[Imc-alternatives] to the non techs out there

[Danyl Strype]

Kia ora koutou

This is a very disorganised rant but it is late and I am moving house  
tommorrow. Ignore the theorizing about infostructure if it's  
confusing. Please just have a look at what I'm proposing and respond  
in the affirmative or the negative.

Basically I want to echo Jay's sentiments about keeping non-tech  
people engaged. There has been lots of good dicussion about  
co-operative infostructure on this list, and this is part of the  
alternatives ethos we want to encourage. However, this project  
proposes a forum for many threads of alternatives discussion that each  
contribute to a bigger picture.

To make this happen we need to move beyond the narrow confines of an  
email list, which can really only facilitate a small number of threads  
of brainstorming. Getting a simple site up gives us space to widen the  
discussion. Further functionality can be added later based on feedback  
from the early adopters from other kinds of projects like community  
gardens, food co-ops, green bike projects, social centres, co-housing,  
free camping, edible landscaping, herbal medicine etc

So, I have a rash proposal for getting a 0.1 version of our site up  
and running ASAP. I suggest we go for a fairly traditional IMC site,  
maybe with 'solutionswire' instead of 'newswire'. We promote  
particularly good posts to feature status or write features as a team.  
We know this can be done quickly and easily with Drupal. All that  
would be required is to implement a version of the IndyDrupal codebase  
being developed by the Philly techs.

People involved in these sorts of projects could benefit from our  
proposed site in a number of ways, which break down into 3 basic  
categories; connecting, sharing knowledge, and sharing resources:

Connecting with:
- other locals keen on their project
- other locals working on compatible projects
- people working on similar projects in other localities

Sharing knowledge:
- finding and sharing effective ways to carry out tasks and solve  
problems related to their project
- promoting their project to their community and the wider world
- learning about potentially beneficial connections between their  
project and others (eg community garden or co-owned land supplying  
surplus to food co-op - community-supported agriculture etc)

Sharing resources:
- seed banks swapping seeds
- distributed libraries swapping books

I think it's really important that we link with other sites that offer  
some of these functions. Not only to avoid reinventing the wheel, but  
to allow an organic distribution of labour - ie imc-alt as a  
meta-project that interconnects and amplifies people's initiatives,  
rather than depending on a centralised process of task assignment.  
That's why I'm glad AaronK has brought his ActivismNetwork project to  
the table and also glad that various people from the sites we have  
indentified as 'socialforges' have taken an interest in this project.

In my mind, there is a conflict between the traditional Indymedia news  
format and the encyclopedia format exemplified by sites like  
Wikipedia.org.

Indymedia newswires and features, like blogs, are sorted primarily by  
chronology. Users mainly start at the homepage and digging into the  
timeline. The newest information is at the front/ top and is the  
easiest to access, although older material is archived and can be  
searched.

In constast, sites like Wikipedia are sorted primarily by topic.  
Although there is a homepage with featured content, users mainly  
arrive on its pages through web searches or links from other sites.  
Information is aggregated under topic headings and once created, each  
page evolves over time.

News-based infostructures are good for quickly documenting and  
reacting to current events. They produce content quickly and stimulate  
discussion and further research. But their speed of reaction tends to  
produce content that dates quickly. Facts are missing, misrepresented  
or just plain wrong. This means news content is less useful to a later  
reader than a more reflective article, or a wikipage sculpted over time.

I have been working on the theory that the AlternativesIMC would be a  
knowledge-base - an encyclopedia rather than a newswire. I think this  
is because of the way the original alternatives feature was written  
and the fact that updating that feature was the first thing we did  
towards this project.

But many of the sites in the list of socialforges we have aggregated  
on the wiki are already doing this. It seems to me that's what's  
missing is a place people can go to find out what these sites are and  
which site is most useful for what. A place people interested in  
alternatives can bounce ideas off others also interested in realising  
alternative projects.

So it seems to me we have to decide between the importance of these  
two functions in the way we design the front page. Are we going to go  
with a traditional IMC format (imc list, features, solutions-wire),  
emphasising the alternatives news functions. Or are we going to  
emphasise the activist networking functions?

Another question is this: is the activist networking a central part of  
our site, or do we want to provide a front-end for a distributed  
networking tool that we aim to have incorporated into other IMCs and  
other activist portals like Infoshop for example? I am tending towards  
the latter. I think the activist networking is a meta-project of  
Alt-IMC that needs to involve lots of other sites to be really  
successful.

So to reiterate, my proposal is that we go for a fairly traditional  
IMC site, maybe with 'solutionswire' instead of 'newswire'. We promote  
particularly good posts to feature status or write features as a team.  
We aim to have a means for articles posted to local IMC newswires to  
be tagged 'alternatives' and automatically added to our wire. We  
support internationalization as much as possible.

To get this site up and running we need three things:
1) To assemble a team of solutionswire and features editors who can  
commit to putting time into the site on a regular basis
2) To agree on a name
3) To confirm a graphic designer to prepare the appearance of the site  
(logo, css, colours etc)

Thoughts?
Strypes

Quoting Jay <jay at fundamentalchange.net>:

> Hi imc-alternatives,
>
> I've been reading through recent posts and am so excited about the
> tech progress we're making!  I also feel as if I need to remind
> myself, and maybe to remind all other non-techies out there in
> imc-alternatives land, that there is going to be a ton of exciting
> and amazing non-techincal work to be done on the alternatives
> project, and soon.
>
> In the not-too-distant future, especially once we have the rudiments
> of a functioning site, we're going to be able to outreach to
> individuals, group and networks that make positive change and
> encourage them to get to know each other through the tools we're
> conceiving.  That means you -- yes, you! -- who may not know a wiki
> from a wicker basket -- have much, much, much exciting alternatives
> IMC work ahead of you.  So, this is a reminder to us non-techies to
> keep an ear open to the project, and try not to feel overwhelmed by
> all this great and extremely necessary tech talk.
>
> With great love and admiration for everyone who shares the vision of
> this project,
> Jay



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"You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You  
can only be
the Revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere."
- Ursula K. LeGuin (The Dispossessed)

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