[imc-melbourne-work] Melbourne IMC decides to suspend open publishing

[and]

Hey all,
a few comments.

As hard as it is in many ways I'm glad to see this happen.

One thing I think that might be useful to do is to generate a  
collective statement on the situation, and to link to that from the  
front page and send it to various IMC lists rather than only having  
one perspective being the collective statement by default (which  
isn't a criticism of what takver wrote, i'm glad it's there). I think  
agreeing on such a statement would help us all clarify what the  
problem has been and therefore what the solution might be.

Also I wonder if it might be good to link to other like-minded sites  
other than sydney imc on the front page where people can publish or  
get similar info?

eg.

http://eco-shout.org/ - calendar, groups etc.
http://3cr.org.au - audio streaming ((i'd reccomend radio.indy but  
uploading is broken)
http://www.radio4all.net/ - audio publishing
http://engagemedia.org - video (i'd reccomend video.indy but  
uploading is broken)

any places for blogging or other places to publish?
http://futureaustralia.net/ ?
http://undergrowth.org ?

Cheers.
And.


On 12/06/2007, at 4:55 AM, takver wrote:

> 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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