[IMC-bristol] proposal to ban IP addresses

[kyra]

hi james / all
always up for a bit of explosive behaviour! only joking

thinking about the sort of articles i would envisage needing to be 
moved, i reckon that actually the hiding process already meets this need 
so perhaps was over complicating things.

to clarify, i was not aware of any "more intelligent" / "less 
intelligent" debate about postings on the uk network - i completely 
agree that this is no way to discuss postings. with my own suggestion, 
which should not be confused with that one, it was about having clearly 
defined areas of the site - so just as, if an article gets moved from 
the newswire to the calendar, there is no value judgement attached to 
that move, and a listing is not seen as being of lower status/ less 
valid than a news article, its just a different sort of posting; 
similarly, if people do want a space to rant/wind each other/us up, then 
we should decide to actively provide an area for that, and to maintain 
the boundaries between the different areas of the site, or we decide 
that we dont want to provide rant space and continue to hide non-news - 
i suppose in a way the hidden articles area already serves this purpose, 
but in "hiding" the articles a lesser status is implied...

so it wouldnt be about creating an elite model, just about separating 
out the different stands so people can access the content they want to 
find.  the calendar grew out of a need to stop the newswire becoming a 
listings column, and so i thought that we could respond to rants 
similarly.  whilst one mans rant is anothers reasoned debate, its 
usually fairly clear whether one mans rant is news or not.

anyway, thanks for the input - you're right that its worth thinking 
these things through properly before being harangued on site for yet 
another perceived slight or bias.

all good fun, as they say
see some of you tonight,

kyra x



James Venables wrote:

> Hello Kyra,
> 
> This all sounds good in principle. I would also be happy to do a bit of 
> moderating myself, but my concern on that one is that because I already 
> contribute a lot to this site via BSTW, & because I'm always emailing 
> this list too, I probably tend to tightrope along 'dominating' this 
> newswire myself, but if you do want an extra pair of eyes let me know.
> 
> A real concern I do have is with the idea of having a separate area for 
> 'ranting', and if you're talking about moving people into that area this 
> would be a potentially very explosive thing to do.
> 
> Someone on UK indymedia proposed something similar on UK IMC a few 
> months ago, but as I remember they phrased it in terms of 'more 
> intelligent' and 'less intelligent', or something similar. Phrased in 
> those terms the chronically elitist potential of such a much becomes 
> clear, especially if people are effectively forced into that area on a 
> subjective basis.
> 
> I would argue that 90% of the time any definition of a 'rant' is 
> entirely subjective, as the saying goes 'one man's rant is another's 
> reasoned debate'. If people volunteer to go into a 'rant' space that's 
> one thing, pushing people into it would be potentially very destructive 
> & elitist.
> 
> James