[IMC-Boston-Editorial] editing website

[Pete Stidman]

Welcome to editorial! 

To the war category.

 I know that there are some very sensitive feelings
that could easily turn an online discussion of this or
any topic into a warzone.  

I am very leery and even I guess, afraid of entering
into another conflict by expressing my opinion on
this. 

I hope that my expression of an opinion is not seen as
controlling or overbearing, I only mean it as an
opinion of mine, as one equal part of the editorial
group.  

I wonder if Matt mentioned the long drawn out
dialogues and discussions that got the categories to
where they are, or if he described to you both sides
of the issue, the history of the whole thing.  

About a year or so ago we trimmed that list down
considerably.  The reasoning behind it was that
category list had something like 24 categories, many
of which were rarely used.  Categories became
redundant or esoteric.  

So in collective groups we agonized over what to leave
in for at least a few months untill we finally decided
on the present situation.  

I think if we want to review that situation, we should
do it in a collective editorial meeting, and it should
not be a decision to be made online. But at the same
time I don't want to discount y'alls input, so let me
just say my more specific reason for disagreeing.  

War was very much on the minds of the folks who
created that list, Matt among them.  It was thought
that International could cover war and all
international news. (much of which, from an activist
standpoint was war. globalization is a category that
covers another focus on international news) 

We in fact, used to have something like the section
you propose but combined it into international becuase
the two seemed redundant.  I think it was called
war/militarization even, but I could be remembering
wrong. 

When you come to categorizing a story about Iraq for
instance what would the average person do? A war is in
essence international and so would go under both, and
most news that would go under international was about
war anyway.  But then maybe some people would see
international first and not put it in War, or vice
versa.  I f that happened, even once, then later on
people would click into war and not see every war
story.  

Of course it can never be perfect but we wanted to
design it in a way that would make the categories the
most useful from both the poster and the readers
perspective. 

So we could debate that for a while, but in any case,
this is definitely something to send to the editorial
meeting in the end and before anybody adds it. Thanks.


-Pete

--- Svea Eppler <sveasca at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> 
>      Hey folks.
> 
>      Yesterday, Matt trained Jamie and myself on how
> to edit the website. We're working with Matt and
> doing
> some of the simple administrative stuff. We'll be
> asking him to look over our shoulder before we do
> any
> bigger administrative things but we should be pretty
> set.
> 
>      One new idea we talked about yesterday was
> adding
> a "War" category to the "Feature Categories"
> section.
> There are so many war-related topics that all three
> of
> us agreed that it would be a good category to add
> without making the Feature Categories list much
> bigger. Matt suggested something alone the lines of:
> War & Militarization
> 
>      Anybody have any doubts about this idea? If
> not,
> we'll add the category in a couple of days.
> 
>      Cheers!
> 
>      S.
> 
> 
> "Once is by accident, twice is coincidence, three
> times is enemy action!" - good military advice for
> the modern media guerilla
> 
> 
> 		
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