[New-imc] What this leads to

[Arc]

On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 04:21:15PM +0200, boud wrote:
> It's clear that arc (and probably eric, both from IMC Ithaca) are
> unhappy with what is effectively a "consensus minus two (individuals)" 
> network decision regarding IMC Rogue. 

There is no such decidion.  Nowhere did we agree to use anything but
pure consensus within new-imc.  Those with "keys to the building" cannot
decide to change the rules of the group, that is a heirarchal
organizatonal model and is against the principals of Indymedia.

What is being used is consensus with a mob-rule fallback.  If consensus
cannot be reached then it's turned into a personal issue, a flame war
erupts to tear down the objecting party/ies, and any further objections
are unlikely to come since they are afraid to be targetted as well.  The
fight continues until the objectors "submit" to the will of the others,
leave the group, or until someone decides to use their access or
strength to make the decidion happen anyways despite the objections.

Transposed into the physical world, this would be equivelent to a group
of people in a local IMC cutting down a blocker, standing up and turning
it into a yelling match, sometimes even going as far as a fistfight,
everyone else in the group either leaves or stays the hell out of it,
and in the end the only way it can be resolved is through the completion
of that fight.  Anyone is a fool to think any form of true consensus can
be reached in such an environment, because even before the personal
attacks begin there's a history of such a thing happening and thus knows
better than to dare object to anything.

There is no consensus here.  It doesn't matter how many "minuses" you
tack on to say it's consensus, consensus cannot be reached during a
fistfight.  Rogue is not an IMC, it would be a disservice to Rogue to
continue calling it such as it would be effectivly entering it into the
network under extremely questionable means and leaving a permanent
shadow of doubt and distrust that haunt the group through it's existance.

This also sets up an extremely bad precident for Indymedia, since those
with the power to do so (access to the servers) have effectivly used
that power to make a network decidion.  This has happened in the past
but with milder issues, the new-imc group was created to make the
process of entering new IMCs to the network an open and democratic one,
whereas before it was the IMC techs that made those decidions alone.  

If those with the power to do so do not reverse this action immediatly
it sets precident within the network.  Even with what has happened now
it shows, very clearly, that Indymedia is extremely sick and as far as
the principals that it was founded to represent it's dying.

I'm not going to let it die without a fight.  
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