[imc-tech] draft paper on categories? (was message from manse) (fwd)

[kellan@metaevents.com]

a repost from many months ago.

kellan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 19:31:32 +1000 (EST)
From: Matthew Arnison <matthewa@physics.usyd.edu.au>
To: kellan@metaevents.com
Cc: imc-tech@indymedia.org
Subject: Re: [imc-tech] draft paper on categories? (was message from manse)

a small comment on the doc below, i think overall it's great. be careful
though when presenting "US hegemony" as a broad topic. yes, it's a fact,
but Japan and the EU also dominate the world stage unfairly. maybe we can
find more inclusive ways of grouping things. i humbly suggest that those
in the US (and rich countries in general, i.e. me too!) need to be
extremely humble to compensate for saturation bombing of american culture
and power across the planet.

m.

... doc from Bruce Welti, Seattle, USA <brucewel_ms@msn.com>

Ideas for Structure of Indymedia Website

Here are some ideas about a way to structure the indymedia website to make it
easier to find the information you’re looking for.  We should have an explicit
structure so a newcomer can easily see what categories we cover.  We should
also use the database aspect of the site to allow users to customize their view
of it.  More on that later, first the explicit structure.

First level of division: local, national, international

Within each scope, major topic themes:

	US Hegemony

	Other Power Relationships

	Environment and Natural Resource Issues

	Development

	Education and Culture

	Philosophy of Action and Power

	Human Rights and Labor

	Good News – Efforts That Worked

Articles can appear in more than one area, with a different abstract for each. 
Can we do highlighting of relevant paragraphs, some kind of overlay on the
article (maybe w/o having multiple copies)?

Within the topic themes, some specific issue areas will have stability - their
own newswire and edited top stories that bring current focus to the issue.  A
user tracking that issue will have a sense of continuity, like someone is
watching it with them.  We will invite people who are up on certain issues to
identify themselves and help with contributions of content and editorial
suggestions.

Here are some issue ideas:

	US Hegemony
		These can be divided out by country, region, or type of issue or relationship
		Cuba
		Israel
		China
		Russia
		Latin America
		Middle East
		Trade
			WTO
			IMF
		Covert Operations
	Other Power Relationships
		These can be relations between two countries or groups, ideological struggles
		Imperialism
	Environment and Natural Resource Issues
		Climate
		Land Use
		Extinction
		Pollution
	Development
	Education, Religion and Culture
		Culture Jamming
		Education
	Philosophy of Action and Power
		Liberation Theology
	Human Rights and Labor
		These can be by region or by type of issue
		Korea
		Child Labor
		Worker Safety
	Good News – Efforts That Worked

There are lots of ways to create an information hierarchy.  We should pick one,
but also allow users to create their own view.  An example of this is the
CRAYON site http://crayon.net/, which lets you “create your own newspaper.” 
They have a large list of news sources and subject areas.  You pick which
subjects you are interested in and the news sources for each.  Whenever you go
back to the site, there is “your” paper waiting for you.  They do it all with
links to other sites’ articles, but we could do it with our own articles, or a
mix of our own and links.  Check out the site – they have an example
“newspaper” you can look at, or you create your own in a few minutes.

The better our database is, the more flexibility we can give users.  By
“better” I mean more complete and accurate meta-data about each article.  If we
had a network of reviewers, they could give each article a rating for overall
quality, factual content, coherence of argument, type of voice (?), etc.  We’d
have a mix of things, from the personal experience of the person on the ground
in some situation, to critical analysis of a new policy, to a link to a Wall
Street Journal article in which some conservative author changes her tune:

Why vote when you feel that policy is shaped not by your votes but by money? 
One observer summarizes it this way:  "The economic boom of the 90's has masked
a looming national crisis: a corrupt political system that auctions off public
policy to the highest bidder and leaves the overwhelming majority of Americans
feeling alienated from their own government."  That quotation is from a new
book by Arianna Huffington, "How to Overthrow the Government."  Yes, the same
Arianna Huffington who has so pungently argued conservative views.  Her
rhetoric is still pungent, but her viewpoint seems to have undergone a sea
change. 

With all of these articles, we would encourage comment from our reviewers and
readers, and we’d provide links to those, right next to the article.  This way
we blur the lines between mainstream media, alternative media, and reader
dialogue.

If we have a broad range of articles, and each is rated on several different
characteristics, users can choose not just the subject areas but also the types
of articles they want to see.  They could even give a sort order, so articles
on the IMF would be arranged from most conservative to most radical, or from
highest factual content to lowest.  If we have many different reviewers of
articles, a user could even choose which reviewers’ ratings to use in making
selections.  I realize I’m getting into some pretty advanced features, but I’m
mentioning them more to stir thought than to say we should do them all.

I’ve mentioned two ways for people to see our info: in through the structure we
provide (some edited front page plus a hierarchically structured set of
newswires) or through a view they create themselves.  There’s a third option. 
A grassroots group with a specific interest (some subset of what we cover)
could create a view of our info just as a regular user would, then provide a
portal to that view from their own web site.  Their web site serves to pull
people in, and perhaps to orient them to the particular view of our info that
the site presents.  It’s like we’re offering a buffet dinner in the dining room
of a big house – people will approach the house from different sides, and will
be drawn to different doors into the house.  We could experiment with lots of
different ways to draw people to the site by creating a wide variety of shell
sites, each presenting a different aspect of the value of what the main site
has to offer (as well as different views of the main site).

We should have a policy of no corporate sponsorship BUT…  we could have one
page (eg, “How to Channel Money to IndyMedia”) where users could choose to go
do various things that would result in money coming to us.  The page would
explain that our policy is not to push anything on people, but that from this
one page they can do some of the usual things (eg, use our shopping portal and
we get a percentage) to give us money.  We’d also pitch straight donations on
that page.