[imc-melbourne-work] Re: [G20media] Melbourne Indymedia Suspends Open Publishing

[Anna Helme]

Hey Nic,

Nice to hear from you :) I'll forward this email to the Melbourne 
Indymedia Collective list, I'm sure they'd be glad to hear your 
comments. I have been involved on and off for the last few years, but 
your appreciation really should go to people like Takver and Harry who 
have been holding the fort for some time now, as well as many others 
who've contributed hugely over the years rather than a casual kind of 
moonlighter like me.

Indymedia had a bit of a mini-conference a few years back at TINA. From 
that meeting oceania.indymedia.org was formed, so definitely it could 
spark some new interest and projects to have a meet up or panel 
participation at NYWF.

Given the state of things at the moment it may take a while for someone 
to get back to you about appearing on a panel. Andrew and I have gone up 
to talk about EngageMedia (and launch the site actually) at TINA in the 
last couple of years but haven't really engaged with it this year. 
Andrew would have lots to say about Indymedia I think, from a very 
critical perspective, as he was very involved for some years now but is 
quite over it and left the collective a few months ago.

There are some interesting things being talked about on the Indymedia 
front - one idea is to make an Australian Indymedia site - and run local 
news for each city off that. This may work much better as there are 
fewer programmers and sys-admins to go around these days, and it would 
lessen the work to maintain only one site. Of course viable editorial 
collectives must form for each local branch or it won't function. But 
upgraded software will benefit the ability to moderate and editorialise 
user-generated content immensely.

Another idea going on globally is Indymedia Alternatives. I was 
following the discussion on this in the first few months but haven't 
really kept up with it, but the idea with this was two-fold - to design 
a site around positive alternatives to help shape the movement into 
coming up with ideas and models for change rather than mere criticisms 
of the status quo, and secondly to rethink web technologies and figure 
out what to do next with news publishing and community sites - to be a 
revolutionary new way of doing things as Indymedia was in its inception.

Many of the problems with Indymedia are seen to be with the wider 
"movement" itself - the anti-capitalist movement that has gathered for 
mass summit protests since Seattle. People are questioning the value of 
protest and what it can achieve in these times - and this is obviously 
central to what Indymedia is all about and what it is often used most 
effectively to support.

People are also wondering how to promote their content in the black hole 
of the Internet, and how to filter the Internet to find the content they 
want to see. Methods of doing this such as social bookmarking and 
tagging have not necessarily been picked up by Indymedia sites. I 
suppose Indymedia folk are looking at the big online community sites 
like MySpace, big publishing sites like Flickr and YouTube, to try to 
steal the best ideas of how to network people and provide publishing 
space effectively whilst using these tools for social change rather than 
naval-gazing, happy-snaps and funniest home videos. There is much to 
learn by huge collaborative news sites like Slashdot.

Indymedia is also trying to move away from home-grown codebases to big 
content management systems like Drupal and Plone in order to cut down on 
time spent developing features that are already available.

But Indymedia has to work out what it wants to be to serve a movement 
that isn't always able to articulate what it is or how to achieve it's 
goals of global social justice either. It's really a time of questions 
rather than answers, it seems.

I'll send you an email address for Louise as this email went to me not 
the g20media list. Hope you're well, glad to hear you're doing NYWF and 
livening it up a bit this year! :)

