[IMC-Tech] categorization & editorial policy

[kellan]

i'm looking for feedback on categorization, and thoughts on the what can
be posted to the newswire and perhaps even features section. (so read this
email or i might do something rash ;)

rabble and i spent a while kicking around categorization schemes for
protest.net, and we re-hashed some of the list we came up with an proposed
it to imc-editorial as a list of working categories that could be added as
a pull down menu on the publish page to help categorize articles (allowing
all that nifty stuff i talked about in the last email, plus intelligent
useable navigation, and decent search)

got some response basically confirmning what we already knew, its a hard
issue, and a touchy one, but didn't generate a lot of response.

our list was:
Animal Rights
Children & Education
Civil Rights
Death Penalty
Drugs
Elections & Democracy
Environment
Fascism & The Right Wing
Feminism & Reproductive Rights
Food & Agriculture
Globalization & Capitalism
Human Rights
Immigration & Refugees
Labor & Unions
Media
Movement / Activism
Other
Peace / War
Poverty & Hunger
Prisions, Police & Repression
Race & Class
Religion & Spirituality
Sexuality, Gender & GLBT
Third World


too long a list i think, and yet i'm sure it could be percieved as having
too broad of categories, and leaving out too much.

the other option is too use a hierachical set of categories, which is what
i think will evolve over time as we share contents with other website that
have slight different conceptions then we do.

but representing hierachical categories on websites, say using a pull down
menu, is hard, even w/ javascript trickery.  not to mention educationg
people about our new and complex schema, and the burden of simply
developing it. (and please, i've already thought of the jokes about
hierarchy)

so we have a tension between two ideals here, and i'm not sure where to go
next with this.

one thought i had, and this is why i thought you should all tune in, is
posting these sort of questions to the newswire.  

we learned during the ratings expirement that many people who consider
themselves a part of IMC don't read the mailing lists about global issues,
and don't come to the imc-tech irc meetings.  people were caught off-guard
and vitrolically upset that ratings seemed to come out of nowhere to them.

i think that the newswire, and perhaps even a feature is important to
solicit broader feedback on this issue.

i ask, because there seemed to be some agreement that imc was for
"news" however we define it, and that discussion about imc itself should
be done elsewhere.

but perhaps that has changed.


kellan