[New-imc] Questions about Open Publishing

Mon Aug 4 12:07:35 PDT 2003

Problem is real easy.

Without a newsire its not indymedia. My 0.02c

If France, NYC or whatever are not doing open publishing, then I would
consider them far less 'indymedia-ish' then , say jakata or the
open-active newswires the cat-collective do where there is no edited
features. (btw, france&nyc... ya still beautiful ;) You too romania.)

Its not the features that count! its the voiceless given voice.

As was said on the ircd tonite...

 approval beforehand is giving editoral consent, hiding afterwards is
editoral objection

its a subtle diference, but its ever so important.

So yeah. I object in the strongest possible manner to to a non-open imc.

Shayne.
------------------------------------
"Must not Sleep! Must warn others!"
-Aesop.
Shayne O'Neill. Indymedia. Fun.
http://www.perthimc.asn.au

On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, joanne richardson wrote:

> Greetings boud, everyone,
>
> I wrote this message below before I got your reply. It is not that I
> thought your solution about post-publishing was superfluous, but rather
> that you misunderstood my point. And I don't want to ask new-imc for a
> change in policy, I would like to ask for a clarification of policy and
> what some of the reasons why a pre-publication hiding policy would be
> considered  "unacceptable." But thanks for the suggestion that if the
> point is to start a debate, it is better to forward this to imc-europe or
> imc-process.
>
> You wrote: “Nearly all IMCs have editorial policies where articles which
> are racist, sexist, contain no factual type of information, are commercial
> advertisements, etc. are hidden, but this happens after publication ...
> Has such a post-publication method been considered? It's true that any
> sort of pre-publication hiding of articles would be unlikely to be
> accepted by the network. However, any post -publication method of hiding
> articles, as long as it's transparent and you have some locally agreed
> upon method of doing it, is likely to be accepted.” CONCLUSION:
> “imc-romania people should consider whether they would be happy to have an
> editorial policy post-publication hiding of articles.”
> (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcRomaniaSummary030727Debate)
>
> I got the sense you thought maybe I wasn’t sufficiently aware of the
> difference between post and pre publication hiding, and that you thought
> maybe the discussion on the imc-romania list I mentioned occurred in
> ignorance of open publishing policy. It was not in ignorance but as an
> attempt to question the logic of some distinctions (post and pre) which
> were unclear. My message was about the context in Romania which led those
> who have been active on the imc-romania list to agree about the need for
> hiding racist and other unacceptable content *before* it is published on
> the site, a decision that came after several unpleasant experiences – like
> attempts by nationalists and racists to take over mailing lists, adopt
> false names, start flame wars, and sidetrack discussions - which we could
> not have foreseen when we started. My apologies if this was not clear
> enough.
>
> I think members of the new-imc list have the responsibility to give an
> accurate account of variations (and disagreements) in practices and
> policies among the larger IMC network for newcomers who might not be as
> adequately informed as someone from the ‘inside’. I wonder if the case for
> post-publication hiding was made somewhat too strongly: Indymedia’s Open
> Publishing policy has been *the* issue sparking the loudest controversies
> - for normalizing racist posts and damaging the reputation of the network
> - both internally and from outside critics, and its endorsement seems far
> from unanimous.  ChuckO’s “The Sad Decline of Indymedia”
> (http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=02/12/08/2553147) and
> Kevin Groves’ “Is Indymedia Still Relevant”
> (http://www.mun.ca/muse/archive/Volume53/Issue05/feature/) both sparked
> discussions on IMC lists and off.
>
> On the front page of http://france.indymedia.org, the group who started
> the project claim that they adopted open publishing in haste and without
> sufficient time to consider how it would work practically in their
> context, and that they have since decided by consensus to “freeze” the
> open newswire column – though I’m not exactly sure what freezing it means?
> IMC Germany has a moderation policy
> (http://de.indymedia.org/static/moderation.shtml, translated into English
> for follow up discussion by IMC Prague at
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-prague/2002-October/006071.html)
> - their open publishing newswire is somewhere off the front page, and
> posts that are rejected by the editorial group go to a trash archive,
