[Imc-alternatives] newswire vs. knowledge-base

[Jay]

Strypey,

At 8/9/2007, you wrote:
>Kia ora koutou
>
>The purpose of all this theorizing is to get clear in my mind what we want the
>site to present to the first-time user, and what the repeat user can 
>customize.

Yeah.  If anyone reads through the big long e-mail I wrote to respond 
to ekes, this is a hot topic in ekes' mind, and now mine too.


>I wrote:
>
> >> 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?
>
>Jay replied:
> > I've actually always viewed the alternatives site as both, and this
> > is what would help give it power.  I still picture a front page with
> > a top feature, that either an editorial collective or user-ratings
> > would choose, and alternatives solutionwire running down the side of
> > the page, with a list of categories somewhere on the page that would
> > take the site user into our knowledge-base.
>
>So how do we fit all these into one front page in a way that makes sense to a
>new user? Following the traditional IMC format, we know we have our features
>column in the centre and the open-publishing wire on the right. I assume to
>fulfill the membership criteria of the IMC network we will need the 
>cities list
>on the left, but this can be quite small (see somes IMC sites where 
>the regions
>can be clicked open to show links to all the IMCs under each region). So that
>leaves us with some space in the left sidebar, and possibly in the 'razorwire'
>space at the top of the features column.

This may be a good time for us to point to some of the best-designed 
IMC sites as examples.  I'm replying to this off-line so I don't have 
broadband at my fingertips to do a search, but I do like the way the 
PhillyIMC site looks (http://www.phillyimc.org).  We could have our 
solutionswire on the left column, a main feature, and then category 
descriptions rather than the feature blurbs below.


>Perhaps the left sidebar could be used for the knowledge-base for 
>Alt-IMC? Maybe
>by adding the ability to edit the IMC list for their user account, 
>like a set of
>bookmarks - adding (or removing) site links under geographical 
>categories (which
>they can also edit). Perhaps the razorwire space could be used to display info
>delivered by the activist networking functions chosen by the user (eg events;
>feeds from lists, blogs, podcasts; streams; irc channels, instant messaging
>etc). Or it might make more sense to divide those functions between both
>razorwire and the top (or bottom) of the left (or right) sidebar.


>These modules in our front page could use another site as its back-end - using
>the web services Aaron describes. Where appropriate, an Indymedia 
>server but it
>could also be openplans.org or another site that most supports the kaupapa
>(cause) of the group/ project. This separation of user interface from hosting
>provides a relatively seamless user experience, while spreading the 
>hosting load
>and avoiding a single point of failure.
>
>For example, let's imagine we used our site to organise our own project (after
>all, if its not useful for our own project whose project will it be useful
>for?). Each of us could have our activist networking account set up 
>to include a
>chat window in the razorwire which automatically logs into Che and joins up to
>the alternatives channel (and any other channels we pre-set) whenever we visit
>the site. If we make the site our homepage, we can chat together whenever we
>open our browser.
>
>The same approach could also help to integrate IMC sites, and the Indymedia
>network resources - like indymedia.org, docs, irc, lists etc. This chat module
>could be re-used on any IMC site. Anyone reading the site could automatically
>join into a live chat in that IMC's irc.indymedia.org channel.
>
>One possible drawback is the workload it would put on the user's 
>browser, and on
>Che. Can anyone more techy than me comment on this? Another is spam and other
>abuse of the channels. A 'join chat' button in the entry field of the chat
>window, with a captcha to keep bots from joining, would solve spam. As for
>abuse, is potential abuse a good reason to keep people from 
>gathering freely in
>public space? As with the open-publishing newswire, I think the potential
>benefits of user interaction outweigh the risks.

I'm still not 100% sure I grasp the techincal and practical 
implication of distributing all this infrmation and blending differnt 
softward, but I definitely support it in theory.

> > On the other hand, Indymedia sites have been pretty awful at
> > developing a respository for accumulated knowledge, and that's
> > something we've been talking here about changing.
>
>That's not entirely true. Docs.indymedia.org has housed an incredible body of
>documentation about Indymedia itself.

I was talking more about the way a news story appears on an IMC 
newswire and then eventually disappears, rather than adding to 
accumulated knowledge on topics.  You can search an IMC site using 
something like google, but in practical terms, when an article is 
bumped off the newswire it's gone.  I agree that docs.indymedia has 
been a real advance in documenting indymedia itself.

>However, there has been a consensus that
>to keep Indymedia network resources like Che (irc server), Sarai (list server)
>etc from getting overloaded, they should be reserved for the 
>Indymedia project.
>I think this is a valid concern, which is why providing a portal to other
>hosting options makes sense to me.
>
>The archives of lists.indymedia.org lists, like this one, also accumulate
>knowledge but it's a complicated process to summarize the ideas 
>flowing through
>lists on Twiki. We can put links on docs pages to list postings in 
>the archives,
>but we can't edit the posting (although we can comment on it on the 
>docs page).
>What would be cool is something like Jiglu.com spaces where list and open wire
>postings, and features, can be dragged onto the wiki and edited, 
>while a static
>copy of the original remains chronologically archived in its original form.

That would be cool!  I'm so not the person to ask about whether it 
would be feasible, but it would be cool.

:)

Jay

>There's a lot of brainstorming in there. Hope it all makes sense.
>
>RnB
>Strypes
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