[CIMC-work] (response from a Vancouver IMC person) Fwd: [IMC-Process] VanIMC (was: hello)

[Chris Kaihatsu]

___

The Bush administration and elements of the American military hierarchy,
media and corporate establishment are indictable war criminals.
www.wsws.org/articles/2004/may2004/berg-m14.shtml

World urged to halt crimes by Israel
www.gulf-daily-news.com/Articles.asp?Article=81556&Sn=WORL
www.whatreallyhappened.com/

Guantánamo abuse same as Abu Ghraib, say Britons
www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1216644,00.html






------- Forwarded Message
To: imc-process at lists.indymedia.org
Cc: 
Subject: [IMC-Process] VanIMC (was: hello)
From: Keith Grennan <keith at squeegeemedia.com>
Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 03:27:01 -0700
Message-ID: <20040518102700.GB30836 at squeegeemedia.com>

hello process,

just thought i would attempt to shed some light on the current state of
vanIMC.  i'm a techie volunteer on the vancouver/alberta/victoria server,
and my involvement in IMC at the moment is limited to keeping the server
alive and healthy - i don't have energy to put into editorial or
organizational work.  because i'm operating at arms length from the
editorial collective and IMC in general, my perspective may be a bit 
distorted from reality - if any vanIMCers are subscribed to this list,
please feel free to correct me.

van imc as far as I can tell has not had a dedicated core collective in
8 months to 1 year.  it seems that many of the core members have moved
on to other things or (like me) only have time to dedicate to fixing
crises when they arise.  the van imc has also been suffering steady
troll/DOS attacks for the same period of time.  as far as i can tell
there are one or two dedicated people monitoring the newswire, and they
simply can't keep up with the flood of malicious posts.  i think to some
extent vanIMC has become known as an "open relay" for this content
because the editorial energy simply isn't there to sort it out.

also no one as far as I know responds to requests from the outside world
sent to the editorial mailing lists (there is almost zero discussion on
these lists), and no one is actively liasing with IMC global.

at the same time, it seems that there is vibrant and diverse readership
- the site traffic is very high.  i think vanIMC is still viewed as a
valuable community resource.  it's just a shame that users sometimes
have to wade through garbage to use the site.

i think vanIMC simply needs more bodies - more dedicated members in
the collective.  this would take care of most of these problems.

also it needs an upgrade of the server software - its currently running
a very old copy of sf-active and the editorial features are quite
immature, making editorial an even tougher job.  

i'm quitting my full-time job in june (yay!), and i'm planning to take on the
project of an upgrade to a more modern system (sfactive or mir) in my
newly acquired spare time.  this should help take some of the strain 
off the editors, but it won't replace the volunteer effort needed to make a 
functioning, responsive collective.

in the meantime, perhaps it might be necessary for vanIMC to "go dark"
for a while, and for the collective to regroup and do some
outreach.  if anyone on this list has any suggestions i am willing 
to present them to the vanIMC editorial people (or you can try mailing
the vanimc editorial list directly).

thanks everyone!

peace, 
keith
_______________________________________________
imc-process mailing list
imc-process at lists.indymedia.org
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-process


------- End of Forwarded Message