[IMC-Tech] Re: [general] reputation management systems

[evan@protest.net]

I think developing a reputation management system would go a long way
toward making open pubilshing be robust against attacks. Regarding this i
wrote a little piece regarding reputation management and developing a
networked form of crediblity for indymedia.

Indymedia, Credibility, & Covering Palestine
You can see the article with some comments at
http://www.anarchogeek.com/archives/000008.html

Thoughts on the way indymedia has covered the war in palestine and in
general how we can develop a system of networked credibility with
indymedia. This was written in response to an email on the stratagies list
and i include a couple lines from the email who which i'm replying.

> > With indymedia, an international 'force' of gandhis could make war
> > impossible for Sharon & Hamas carry out.

> In 99, during the war over Kosovo, there were reports flying all over
> the place -- how much was proven, I really don't know -- of both US/NATO
> intelligence and Serbian operatives infiltrating mailing lists and so
> on,which was where the action was back then, before Indymedia. Now,
> even with or without infiltration, we still have these severe
> credibility problems with Indymedia to overcome.

As somebody who has been very closely involved in the development and
evolution i think you bring up some interesting points. First of all
indymedia isn't a static thing but rather is a constant experiment in
progress. Initially we had a very flat and open publishing policy due to
technical limitations. The code just worked that way and we didn't have
time to change things so that's what we did. During the protests in
Seattle we discovered that this model of open publishing, letting all the
users publish directly to the site was a powerful innovation and one of
the central reasons indymedia was a success.

Since then we've notice that the open publishing model that indymedia
employs is especially good at covering intense conflicts and breaking
stories. While the Palestine indymedia center is the first to cover a hot
war, the experience gained from covering major anti-globalization protests
has transfered quite well.

There are some major problems that are increasingly cropping up within
indymedia and they relate very directly to this open publishing system. To
cope with these problems we've been making some changes. First off the
global indymedia site the open publishing newswire is being moved off the
front page. It's being replaced by a newswire of highlighted stories from
local indymedia centers. The idea is to decentralize power out of the
global site and in to the hands of local collectives where the real
quality work of indymedia is done. This change over should happen on the
14th after the voting period has come to a close.

If you're interested in what it's going to look like the we have the
working new version up at www.indymedia.org/index-features.php3

The current model for indymedia publishing basically forces every post to
be anonymous. This means we aren't building up a credibility within the
individual publishers. Most imc's have editorial collectives which remove
or hide posts which are racist, homophobic, fascist, commercial spam, or
are simply untrue. The problem is that the number of posts vastly out
weighs the ability for people to do this filtering. There is also a wide
difference of opinion about what should be removed. We've experimented
with a simplistic model for ratings based on articles, everybody who views
an article gets to give it a one to ten rating. This model both created a
lot of backlash among some users and didn't do much to solve the
credibility problem. Even if we made the ratings form more complicated I
don't think it would be the long term solution we're looking for.

Credibility doesn't reside in the article itself but rather it's source.
This is how the corporate media constructs it's credibility. They provide
a uniform editorial 'voice' upon which they base their credibility. By
having indymedia forcing every poster to be anonymous we are shifting the
credibility away from the author in two directions. First and foremost we
are pushing it on to 'indymedia' itself which means really the editorial
collective which is tasked with hiding the 'bad' posts. Secondarily,
credibility also is derived from the post itself, the form and content of
the post must be judged by every reader.

A number of solutions have been proposed to merge indymedia's model of
open publishing news while developing systems of credibility which are
open and democratic.

The two principle proposals are:

* Dru's Three Proposals For Open Publishing:
http://dru.ca/imc/open_pub.html

* Mathew's What is Open Publishing:
http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/cat/openpub.html

In general what we are looking at is two things, first the information
architecture of the indymedia sites to organize and collate the articles
in a usable and accessible manor. The second is how do we increase the
reliably and credibility of indymedia on the whole. The later point is
important because as indymedia increasingly covers hot and politically
divisive issues like the military occupation of Palestine we will be a
target for infiltration. This infiltration occurs both on our websites and
in the physical media centers. For example there was an NYC police officer
working the registration desk at the indymedia center in New York during
the World Economic Forum protests. In terms of the web we have the
numerous news items posted to indymedia which can't be confirmed or which
are posted with the intent of spreading disinformation.

