[New-imc] CAIRO IMC (urgent)

[boud]

hi ian, hi everyone at new-imc,

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SUMMARY
- There seems to be consensus:
(1) to support the group with a website, but
(2) making it clear that it's not (yet) a fully self-organised IMC,
(2b) e.g. a clear statement on their website
- The main practical questions seem to be:
(3) (Cairo people via ian?) what temporary hostname alias should be chosen?
(4) (beyond new-imc) will some people really do the work of setting
up the site?

Does anyone object to (1), (2) or (2b)?

ian: Can your local network choose a temporary hostname alias in the
indymedia.org domain (e.g. cairo-tmp.indymedia.org) ?

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On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Jay wrote:

(1) + (2)
> >We have done this in the past, we help them get a site but DON"T include
> >them in the cities list or consider them an indymedia center until htey
> >have finished the new imc process.
> 

(3)
### hostname alias / DNS entry ###

> This is what I mean.  We would help them set up a very consciously 
> temporary site.  Or, if they're simultaneously going through the new-imc 
> process, and do so successfully, a temporay site that can become a 
> permanent one.  A temporary site could be at cairo.indymedia.org, but they 
> are also trying to get "http://www.cairo-imc.org" -- if they're able to do 
> that, maybe that would be a better URL, since it would create even more of 
> a distinction.  In fact, that may be a better idea than their being 
> cairo.indymedia.org right off the bat.

They're asking for urgent help - they have money transfer problems
right now. If a local IMC or someone wants to buy them the domain name
cairo-imc.org, i'm sure noone would be against.  But we can given them
an indy domain name like  

cairo-tmp.indymedia.org

or

cairo.proposed.indymedia.org

or ...

much faster - once we agree. They can always add an alias  cairo-imc.org
later once they have it.

arc wrote:

: how about making a permanent policy, like setup a proposed.indymedia.org
: and have cairo.proposed.indymedia.org.. or some word that's shorter than
: "proposed" but gets across the same spirit.

i don't think we should make a permanent policy in a rush. There's
also the risk that every requested group feels it has the right to ask
for a mycity.proposed.indymedia.org hostname. Given the large number
of applications that evaporate (or hibernate?) after the initial
enthusiasm, we could end up with a lot of deadend hostnames, some of
which might be used by sects, fundamentalist religious groups, fascist
groups, and we wouldn't notice. 

In this case, the group is more than just "requested", since as jay
says, they've been organising, doing outreach in quite dangerous
conditions, for about 12 months.

Hmm. How about if ian proposes a clearly temporary hostname for the
DNS? That would follow our policy on "local" decision-making.

** ian: ** Can you consult with your local network quickly and propose
a name which is clearly temporary, something like

cairo-tmp.indymedia.org
cairo-temporary.indymedia.org
cairo-proposed.indymedia.org

i'm not sure whether it's better to have "-" or "." - i guess the
DNS people would probably prefer "-" to avoid having to make a 
subdomain, but i think someone who knows more than i do could comment
here.

Later on, if you succeed in buying your own domain name, there would
be no problem using both.


(2b)
### statement on forming IMC Cairo website ###

> >My recollection, was that there were problems with teh first cairo
> >application. Mainly that there were no Egyptians involved in the
> >organization. Maybe they have solved this maybe this is a different group,
> >i don't know.
> 
> Exactly.  They've gone through almost a year of organizing and seem to have 
> made strides in the right direction, but we absolutely need more 
> information to determine whether they warrant a listing in the cities 
> list.  I do think world events are such that we should be 
> flexible.  Perhaps if people are uncomfortable with this whole idea we 
> could ask them to put a statement at the top of their center column 
> explaining that they're a project of people who are organizing toward 
> forming an IMC, but have some more organizing to do to join the network.

Sounds reasonable to me.


(4)
### getting the site set up ###

arc wrote: 

: > (scott at bandwidthcoop.org) and spud who does dada seem to have
: > i18n reasonably functional - IMC Japan (coming soon... watch this
: > space :) has a site at bandwidthcoop functioning OK, where the
: > Japanese is written on the web page in html coding.=20
: 
: Um, hello?  First, Freeform also has fully working i18n as do other
: codebases.  Second, zero.bandwidthcoop.org is currently full.  We're
: still in the process of moving over existing sites from stallman and
: at this point are not accepting any new IMCs until we can evaluate the
: bandwidth load of the sites we're currently hosting.
: 
: We could probobally setup the IMC on another server pretty quickly, but
: diversity is our friend here.  Centralising our resources on zero (or
: any other server) creates the same scenario we've seen on stallman. =20

Sorry about that! My error. Of course decentralising is the best policy.


solidarity
boud