[New-imc] IMC Romania - carts and horses

[joanne richardson]

dear boud ... and new-imcers,

well, i didn't expect that my email to you would end up on the indymedia
documentation project pages without being asked. i have nothing against
making it public, but i didn't really like how fragments of my message are
subordinated to your interpretations and headings as examples of problems
like "putting the cart before the horse." i think this structure reverses
the temporal relationship of the dialogue. as far as your suggestion about
wiki as a solution to the flame-war problem of mailing lists because the
software will change the social dynamics by making it "much easier to make
changes which clarify arguments and separate genuine conflicts from hurt
feelings or personal attacks" - i confess, i am less convinced of the
ability of technology to transform social relations when their problem
really lies elsewhere.

i'm kind of puzzled by your dignosis of the stalling of IMC Romania
because of editorial policy (sorry, but the fragment of my message you
cite has nothing to do with editorial policy) and lack of networking as
examples of putting the cart before the horse - the reason for the
confusion is that i'm getting very contradictory messages from you. very
early on i remember your advice (also to member of other new IMCs) that
concentrating on the organization among group members should come before
the production of the site, and that it is a mistake to rush the site when
the organization is inadequate and one or two people are doing all the
work and the structure thereby risks becoming hierarchical. and i agreed
with you. i also remember an earlier criticism you made to the IMC romania
list that editorial policy and the mission statement should not be written
by one person and that maybe i should distribute responsibilities (and
power) throughout the group and that production and decisions should be
made collectively. i also agreed with you then. so now i am hearing that
it was a mistake on my part to try to "force" people to "commit" to taking
on responsibilities for tasks, and that as a group we shouldn't focus on
organization and networking but just get the site up even if it's only a
couple of people doing everything, because the software and the editorial
policy are the the primary thing and the rest (participation from others)
will come naturally and later. so which is it, exactly?

in my opinion, the horse or the "meta-level" cannot be software or
editorial policy as you suggest, but the social relations between people;
the editorial policy and the site itself is an expression of these
relations and networks, and the software is a tool. i don't want to
disparage its importance, and i acknowledge that some tools are better at
expressing such relations and potentials while others can hinder them
completely, but your emphasis on software seems a bit exaggerated).

i also have a longer reply about open publishing (btw, opting for hiding
of articles with suspicious content BEFORE publication was not a decision
made in ignorance of the general indymedia policy that articles be hidden
AFTER publication), but i will post it as a separate message ... since i
think this is worthy of a debate within the new imc group (and maybe also
beyond it).

i encourage other IMC members to reply if they have something to add,
please make sure to cc to new-imc at lists.indymedia.org or hit reply all if
you want the message to go beyond the romanian language list.

best, joanne