> which is not accessible from the site but only by email request. Last
> month one of the big headlines was the adoption of a moderation policy by
> the NYC IMC as a response to racist posts
> (http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=65071&group=webcast):
> “In the last year and a half, the NYC IMC Open Publishing Newswire has
> been besieged with neo-nazi postings, and other items and commentary which
> are far away from what the Newswire is meant to be: A vital space of
> progressive and radical breaking news, commentary, articles, and
> announcements.” They have a long list of the types of posts that may be
> hidden, but it’s unclear to me if these are hidden before or after.
> During a discussion on the next 5 minutes 4 organization list, Sherrie
> from IMC Seattle listed several IMC sites that are not examples of Open
> Publishing – sorry I should have asked for a better clarification then
> about what was different about them.
>
> 1. So I would like to know which sites don’t have an open publishing
> newswire on their front page, whether there are any sites which don’t have
> one at all (or have suspended its function), and whether there are any IMC
> sites which have a policy of hiding problematic posts *before* they are
> published rather than *after*?
>
> 2. Maybe a more important question is why the IMC network considers that
> hiding a racist post after it is published is an example of Open
> Publishing whereas hiding it before it is published is a violation of Open
> Publishing? To me, the difference seems rhetorical at best, hypocritical
> at worst. The end result is the same, you have rejected someone’s message
> from the Open Publishing newswire  (though keeping it in a trash archive,
> or some other folder that is still accessible on the site).  Hiding a post
> (whether before or after) doesn’t seem to be an issue of censorship, since
> you are preventing someone else from censoring an entire group or
> violating their rights; nor is it about freedom of speech, since the
> racist messages can be (and are) published in many other places than in a
> publication intended for “progressive and radical breaking news,
> commentary, articles, and announcements.”  I understand the “open” in open
> publishing to be about transparency (making the processes, debates,
> decisions, disagreements, rejections, etc visible), not necessarily about
> being open to absolutely every kind of content without any principle of
> selection or without any boundaries. If it were absolutely “open” in this
> sense, it would not be news, it would not be a form of media, it would
> just be noise. If the process whereby a post is rejected is made public
> and there can be easy access to the trash archive, I honestly don’t see
> what the big fuss about post vs pre publication hiding is. And actually I
> exaggerated when I said the end result of post and pre publication hiding
> is the same – since in both cases the result is the rejection of a racist
> or otherwise unacceptable post from the newswire, but there is an
> important difference if readers have seen it represented under the
> Indymedia banner (even for a few minutes or a few hours), or if they find
> it in the site’s trash basket.
>
> 3. I understood that as a decentralized network, global IMC respects the
> decisions of local IMCs which are made consensually and in what is
> considered to be in their best interest given the local context – a
> context about which other IMCs don’t have first hand knowledge. So I would
> like to ask for a clarification of Boud’s point – is it the case that if
> IMC Romania chooses a pre-publication hiding policy we will not be allowed
> to join (or banned from) the network?  One of the reasons defenders of OP
> offer for IMCs tolerance of racist posts is that readers & contributors
> know not to identify them with Indymedia, but, as it were, with “the other
> side” who may be trying to harass or sabotage them. Indymedia might be
> well known internationally, but honestly in Romania not that many people
> know about it. So it is very likely that someone coming to the site for
> the first time and seeing a message from Altermedia
> (http://ro.altermedia.info) or the New Right (http://www.nouadreapta.org)
> about the final solution to the gypsy problem or why homosexuality should
> be recriminalized would identify it with the politics of the Indymedia
> Romania site itself and not come back again or spread false information to
> others. Maybe this is a general risk the IMC network is willing to take,
> but it’s not a particular risk we want to accept. And it doesn’t seem
> right to be asked to become subordinate to someone else’s principles when
> they contradict our reality.
>
> In solidarity,
> Joanne
>
>
>
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