The solution to this i believe is to adopt an ebay style reputation
management system. We need to continue to allow anonymous posting, as
we've had sensitive and illegal but politically important information
posted on indymedia. With the ability to post with a pseudo-nonymous
identity and a reputation management system built upon that will create a
space for a radically open and participatory news medium to develop it's
own model for credibility. Unlike the traditional press which enforces
consistent credibility through an authoritarian model of editorship we are
trying to build up a networked credibility.

In doing this we are developing effective strategies for fighting a net
war. Our information systems covering the battle on the streets of
Palestine has a very real effect upon the fighting. Indymedia operates as
a fundamentally networked organization. There is no center or head office
but we are very coordinated. In the past authority has been derived from
monopolized power, either the private power of capital or the gun. Today
we are constructing a new form of power, not as an idle fancy but because
it is the most effective form through which we can advance our collective
struggle.

The IDF can stop ambulances, assassinates civilians, and bomb hospitals
all they want if nobody is going to report on it. CNN and all the
corporate media are propaganda tools working on the behalf of the IDF.
Even with all the potential behind the internet their websites are just
another tool in their propaganda arsenal. Indymedia and the activist
mailinglists that serve some of the same function are only powerful tools
when they are merged with social movements and real struggles for change.
Social control over the means of communication are meaningless they are
not put in to the hands of people with something to say. Indymedia and
other projects which are moving to use the net to advance a different kind
of news media need to be rethink the ever present cry for credibility.

The NY Times is the bastion of credibility, their stories always reinforce
a hegemonic perspective despite adherence to the 'facts.' Now many in
alternative journalism want to out do the NY times, using the same
objectivity but just replacing it with another paradigm for viewing the
world. I don't think this will work for two reasons. First off they have
almost all the money. Secondly we aren't advocating the kind of world that
will fit neatly in to one modernist perspective. Unlike the
Marxist-Leninist of old who had THE answer, today we have many answers and
even more questions. For a credible media to be created in this new
networked, postmodern if you like, world we need to fully reconstruct what
we mean by credibility.

in solidarity,
evan

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, kellan wrote:

> It does look neat.  It actually more reminds me of Maff's proposals but
> they are all interelated at this point :)
>
> I think it might make sense to wait until June to really start playing
> with it, and that seems to be when they are aiming to have a working
> example ready by.
>
> I found the ideas interesting, but very abstract, and the mailing lists
> seemed quite, but they have a roadmap that says they'll have a working
> intergration with their p2p content sharing system (built on RSS btw) in
> June.
>
> kellan
>
> On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Micah Anderson wrote:
>
> > This looks like a very interesting abstraction of reputation
> > management. Can anyone take a look at this and see if it would be
> > possible to integrate it with our existing code? I don't really
> > understand how it works, as far as how it plugs into your existing
> > infrastructure, but I've mostly not been focused on the coding aspect
> > of things.
> >
> > This could go a long way towards implementing some of the further
> > steps in Evan's proposal with regards to some of the Dru designs.
> >
> > Micah
> >
> > mark burdett schrieb am Wednesday, den 10. April 2002:
> >
> > > Hi thanks for writing,
> > > I'm passing along your message to imc-tech and imc-editorial
> > >
> > > --mark
> > >
> > > On Wed, 10 Apr 2002 03:05:46 -0700, tack wrote:
> > > >
> > > > From: h_moleman%20at%20yahoo.com
> > > > Name: tack
> > > >
> > > > Message: I always take indymedia with a grain of salt.  I've heard that story submissions are pretty open and thus subject to exaggeration.  There may be an open source way to negate or resolve this meme: reputation management for submitters.  Here's a link:
> > > > http://sierra.openprivacy.org/
> > > >
> > > > This free software (as in beer and speech) will still allow the openness of submission of stories, while letting readers express their trust in the author.  You might want to take a look at reputation management schemes to block spin against the validity of the stories, while at the same time, allow people in the know to blow the whistle on people seeding indymedia with misinformation.
> > > >
> > > > I'm just saying it might be worth taking a look at.
> > > >
> > > > tack
> > > >
> > > > Article: all
> > > > Site: http://www.indymedia.org/
> > > >
> > > > Additional Comments:
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > general mailing list
> > > > general%20at%20lists.indymedia.org
> > > > http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/general
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > imc-tech mailing list
> > > imc-tech%20at%20lists.indymedia.org
> > > http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-tech
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > imc-tech mailing list
> > imc-tech%20at%20lists.indymedia.org
> > http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-tech
> >
>
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>

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