[CIMC-work] (regarding editorial policy)

[Chris Kaihatsu]

Ian, all,

I take your points very well -- about distinguishing between personal, voluntary participation and collective decision-making/policy. From the perspective of process, I'd say the center panel is at the tip of a funnel, and what appears in the center panel implicitly reflects on all Indymedia-associated people.


Chris







________________________________________ 
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On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 15:14:57 -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:
> Chris Kaihatsu wrote:
>>     *From: *nessie at sfbg.com
>>     I did that. I do a lot of the moderating around here. I should have
>>     thrown him out long ago. He's a racist. He spams. He lies about it.
>>     He abused our newswire. He is not welcome.
>> 
>>     I can't for the life of me understand why *any* IMC welcomes someone
>>     who has abused any IMC. Is not an injury to one an injury to all?
>>     Why is this man permitted to post at UC-IMC? If someone abused
>>     UC-IMC, and was banned, SF-IMC would not permit him to post. For
>>     Indymedia to hold together as a global network, solidarity is
>>     essential. No one who abuses any IMC should be permitted to post on
>>     any IMC.
>> 
>>     Anyone who abuses our newswire by spamming is banned. Period. End of
>>     story. No appeal. We also forbid any form of enemy propaganda, be it
>>     sexist, racist, homophobic, pro-war, pro-exploitation, pro-nuclear,
>>     anti-environmental, anti-labor, or anything like it. Trolls are not
>>     welcome on SF-IMC. Our site exists for the benefit of our friends,
>>     our allies and our potential friends and allies. [...]
> 
> This is the part that bothered me most in his description.  While I 
> can appreciate the general sentiment behind his editorial policy, 
> this starts to hint at the policy being essentially a personal 
> policy, not a collective policy.  That there isn't any formal SF IMC 
> editorial policy adds to that impression.  Instead it feels like a 
> partisan policy -- which seems okay at first when you consider 
> yourself aligned with justice movements etc., but also seems like 
> something that may have exacerbated the division between sf/sfbay.  
> The site becomes personal -- and I think we can all agree that some 
> of the people in the SF area have shown very bad stewardship of their 
> Indymedia local, perhaps because they don't appreciate that they have 
> a stewardship role.  You don't have to provide stewardship for 
> something you possess.
> 
> I think there's some of the same issues in our collective.  I don't 
> think they've caused problems so far, but they could have, and maybe 
> drawing parallels will help us continue in that spirit and avoid 
> problems.  As we all know, some of the people in our collective have 
> contentious relationships with people who are also inside what would 
> be considered within CIMC's general progressive community (I use 
> "progressive" because I think it's the most appropriately inclusive). 
> Recently what's-her-name (starts with an L) from the what's-its-name 
> media group, though it certainly could have happened with some of the 
> M20 planning or other contentious issues in the community.  Since 
> Chicago seems to have too many problems with cooperation issues in 
> the community, it's an important issue in our local even if it hasn't 
> caused internal conflict.
> 
> And it's certainly fine that an individual have a problem with some 
> other person or group, but it's important that we not confuse our 
> individuals with our collective.  Certainly it's up to individuals to 
> decide, say, that they don't want to participate in a panel 
> discussion with someone they dislike -- we're all volunteers.  But 
> that's an individual decision, and if that's a motivation for the 
> individual and no one else wants to speak, it's still not the 
> collective who dislikes anyone.  Or, if some people don't like 
> UC-IMC, CIMC does not dislike UC-IMC.  (We could consense to dislike 
> them, but I doubt we'd reach consensus on that)
> 
> To generalize, I'd say that the collective should never become 
> partisan within the progressive community, for a very inclusive 
> definition of "progressive community".  No member -- as a volunteer 
> -- ever has a duty to cover something they are disinterested in, or 
> some group they dislike, but when it comes to editorial decisions 
> like hiding articles we should be very careful, and when it comes to 
> things like what to center panel, we should be aware that we are 
> acting on behalf of the collective -- and at its most expansive, the 
> collective includes not just our regular meeting attendees, but also 
> all of our posters, commenters, and even our readers.
> 
> Because of our loose editorial policy (loose compared to other news 
> sources), I think CIMC can be neutral on issues without being watered 
> down, because we (*as a collective*, not as individuals) host ideas 
> rather than synthesizing them.  As individuals we can do and say 
> whatever the hell we want.  It's a free country, right? ;)
> 
>   Ian
>