'collectives' when a real technical opportunity presents itself that could make the thing work in a truely collective manner (e.g. 'scoop' above) - collective decision making regarding moderation tasks - yet this is resisted or ignored.

You shouldn't discount the possibility that it is "well understood to have serious problems both technical and social and thus not considered worth worrying about by most IMC techies who are all volunteers and are almost always excessively busy and overstretched" rather than being "resisted or ignored" by a technical elite.

The thing about indymedia and OS development in general, is that if there is a genuinely good, concrete idea out there which solves significant real world problems, somebody implements it. I don't think that what you are proposing is even nearly concrete enough for anybody to even think about implementing it. I mean, I don't understand what you are proposing and I know more than most about IMC software. If your proposals are too vague for people to understand them, then it is hardly fair to complain about technical elites resisting them.

Anyway, if you can give me a detailled breakdown of what you are proposing, I'll do my best to explain why it's a bad idea

I have very real concerns about *any* organisation which gives people the impression that they can write articles anonymously and without fear of retribution when it would appear that (due to the topography employed by IM servers) this is clearly not the case.

I very much doubt that any imc actively gives people the impression that they can do anything on the internet with guaranteed anonymity and without fear of retribution as these things are not even remotely possible. Perhaps, some IMCs do not do enough to dispell the erroneous preconceptions that some users might have about this. In reality a vast and imho excessive proportion of the technical resources of the IMCN are employed precisely to improve the probability of user privacy. The lack of guaranteed privacy is also most certainly not caused by the chosen topography of IM servers.