[New-imc] Hosting for new IMCs

[Petros Evdokas]

Hello, 

The matter belwo may sound petty, or a matter of
"convenience" but it's actually about something much
bigger. I've taken two short excerpts from letters
posted here previously (from Scott and from Bart) just
to illustrate the issue, and at the bottom is some
commentary.

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From: "Scott Lewis" <scott at bandwidthcoop.org>
Organization: Albuquerque Bandwidth Coop
To: new-imc at lists.indymedia.org
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 
Subject: [New-imc] Hosting for new IMCs

hi everyone,

i'm a member of the bandwidth coop, a collective which
hosts several IMC
sites. we have added a new server which will allow 
us to host a number of new sites.

i have several questions:

1) should we wait until a group has finished its
application process before
beginning technical work on the website? if so, how 
can we determine that a group is official?

2) someone has to tell us who within the group should
have access to the
website and the server. i assume that decision will 
be made within each group.

--------------------- 

From: "Bart" <bart at indymedia.org>
To: "Scott Lewis" <scott at bandwidthcoop.org>,
        <new-imc at lists.indymedia.org>
Subject: Re: [New-imc] Hosting for new IMCs
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2002 


Scott wrote:
> 1) should we wait until a group has finished its application process
> before beginning technical work on the website? if so, how
> can we determine that a group is official?

please don't wait :-)
It's good to get sites up and running before they're
official. They won't
be
in the cities list & they wont have the
"imcname.indymedia.org" before
they're official, but there's really no reason why they
wouldn't be online
before they're official.

Bart

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

From: Petros

Bart,

You have some seniority here as a member of the New-
imc group which I respect. Your opinion should have
some weight among us. But, in this case I feel that I
need to point out a different view, hoping to clarify
and to make things easier for all of us, even if it
sounds like a disagreement. I am new in a sense here
(been participating in the discussion here since the
spring of 2001), so I don't want to create troubles. 

All the problems we had with the previous imc- Turkey
and with imc- Russia (which in the recent past  were
operated for a while by groups whose politics ranged
from "questionable" to "fascist"), and the problems we
had with imc- France (nobody was operating it for a
while) and the previous incarnation of the Czech
republic- imc, and the current confusion about
Zimbabwe- imc, all come from this policy: allowing a
group (or an individual) to use imc facilities,
resources, even the imc name (offline and online)
*before* we develop a political aquaintance with them
as media activists. So, before a group is admitted into
the imc- network, *someone* ends up with the passwords
for a site. But the New- imc process exists for a
reason, and part of it is to see if that group is
structured according to imc values and principles.
What's the point of having a New- imc process, if not
to create an atmosphere for co-operation with our new
contacts, and to ensure that the conditions of openess
and direct democracy are understood and will be
practiced by the candidate group?

So sometimes our new contacts vanish, and the
application is left hanging. This happened with our
contacts from Iraq, our previous contacts from Beirut,
our contacts from Egypt. Sometimes, we end up having to
ask a candidate group to "open up" its process to
others in the local area before the application is
approved. Even after an imc local is formed, sometimes
we end up considering to ask a group to do that. For a
while, if you remember, with the initiative of some of
the more experienced (than me) New- imc volunteers, we
were even discussing something like a proposal for
"auditing" our imc groups, to see if they still operate
according to our principles. 

But if we commit time and imc resources into a
relationship we have not yet explored well (meaning
*someone* we don't really know well ends up with the
passwords for an "unofficial") site, we still end up
feeling we "have to" admit a group, even one which does
not completely fulfill the criteria, just so that our
"investment" of time and resources is not wasted. 

But it does get wasted, because if the candidate group
is eventually admitted into imc on that basis, the
group *is forced* to have that person (or team) who has
the passwords eternally locked into their local imc,
holding that imc hostage, controlling their group
forever. I won't name names, but some of you are aware
of imc locals where this is the reality, and it is so
because the New- imc process was either not well-
functioning at the time, or the local imc group formed
before the New- imc procedures were created,  or New-
imc was somehow "tricked", tickles or manipulated into
approving some relationship with groups or individuals
who do not really operate according to imc principles.

So, I would like us to state that our policy should
remain unchanged. First we encourage our new contacts
to form groups according to imc criteria, use our
communication to ensure the group understand and
practice those principles, then embrace the candidate
groups into the network (approve the application).
*After* all this, instead of abandoning the new group
to the usual "whatever" policy, every new imc group
should be guided to using every facility and resource
that our network has available, including imc server
space, liaison group, finances and special projects.
Otherwise, why ask candidate groups to go through our
process? 

I'd like to propose clarifying it even more. Should I
do it perhaps with a formal Proposal?

Thanks,
Petros
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