[Seattle-editorial] Editorial needs of new site design

[BFGalbraith]

Editorial,

First, I Benjamin (bfgalbraith at yahoo.com) have tried
to get on this e-mail list several times, the last of
which was last night somewhere around 2AM.  As far as
I can tell, I have not been able to get on this list
since September, and I wonder if other new people
who've tried to get involved in Editorial have had
this same barrier.

Second, Jason Reep made some very interesting points:

--- Jason Reep <jasonr at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> Editorial
> I think that the categorization that MIR will enable
> is going to address 
> most of these questions.  Please go have a look at
> other MIR sites and 
> see how they are handing these divisions of topic. 

It is nearly impossible for me to tell which sites use
which code.  Is there some WIKI site someplace that
reveals this info?  I check Portland, and they don't
catagorize their newswire at all.


> I haven't researched 
> other editorial policies in regards to newswire
> moderation but I know 
> that categorization is working well for some.
> 
> I would argue for the open un-moderated (except by
> current editorial 
> policy) newswire to continue to be on the front page
> and that there be 
> as many categories as we see fit, including an all
> local one or even 
> several (ie: city council, homeless, native,
> media.....sports, weather, 
> shopping, whatever......all local focus) then have
> other categories for 
> issues that go outside the immediate region. 
> Articles can be posted to 
> multiple categories at the discretion of the poster
> (which could be a 
> double edged sword requiring hiding when posted too
> broadly across 
> categories) so if they are local and tie in to
> non-geographical issues 
> they can be in both places but the person interested
> in local issues 
> only can go directly to it and not be bothered with
> other stuff.  So we 
> would have a local section(s) that do all the things
> that Walt is 
> promoting below (most of which I agree with) without
> changing policy 
> except in technical ways regarding the new codebase.

This brings up some interesting possibilities, in that
independent editorial groups could have independent
sections for the newswire.  The last I heard from the
Bellingham IMC people, they asked "so how long will it
be before we can start posting to the web?"  I don't
think they wanted to go throught the trouble of
setting up their own site, and would have probably
been happy with their own catagory on the news wire. 

My main concern is that when local people (from
vancuver BC to portland) put stuff up on the news
wire, they see that it gets into a position of
elevated importance over the constant spam storm, and
that it is protected from the spam storm jolting their
news off the page in a few hours.  This spam-storm of
course is a major outreach barrier, because new local
contributing groups see that their stuff is just sort
of mixed in with the nonlocal crap, and not given
enough time for most local readers to get a chance to
read it.  So for me, having seperate local and other
sections of the newswire is the bare minimum we need
to function effectively as an IMC.  I do agree that
other catogorization is potentially very useful!

(Jason goes on to explain that he feels that our
current newswire hiding policies are sufficient, as
far a our moderation needs go).

I believe our problem with our hiding policy isn't
really a problem with the hiding policy, so much as
it's just too much work to hide all the garbage.  So,
we instead hopefully we'll try to save most of the
good stuff by seperating it from most of the bad
stuff, by way of at least local and other newswire
sections.

At one point in time, the Editorial collective was
considering hiding all newswire posts that could be
found on two other IMC sites.  Again, the problem with
this strategy is that it's just too much work, you
have to baby sit the site all day long.  This is why I
think the seperate newswire section for Local and
other is absolutely critical, because otherwise our
site is just another Indymedia spam receprical.
 (Have I jumped to a conclusing here?  Would we still
have to go through and sort the local from the other
ourselves?)

(I have noticed that on some Indymedia sites, labels
are given to each article, according to what type of
content the article contains.  This would be cool, as
long as our local stuff has it's own seperate
"physical" section from the other stuff, regaurdless
of attached labels.)

Again, we who want to do outreach MUST have at least a
seperation of Local from Other, but actual section of
the newswire (not just by label,) in order to be able
to proceed in out reach with any level of confidence.
I wish I new what other conversation was going on on
the Editorial list about this, but alas, I can't get
on.  Please include my e-mail address in your
conversation about this issue, because I am not
getting editorial e-mail.






=====
-Benjamin 

"BFGalbraith"- bfgalbraith at users.sourceforge.net 
(H&S Project Manager- http://hack-and-slash.sourceforge.net)
Galbraith Games Website- http://www.squawkrpg.net/news
Why I am looking for another e-mail service:

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