[CIMC-work] Fwd: [imc-us-process] Banning / Garth / "Negative Propaganda" About Other IMCs

[Chris Kaihatsu]

----- Begin forwarded message -----
From: "gekked at blackflag.net" <gekked at blackflag.net>
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 13:54:46 -0800
To: imc-us-process at indymedia.org
Cc: 
Subject: [imc-us-process] Banning / Garth / "Negative Propaganda" About Other IMCs
Reply-To: "A process discussion list for U.S.-based IMCs" <imc-us-process at lists.indymedia.org>

First, I can confirm that someone at least using "gehrig"'s name has
posted things he has written in an obscene volume on our website. We
spend literally hours fighting off the flood of spam coming from
someone called "gehrig". It is a known problem with Indymedias that we
don't have "identity verification". As someone who works on the sf-active 
code which runs many IMCs, I can say it is definitely something that 
comes up over and over again and we're continuing to talk about the 
best way to implement it. 

If the actual real person named Gehrig denies spamming our site with
stuff he has written, who am I to argue that? But hopefully Sascha and
Gehrig and other UC-IMC folks can appreciate the problem we have with
validating what really comes from Gehrig and what doesn't. Until we
find a solution, I agree that we shouldn't have flamewars going on
here or on the newswires. 

On to another topic:
Regarding Garth's comments about trashing other IMCs, I want to echo
it 100%. SF Indymedia (nessie, me, and a bunch of other people who
cannot stomach these global lists) has been a victim of this for quite
some time now. 

So that we are all clear on what happened:
One morning we all woke up and SFBAY (lisa, sfschism, mark, etc) had 
spammed every IMC site, half a dozen IMC mailing lists, etc with an 
enormous document of hearsay and BS. To this date, SFBAY has not 
retracted any of that and still continue to spread half-truths
on this mailing list (see the email from Lisa which tries to start up
an argument again). Unfortunately, this kind of baiting,
rumor-mongering, etc has gone on for over a year now by these
individuals, and still continues, and is primarily what led 
us to expand into two new groups. It became particularly bad when
gossip mongering by the SFBAY group began to endanger local direct
action groups, during the time when SF was under heavy investigation
for the anti-war protests by local, state and federal authorities. I 
urge the IMC network to not fall into the trap laid by SFBAY. Garth, 
for the record, the spam from the Portland IMC was directed
at sf.indymedia.org at the behest of SFBAY members. 

Per Christine's request, SF-IMC will come to a decision on this.
However, as long as SFBAY folks are still spamming this list and
others with contentious statements (if not flat-out lies), we have to
take pause about what good it does to even remotely dialogue with
these people. 

Again, I urge SFBAY to come in line with the agreement we reached and
stop spamming these lists and/or newswires with flamebait. Its getting
SO old and does no one any good.
 
-ryan/sf-imc




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