Cheers,
Anna

Nicolas Low wrote:
> Hey there Anna,
>
> How's trix? I'm sorry to hear that things are on hold at Melbourne
> Indymedia. It's a huge job and there has to be fresh blood to keep it going
> - it was amazing to be part of it in a small way during the G20, but alas
> that was the extent of my ability to contribute. I've checked in many many
> times over the last few years and I wanted to let you guys know that the
> work you've done is amazing and valuable. Whenever I see something on the
> news related to activism, it's the first place I check.
>
> I'll pass on the word on a few websites and lists I have access to, and
> fingers crossed there's some new energy out there to take it over.
>
> I'm co-coordinating the National Young Writers' Festival this year, so I
> know what it's like to be part of something which has a glorious history but
> not so much current energy behind it. I'm part of the fresh blood that's
> trying to keep the NYWF alive, but it was pretty shaky last year. We're
> looking good this year and there's going to be a shitload of stuff
> happening, but it's never easy when everything relies on our volunteer love.
>
>
> When I saw the e-mail, I had a thought: would one of the Melbourne indymedia
> crew like to come to Newcastle for NYWF / This Is Not Art in September to
> talk about what's been happening? We're doing a session on on-line
> publishing, looking at discussing different strategies for making it viable,
> and I think it would be really valuable for people to hear about Melbourne
> Indymedia's journey, why you've had to suspend the site, and also
> potentially put a call out for new blood and energy. There's going to be
> around 1000 young writers there and it's a pretty good opportunity to get
> some newcomers excited. It's in NSW, but there's a huge Melbourne presence
> going to be there.
>
> We're also doing a 'messages to the media' skillshare about ways of handling
> mainstream media for activists - something you guys might also want to feed
> into? It's going to be talking specifically about G20, but also with an eye
> out for what'll happen at APEC. I'd particularly love to get in touch with
> Louise and see if she'd be up for that one, especially given the ongoing
> madness of the Gunns lawsuit. If anyone getting this has an e-mail for her,
> that would be great.
>
> Anyways, I'd love to know your thoughts.
> Peace,
> Nic
> 0424 832 231
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: g20media-bounces at axxs.org [mailto:g20media-bounces at axxs.org] On Behalf
> Of Anna Helme
> Sent: Tuesday, 12 June 2007 3:07 PM
> To: undisclosed-recipients:
> Subject: [G20media] Melbourne Indymedia Suspends Open Publishing
>
> Please pass on to interested folks.. Melbourne Indymedia has suspended 
> open publishing.
> A public meeting will be announced in the next couple of weeks to 
> explore the future of
> Indymedia - whether or not it will continue at all - and if so what 
> shape it should take.
>
> You can email collective at melbourne.indymedia.org in the meantime.
>
> If there is a real need for an activist news/analysis site for Melbourne 
> then a new collective
> will have to emerge with fresh ideas about where to take it. New 
> software needs to be
> developed, and a web-developer or two with time to invest need to be 
> found to make this
> happen.
>
> Anyone interested in forming part of a new editorial collective should 
> also take this
> opportunity to get involved. Indymedia needs to rethink its identity in 
> a world where anyone
> can blog or publish on the web - unlike the early days when IMCs were 
> initially formed.
>
> Individual blogs don't allow the same capacity for community-building as 
> a site where
> many can post and share their news and ideas. But maintaining an online 
> community and
> figuring out who can speak, and which issues should be featured is not 
> an easy task -
> there needs to be the will behind it, a real need for the community to 
> exist.
>
> If social justice and environmental campaigners and the "activist 
> community" still want
> to make use of this resource and the global network of independent news 
> sites then they will
> have to be involved in shaping what Melbourne Indymedia becomes... 
> alternatively the
> site will collapse and something fresh may or may not appear to replace it.
>
> Cheers,
> Anna
>
> Statement and email from Takver from the Melbourne Indymedia Collective 
> follows....
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> Statement featured on Front Page of Melbourne IMC:
>
> Open publishing has been suspended on Melbourne Indymedia as numbers in
> our editorial collective are insufficient to manage the site effectively
> and responsibly. We realise that MIM has played a vital role in
> reporting activist news from Melbourne, around Australia and
> internationally. To this end the present collective will be assessing
> options for how best to provide an activist news service in the future.
> If you wish to get involved, please contact us, or subscribe to our
> mailing list.
>
> While open publishing is suspended, our collective suggests if you have
> a well researched, well-written story about Melbourne events, you should
> post the story to Sydney Indymedia. We thank our many loyal readers and
> contributors for several years of grassroots journalism and media
> activism and hope we can resume reporting with an even better interface
> at some stage in the future. 
>
> Melbourne Indymedia Collective
>
> http://melbourne.indymedia.org/index.php
>
> ++++++++++++
>
> A linked article gives some reasons:
>
> Basically, irate users and spammers have become more persistent in their
> attacks and without a software upgrade or a collective of several people
> to actively moderate posts and do features, the site is unworkable. If
> numbers are insufficient to moderate the site effectively, then the
> only responsible action is to stop open publishing.
>
> I think this is the responsible thing to do for our loyal readers and
