[New-imc] Membership application

[boud]

hi IMC Beirut,
   Great to see your membership criteria! i think it's
OK for blue pi to propose you for internal new-imc
approval, but i do have one non-trivial request
for clarification. 

But first i should express my congratulations on your 
answer to m. - it's a very creative way of dealing
with a politically sensitive issue, and i don't see
how anyone can object. (i'm only representing myself
with this opinion, of course...!)

Here are my clarification requests:

On Sun, 2 Feb 2003, semk imb wrote:

> e. Editorial policy:
> 
> Indymedia Beirut will not accept any articles which
> make racist or sexist allegations.
> Should an article be racist and/or sexist or overtly
> offensive, IMC Beirut’s editorial group retains the
> right to remove it. Any comment to an article deemed
> racist, sexist or overtly offensive may be removed
> without discussion.
> Upon the discovery of an article posted on IMC Beirut
> which could be racist or sexist, a member from the
> editorial group will tag the article. This alerts all
> readers that the article may contain a violation of
> our editorial policy, and begins an open debate on the
> article, which lasts for three days. At the end of the
> three days, a decision will be made by the editorial
> group (based on consensus) to either remove or leave
> the article in question.

(1) Do you mean "remove" or "hide"?

Most Indymedia collectives choose only to *hide*
unacceptable articles, so that the reader can still
find these if he/she wishes. The danger of removing
articles is that it's difficult for anyone to judge
the validity of the censorship decision.

There are practical ways of making it clear that hidden
articles are considered unacceptable, by not only shifting
the link to a "hidden" list, but also doing something so
that anyone accessing the article cannot avoid being aware
of the problem, e.g.

* adding a standard disclaimer (a few sentences)  - IMC Poland

* adding a tag of a certain colour (IMC Nice talked
about this, i haven't checked if they really do it...)

* adding <strike>...</strike> around the content of
the hidden article - try this on an html file and
you'll see the effect. It's... striking! In some sense
it really does *hide* the article, since it becomes
quite difficult to read, but anyone who really wants
to read it can copy it locally and just remove the
<strike> tags, without being able to claim that the
IMC approved the article.


We don't have a formally agreed upon definition of
open publishing, but i would think that many indymedia
people might be uncomfortable if you really removed
articles rather than just making them more difficult
to access.

Of course, the decision is a local one. 

But it would be good to clarify this. Have you really 
decided in favour of removal and against hiding, or is
this just a language problem? Could you consider something
like filtering all hidden articles/comments by adding
 <strike> ... </strike> around them?



(2) 
Does your editorial policy mean that:

- an article judged as racist and/or sexist can be tagged
and discussed for 3 days, and then either "removed" or kept

- a comment judged as racist and/or sexist or overtly 
offensive can be "removed" immediately without discussion  ?

This seems to say nothing about what to do when there
is no consensus on whether a comment is racist, sexist
or overtly offensive.

However, my main question is just to clarify the meaning:
did i read it correctly? 

i'm sure you're quite capable of modifying the
editorial policy as a function of how the site (and
editorial decisions) runs in practice... The important thing
is that you have decided a clear policy to start with; if it
doesn't work, you can change it.


solidarity
boud