[IMC-bristol] editorial responsibilities

[Adnam]

> Ian wrote:
>
> & The Bristolian party? well It seems to get as much middle column action 
> as Fairford but I know that you and Bone don't get on, so i'll let that one 
> slide.  Does anyone else feel that the Bristolian party is getting too much 
> middle column action?  In my personal opinion BIMC should support it all 
> the way -  and i don't think it puts the integrity of the site in any 
> danger whatsoever, in fact the opposite  - its presence enhances the 
> site...Look at Chiapas Indymedia - should they stop supporting the 
> Zapatistas? Should Brazil Indymedia stop supporting the MST?  Ya Basta  We 
> are all Bristolians!
> 

I agree with that. Vote Bristolian candidates are all independent
candidates from Bristol who promise to work with locals to get things
done. They are not part of a political party that has links to big
business, a manifesto or a record of failing to work in the interests of
the electorate. Also, an estimated 20-30,000 people read The Bristolian
every week. It's practically mainstream news.


Some thoughts on the discussion:-

Independent media websites that rely on article submissions from the
public face the problem I call the 'Signal to Noise Ratio'. Traditional
news media tends to have a rather top-down structure where editors decide
which stories are written, whether or not they are published and how they
are presented. They've also got the resources to ensure that every post to
website message boards can be vetted.

Independent news sites - in the broadest sense - have to resort to
technology to allow the right balance between the good stuff (people want
to read) and the inevitable goat-sex trolls, and also to present it in an
accessable way. This can become a problem for moderators of popular sites
which perhaps recieve thousands of posts every day.

Slashdot came up with a novel approach by banding its users into different
levels. A user is assigned a kind of Karma rating based upon the number of
posts/comments they have made and also how other moderators viewed their
comments: magnificent, insightful, witty, indifferent, abusive and, er,
goat-sex trolling. Users with a lot of Karma are given the opportunity to
'vote' for their favourite articles of the moment, and the most popular
articles are automatically displayed on the front page ... (at least I
believe that's how the system works). The format has been sucessfully
reproduced on many other sites such as nologo.org.

Indymedia appears to have a managerial layer which decides what articles
get the top spot: central column on the homepage. It is inevitable that
people of a journalistic bent are going to want to get involved in running
IMC sites - both helping to manage and contributing many articles ... ok,
I'm only guessing this is so, but I imagine that such journalists seek to
get higher prominance for their own articles, simply because they write
about what THEY feel is important. IMC journalists do it for love, they're
not paid to write about the death of another royal corgi :)

To avoid this being a problem - if it is seen as a problem - I can think
of a few solutions: 
 o Let the readers decide what's important and examine which articles get
   the most page views. Let people rate articles. Band articles into 
   topics/subjects/issues and see what readers think is important.
 o Get more people involved in the editorial process.
 o Get more people from a wider section of the community to contribute.
   Invite the old bloke who writes 2 pages for his local residents
   association once a month to contribute his opinions on crime
   & punishment.
 o Allow local journalists to set up their own area on the site. Have 
   'more by this author' links below articles.


Just some thoughs at 3:30 am. Sorry, also my first post ..

P.S. I'm not suggesting we run Bristol IMC on slashcode. It was just there
to present a different approach to IMC technology... sorry if it wasn't
'news' to you.