> contributors, many of whom have openly complained about spam and
> crossposts being published and unmoderated.
>
> http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2007/06/146534.php
>
> As an editor of 4 years standing here are some personal comments:
>
> One of the factors leading to our current situation was the debilitating
> conflict with ML in Darwin during 2006/2007 and the perceived lack of
> organisational solidarity displayed by the network resulting in active
> members of the Melbourne collective drifting away from Melbourne
> Indymedia into other projects. We haven't been able to generate more
> interest or more involvement in the admin/site editing/ feature writing
> of the site since.
>
> The weekly radio program on community radio was well organised this year
> with more people involved, but no one understood that basic site admin
> and editorial has fallen really to a couple of people for quite a long
> period of time. In terms of reporting there is really only 2 or 3 ppl
> (of whom I include myself) who actively report to the newswire on
> activist events and demos in Melbourne.
>
> The actual trigger for the decision to suspend publishing was an irate
> regular contributor from Sydney (Parrot Press) who spammed the local
> newswire with over 200 posts in 4 days, after other contributors and an
> editor criticised him for overwhelming the site with his posts and
> crossposting irrelevant comments. Attempts were made to de-escalate the
> situation which proved fruitless. IP logging was temporarily turned on
> in an attempt to block the user, but the user was using proxies, so
> could not be effectively blocked from spamming the wire or threads. So
> our collective reluctantly decided we no longer had the time or energy
> to moderate and should close down open publishing.
>
> Over the last few years we have seen the rise of blogging, and
> particularly moderated group blogs that have drawn people away,
> particularly when there is the constant verbal harassment in Indymedia
> comment threads. Leftwrites (www.leftwrites.net) is one prominent blog
> primarily based in Melbourne that analyses the news from a broadly
> leftist perspective (left social democrat to anarchist) that has
> attracted some of our readers (and criticism from others). The rise of
> blogging gives everyone with access to the internet a voice, but it is
> not the same as producing a news site, which Indymedia at its very basis
> is about: grassroots and activist news.
>
> Spam control has been an ongoing battle of which Melbourne managed to
> stay mostly ahead, but it has been a constant drain on time and energy,
> requiring tweaking the software and manual moderation. To stay ahead of
> the game at this stage we really needed a software upgrade. A
> development site using drupal had been 80% completed. If this new site
> had been completed and put into production our decision to suspend open
> publishing may not have been necessary.
>
> Melbourne does need an activist news site, and open publishing should be
> part of that, but I have come to the conclusion that more editorial
> control needs to be asserted to increase the standard of articles on the
> principal newswire. Open publishing should be used to generate new
> contributors and news postings, but should not be allowed to dominate
> the site editorially as it has with the newswires and present software
> (sf-active) used in Melbourne. Indybay has made sf-active work, although
> I know there is a lot of moderation going on in the background to make
> it effective.
>
> We need to empower article contributors by letting them decide if they
> want all comments, be able to approve comments, or choose no comments.
> Remember if a poster chooses no comments in a well written article,
> balance can be achieved by promoting a well written critical article in
> response. Too often I have seen contributors being turned away from
> Indymedia by the extent of abusive or destructive comments, because we
> provided no option to turn off comments, and we have not had the time or
> energy to moderate effectively.
>
> I also want to reward consistent contributors of good articles by their
> articles being promoted without moderation. That is where userids should
> come in. A contributor should be able to build a profile and can then be
> allowed priviledged posting access. 
>
> One of the carrots we should be offering our contributors is that
> promoted articles will be indexed by Google News. So that reports by
> grassroots activists can be accessed alongside corporate media reports.
> My greatest pleasure last year was seeing a woman involved in an
> industrial dispute, not previously an Indy reader, from one of those
> union solidarity pickets that go for several weeks in the suburbs, begin
> to post to MIM, and their posts were featured in the centre column and
> picked up by Google News to counterbalance reports in the mainstream
> papers of The Age and Herald Sun. Similarly with Tasmanian forest
> protests in which forest activists were able to counterbalance the PR of
> the timber companies thru indy articles. We became highly useful in
> 'getting the news out' not just to our Indymedia scene but to a much
> wider audience. It was very empowering to those contributors and to us
> as media activists.
>
> The real test is can we bounce back and provide something better than we
> had today that allows us to concentrate on grassroots and activist news.
> I hope so. The next several weeks we will find out whether the Melbourne
> collective can regroup and continue a presence with a dedicated site.
>
> There is also a new idea being put forward of an Australian continental
> IMC. A few people across Australian IMCs have started  discussing this
> possibility along the lines of us.indymedia, uk.indymedia, or even
> aotearoa IMC. We might see where that takes us as well.
>
> in solidarity
> Takver
> one of Melbourne IMC
>
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>
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