[New-imc] (no subject)

[boud]

<cross-post new-imc, imc-france>
Followup to my message and further discussion:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2002-
June/003682.html

[fr]
Desole, mais c'est trop long pour traduire, 
et en tous les cas, je
pense qu'en gros, soit red kitten l'a 
deja dit sur imc-france, soit
qqn d'autre l'a deja dit sur imc-france.

Peut-etre il faudrait quand-meme discuter
un peu plus la proposition de mettre hors
acces la base de donnees du newswire - c'est
la question de toni du perfide albion ;) :

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2002-
June/003685.html

Je pense que rk a raison pour le mettre hors
acces, au moins pendant le processus new-imc.
(Je pense qu'il pourrait y avoir des possibilites
pour le remettre en ligne, ex. en rajoutant
un tampon "ARTICLE CACHE PAR L'EQUIPE EDITORIALE"
sur tous les articles caches - pas trop difficile
avec un petit script shell - mais je ne le vois
pas comme urgence.)

A+
boud

[en]
UPDATE:
red kitten thinks that the deadline was too 
short and that people need
more time to discuss:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-france/2002-
June/003424.html

and also that the threat of legal action may have been from a 
faked address,
see /2/, /3/, /6/ of:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-france/2002-
June/003426.html

so based on red kitten's more reasonable suggestion,
i modified the proposal to one 
for "temporary temporary closure" 
- temporary on monday if necessary depending on 
what the SOS-Racisme organisation says, but to 
be consensed upon over a more reasonable delay
- temporary on the scale of a few months as the 
new-imc process is being
carried out properly

In any case, there seems to be consensus 
(though as jj says "with regret":
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-france-edito/2002-
June/000302.html
), so IMHO a temporary temporary closure 
could be done today Monday, if necessary,
otherwise could wait a few more days, and 
would then become simply a 
temporary closure.


CITIES.INC:
Bart's comment that no newswire => out of cities.inc:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2002-
June/003683.html
i think there is consensus here.


THE NEWSWIRE DATABASE:
toni wrote:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2002-
June/003685.html

> i haven't been following the imc-france situation closely, so 
i might be  
> misunderstanding it. I'm worried about one thing:
> 
> On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, boud wrote:
> > TECHNICAL DETAILS OF CLOSURE
> >The main elements of closure, which so far seem to be 
consensed on, 
> >are: removal of the newswire data base from public access
> 
> does this mean that public will not be able to access any 
content from the
> newsire? if yes, can you please give details, why? i suspect 
this was
> already discussed on lenght on some lists, so you can just 
point to me to
> saome existing emails if that's the case.

i hope i haven't exaggerated the word "consensed" here, 
i'm not sure if "consensed on" means 
more people than genex and red kitten 
and i (i.e. noone from the parisian region
collective which is forming!), several people have agreed 
(reluctantly) to closure, but not discussed
the concrete details. This is in 
fact part of the problem of the collective
undergoing reconstitution: there's 
not yet enough people with enough online time
and editing capacity and knowing and 
trusting each other 
to carefully think through and write
clear emails about all the concrete details of
things, while at the same time cope with 
spamming & personal attacks.

So the question has not (yet) been 
discussed at length, i think there's only
rk's first suggestion + my reaction 
+ then rk's response -  see /4/:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-france/2002-
June/003424.html
where she agrees that conserving the 
newswire database is OK.

Why should it be made temporarily unaccessible?

Here's one example, in the email that 
seems to come from SOS-Racisme:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-france/2002-
June/003410.html
there are links to many articles 
which apparently are hidden articles,
and also to sites "chretiens-et-juifs..." 
which also apparently point to 
mostly hidden articles. Since most of 
these apparently are quite racist
against Israel and/or Jews, and since 
there is no way that the typical websurfer
knowing nothing about indymedia will 
realise that these are *hidden* posts,
the reputation of Indymedia as being 
anti-semitic would continue to spread,
Euro-legislators would have just 
what they need to claim the need for
anti-anti-semitic censorship powers 
(do you really expect legislators 
to go through many levels of clicks?), 
and more and more energy would be
spent on this question instead of rebuilding 
the collective (which as rk
said, already has made a lot of progress 
and is doing its best, but hasn't
got there yet).

Another example: why did i use the 
word "apparently" several times in the
previous paragraph? You might think ;)
that i'm literate and 
knowledgeable enough to be
able to read all the above, check which 
articles are hidden, judge which are
racist or not. But going through 
meta-pages, and meta-meta-pages, and
meta-meta-meta-meta pages takes time, 
and fairly soon goes beyond which any
individual can do. After all, even writing
this email, which is probably not perfectly
written and is probably longer than it
should be, has taken me much longer than
i would care to admit (hint: the Sun has
just risen, and i'm south of the arctic circle.)

There are also lots of racist articles 
against Arabs and/or Muslims and/or
Palestinians. Many hidden, but some 
probably not, and the same argument
about external links pointing to 
hidden articles remains.
 
So it's not just the problem of legal 
action, it's also the problem that a
whole lot of energy of people trying to 
get organised has already been spent
on countering spam and personal attacks 
and mccarthyism (and tempting well-meaning
people into negative defensive reactions)
and the fact that the message is being
circulated widely in france that indymedia 
is racist and anti-semitic, e.g.

massalia on a human rights mailing list:
http://dh-rezo.org/archive_dh-rezo.html?
body=1982&forum=archive_dh-rezo

means that things risk only getting worse 
if the newswire database remains
accessible.

> if i'm not mistaken, and you are closing down complete newsire 
for public
> access, i think it's a terrible mistake. i've been following 
imc-france in
> it's early days (using babelfish to translate since i don't 
speak
> french) and a lot of good content and work will be lost. if 
the reasons
> for doing this are possibility of legal action against imc-
france, why to
> remove access to *all* content?

The difficulty of deciding *which* 
content to make accessible, and even
whether or not this is possible, 
would be another distraction for the
group. Agreeing on the central column
content sounds like a higher priority
to me...
 
> i still hope i misunderstood something.

i agree that there is a lot of good stuff 
there, but i see no harm in 
having this offline for a few months. 
Anyone willing to put in the energy
to discuss a sensible way to put it back 
online when the new collectives
have gone through the new-imc process 
would then be welcome to do this.
And as an imc insider, i'm sure you 
could make your own personal backup
copy for your own pc.  Assuming 10kb 
average article/comment size, 
22000 x 10kb = 220 Mb should easily 
cover most of the text and small photos.

IMHO, by shutting the newswire and by 
putting the newswire database offline, the
spam attacks and personal attacks will 
be countered very effectively, and
the IDF collective-being-reconstructed 
(not Israel Offensive Forces, just
Ile-de-France, the region around Paris ;) 
can get off to a fresh start.

In any case, it's not me who will do
any modifs on the site (someone gave me
a password a long time back, but hopefully
it's been changed since). But i wanted to
help in communication to be sure that if
tech help is needed it's there quickly if
needed...

boud


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