[axxs-sysadmin] decision-making [was: Domain Hosting for Manukoreri.net]

[hugh trevelyan]

hi all,

On 26/11/06, boud  wrote:
> hi axxs-admin,
>
> On Sat, 25 Nov 2006, hugh trevelyan wrote:
>
> > I'm working full time now, away from my monitor. So my concern is being
> > left out of decisions that concern me. And IRC isn't even accessible in
> > retrospect as an archive, as listmail is.
>
> It should be relatively easy to make a script for a bot which logs a
> channel, and regularly cleans the log of ip's and posts it as a
> file to an apache-visible directory as a plain text file. Probably
> best that the directory protections are fairly conservative (NoExecCgi or
> whatever) in case someone posts code into the channel.
>
> Here's my own irc-log cleaning script for irssi style logs:
>
> #!/bin/sh
>
> sed -e 's/\[[^]@]*@[^]]*\]/\[\.\.\.\]/g' $1 | \
> sed -e 's/\(.\{60\}[^ ]*\) \([^ ]\)/\1\n\2/g'
>
> exit 0
>
> The idea is that it removes ip's and breaks up long lines.
>
> A cron job can then post the cleaned log every 5 minutes or 1 hour
> or 1 day depending on what the purpose of the channel is and how
> urgent it is for people to follow it.
>
> Some people did this for #radioappo with the cleaned output (not the
> same cleaning script) posted to:
>
> http://www.iteration.org/radioappo.txt
>
>
> If everybody is warned that the channel is automatically logged and
> published on the web, then i don't see any strong argument against it.
>
> Of course, some people have difficulty accepting that a group of "us"
> (whoever "us" are) organising something socially should have
> everything we say posted publicly.
>
> On the other hand, that's what indymedia has *claimed* to be and that's
> what the wikipedia culture generally claims to do. (i know that axxs
> is not the same thing as indymedia(TM), but there are clearly many goals
> in common. :)
>
>
> Hmmmmmmmmm...........  Probably most people here know that many people
> in indymedia are thinking of the "next phase" of indymedia, especially
> at a technical level. This is IMHO largely because the general
> software community (beyond indymedia(TM)), including people who are
> not committed to free software and/or don't care about the digital
> divide, have in some sense taken over indymedia - in the general sense
> of indymedia - and given it the name "Web2.0". Part of the reason for
> this is lowering technical barriers to participation, or at least,
> lowering technical barriers to *partial* participation while leaving
> deep, centralised control to secretive, corporate style leaders and
> organisations like google.  And so a fundamental difficulty in indymedia
> is that we are trying to have all levels of control, including the
> "deepest" levels to be genuinely open to participation - which is difficult
> given that someone with weak tech knowledge has difficulty participating.
>
> Anyway, the point is that if we cron-jobbed cleaned irc logs to the web,
> then it would be possible to have the much more intense and rapid feedback
> communication style of irc become as transparent as archived mailing lists.
>
> An irc channel would become more like a room where people can casually
> come along, listen and possibly participate in a "direct" conversation
> and de facto rough consensus decision-making, in a way that people outside
> of the room are not totally left out of the picture.
>
> Other people willing to summarise can then e.g. condense these on wiki
> pages.
>
> This could also set a precedent for what (IMHO) we should set as the
> minimum acceptable standard of decision-making in ANY collective
> organisation, whether it's the public service or a private company or
> a school or a hospital. The only exceptions would be things that concern
> particular individuals, which would be private in order to protect their
> private lives.
>
> How does this relate to web2.0? IMHO people *are* interested in
> participation not just at a shallow level, but also they want to know
> who is "in control". While it's true that it's already technically possible
> for anyone to join in indy irc and log the conversations, in practice
> it's difficult for most "non-techies". (E.g. recently there was an
> error in the link from the poland indy main page which points to a page
> which in turn points to the lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-pl-*
> pages. One of the experienced imc pl people complained that the mailing
> list archives were "no longer available" - i.e. this person didn't
> know or forgot how to find the URL of the mailing lists.)
>
> So lowering this tech barrier by croning irc logs might just possibly
> be something encouraging participation, better communication etc.

Interesting rave from Boud. But at a level of complexity that I could
only fully engage with in a format of immediate interactivity, eg
IRC if it was at a leisurely enough pace for my typing skill. Or better
still in f2f conversation. But high energy or multi-threaded IRC chat
always leaves me floundering, way behind.

I can't say I'm really enthusiastic about trying to plough through
IRC logs seeking some sense of participation-in-arrears. The lack
of explicit threads makes it hard work too.

Early Indymedia used internal indymedia pages: posts & comments
hosted on cat, confusingly called global-indymedia. Sydney indy similarly
had its own internal pages. All lost now I suppose, or about to be as kahlo
goes under.

Maybe the new wiki will do the trick.

cheers,
hugh

> Once we get torun organised as an imc, i'll probably propose this
> locally...  But it might be good globally as well, so i'll probably
> cc a similar version of this email to imc-communication.
>
> cheers
> boud
>
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> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/axxs-sysadmin
>


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