[imc-melbourne-work] Revise the old or bring on the new?

[rory]

After thinking about the demise/hibernation of melbourne indymedia and 
those other indymedia sites that are also offline i have come to have 
some serious concerns about open publishing - in terms of generating 
content, comments and general viability.

This article covers fairly well some off the issues with comments, ie 
they tent to add nothing and usually detract from the whole piece.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/07/20.html

And whilst i honestly think there is some need for an activist based 
news site for melb/aus/oceania, i have now concluded that the indymedia 
format - that of open publishing and consensus decision-making is in 
this situation now a flawed one.

If we want to get quality info out there it needs to be in a controlled 
environment: to generate the content, keep the writers, keep the site 
worthwhile, and keep the readers and build and keep the moderators. It 
seems to me that indymedia melbourne has failed on all of these points.

To those who think the site just needs a quick fix or that a few sites 
just need to be joined together i think the problems are much more 
serious that that and really do require a huge rethink - in fact so huge 
i believe that a new site and method/format entirely are required if we 
wish to bring a sustainable activist news site out.

just my thoughts, hope they help.

rory