[Imc-aotearoa-ed] Re: [Imc-aotearoa] Re: hidden DK's comment about periods

[finn c.]

Hi,

> I know Don's abusive language is a serious issue but I think we are in danger of being petty and inconsistent. 
> 
> Do Eric, Paul Holmes etc (whose underlying attitude if not their linguistic style are much more reactionary than Don's) get as much attention from us as Don? Another point is it's a comment, not a newswire posting. To my mind comments should be moderated less stringently than postings as they are more obviously just an opinion of one person.

They do if they are spamming the site as fast as their modem will allow.

Comments should be moderated far more stringently than posts, as they
interfere with other people's articles [unless of course if they are
commenting on their own article]. Most of the articles on
Indymedia are the opinions of just one person.

Also, I would place dk's sexism, homophobia and abuse far farther along
the spectrum than Eric and Paul Holmes [Paul actually has a coherent
opinion too]. 

> On the question of that particular comment <http://www.indymedia.org.nz/front.php3?article_id=13735&group=webcast> I feel uncomfortable about male volunteers hiding things on the basis that they are offensive to women - isn't that a bit vanguardist? If Clare (for example) had felt it was offensive enough to hide the comment (or a female reader had complained) I would support her. Maybe I am being inconsistent? I don't know. 

I guess I have to let a female answer this for me ;)

> I just want remind everyone (myself included) that the decision to hide other people's speech on an open-publishing forum should not be taken lightly. In my first attempt at being a newswire clerk I got a bit trigger-happy and others had to remind me that the thrust of the editorial is (or should be) to allow everything and hide only that which CANNOT (for a clear reason) be allowed to remain, not a firewall approach of hiding everything except that which we approve of.

Unless they are spamming the site as fast as their modem will allow.

> When we upgrade to DadaIMC and have the ability to delete and purge posts (can you clarify what these mean in practice Finn?) as well as just hiding them this collective gains the power to totally censor a poster or subject. This worries me greatly. This is a huge resonsibility and we have to do everything we can to make sure we are accountable and that we are SEEN to be accountable to the communities we want to use this site.

Well I was hoping you'd look it up in the lengthy documentation:

Display options allow the Editor to hide an article or redisplay a
hidden one. The popup menu indicates the general reason for hiding the
article, and the text input box allows for notes to explain the action.
Editors are highly encouraged to add comments to justify their decision,
which comments will be displayed publicly on the Hidden Articles page,
and on the Article Options page.

Deleting an article actually offers 2 further options: marking the
article as deleted, and purging it from the database. Purging removes
the entire record for good, and should only be done to data that it is
acceptable to lose forever, e.g. exact duplicate postings. Marking an
article as deleted makes it unavailable to visitors, except in the case
of Policy Violations, which can be viewed (with a warning!) from the
"Deleted Newswire Articles" page. 

http://dadaimc.org/support.php?section=documentation&id=24

Play and see what it does. This is a *good thing*. Not being able to
delete stuff like test posts [some of mine had large videos attached]
and the like has cost us a lot of money.

--

Can I just say that we have policy for this. Editorial people are able
to hide *anything* posted by a spammer, and it is up to others on the ed
list to ask that the posts be unhidden. No one has done this, they've
just complained that there is too many [of dk's] articles being hidden. 

And another question, when are we going to place the wellbeing of the
editorial collective and the indymedia community above that of an
individual spammer? I am getting increasingly tired of this.

seeya,
finn

-- 
now you guys with this animal activists rights have overstepped the line.