[Imc-london] Report back Sheffield gathering

[maqui]

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Warning: Long email :-)
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Hello

This is a personal report back of last weekend's IMC-UK network 
gathering in Sheffield. It is by no means the 'official' minutes of 
what went on. This is why I send it only to the london list and not to 
the network one. I will probably forget stuff, so please gdm and ftp 
(they also went from London) add to this.

I am not sure if anyone took minutes of a couple of discussions that 
took place. I didn't, and I guess that if anyone did (maybe gdm?) they 
will be posted in the UK's network list. Maybe some stuff that happened 
(and got done) will also be updated in the gathering's wiki page. Have 
a look to it if you want to know what the weekend was about: 
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/UkNetworkSheffieldWeekend

Ok. The sessions took place in the amazing and huge Matilda social 
centre right in the middle of town. Places to sleep were provided, and 
food and drink never seemed to run out thanks to the centre's kitchen 
collective. Also big up to the IMC-Sheffield crew that organised the 
weekend. There were present people from the following IMC's: Sheffield 
:-), London, Cambridge, Nottinghamshire, Leeds-Bradford, Birmingham and 
Scotland.

The gathering was never intended to be a 'formal' IMC UK Network 
meeting. It had been called by Sheffield peeps as an opportunity to 
"get together and get some stuff done". Therefore the weekend's had a 
quite hands on approach. Judging for the amount of time that techs and 
tech-heads spent with their laptops in their laps and staring at these 
unintelligible lines of data (in green) on black background, my guess 
is that 'stuff got got actually done'. Don't ask me what exactly, but I 
know of a few practical things people worked on. For example, some 
changes were made to the templates of some regional imc's, we briefly 
addressed the issue of the old archives (old major reports), stuff 
seemed to be done to the server (or servers?) and I don't know what 
else. I'm sure gdm can update us much better about this. Otherwise 
check the imc-uk-tech list if interested.

There were also practical workshops that took place throughout 
Saturday. These included email encryption / secure web browsing and 
encryption certificates, wiki and irc how to workshop, site moderation 
and admin interface how to for these that needed training, video 
sharing / coordination and database tools, and not sure if I forget 
something else.

Also, inevitably, and as a direct consequence of the discussions and 
'arguments' that have been happening lately in the features and process 
lists,  about moderation (basically of the newswire) and about the UK 
tick box in the publishing form, as well as over the constant trolling 
of the site mainly through the comments facility and how to interpret 
the Editorial Guidelines, a discussion took place amongst all those 
present on Saturday.

I personally found it very interesting (albeit far too short) and also 
long overdue. It helped me to clarify some of the concerns and 
positions some people have been arguing for in the features list. It 
also gave people the opportunity to reflect about what the IMC-UK 
network is right now, as well as to hint ideas about how it needs to 
change and develop to reflect the changes that may be occurring (both 
within it and outside), whilst at the same time deal with the 
challenges some kollectives are pointing out in relation to their 
autonomy.

I personally think this debate is now crucial for the positive 
development of the IMC-UK network, or, in other words, essential to be 
able to continue an Indymedia project here in the UK based on the 
reality of a network that exists not only for practical reasons (ie: 
sharing servers, bandwith and general infrastructure) but that choses 
to work together for political (as well as practical) reasons. To me to 
continue building a strong and functioning network is primarily a 
political stance, a way of functioning that represents, as closely as 
possible, other social structures that depart form the atomization 
capitalism continuously forces us into, based in sharing, solidarity, 
common vision, equality and diversity of approaches (or autonomy) I 
think that for this to function there is a need for continuous debate 
(well not necessarily continually continuous :-) but stuff needs to be 
reviewed as things move on, and issues need to be debated when became 
apparent. Now that I look back I think that as a network we have not 
really stopped to reflect since ... hmmm ... maybe the first network 
meetings in Manchester and Lancaster a few years back, and as a London 
imc kollective since early 2000!

Probably it is now time we address the 'politics', reasons and future 
of the project and how we can address these as a network of imc's in 
this island. Then see what sort of imc-uk website we develop into, I 
mean, how we can represent visually any changes that may be occurring 
in imc-uk. I also find it very helpful to discuss this sort of stuff in 
a life form and not via email.

So .. (blimey I still haven't mentioned anything about what we actually 
talked about, have I? ... sorry :-) basically the main discussion was 
centred on the newswire and its moderation (both the articles and the 
comments)

Some local kollectives (mainly Nottinghamshire and Birmingham and other 
  individuals too) expressed strong concerns about the way the newswire 
is trolled, and how this affects their growth locally as a functioning 
collective. They argue that unless the newswire(s) is/are clean, people 
that could be getting involved are drifting away, a sort of "what's the 
point if the site is full of crap anyway". That's probably why some 
people's idea of what is relevant to indymedia (or the interpretation 
of the ed guidelines) may be more scrupulous than others. In fact, it 
is true that the more one gets involved in the site admin and 
moderation, the more one notices and gets annoyed about the crap being 
posted. It is also true that the cleaner and more relevant the newswire 
is, the higher the 'quality' of contributions become, thus the site 
becoming more interesting.

Also it is an issue for most kollectives that the the content in their 
websites should merely be relevant to their localities or areas of 
influence. Some people and kollectives are arguing for a strong, full 
blown local imcs, with their own topic pages and clean of 'uk-wide 
stuff', and that this is the best way of promoting the regional pages. 
It is argued that Regional sites (and Topic pages too for that matter) 
can only stand out and become useful to Indymedia audiences if they are 
relevant and focussed. There is also a questioning of why there should 
be a need for stuff to appear in the imc-uk newswire by default. As 
long as this happens, the local pages will merely be imc-uk 
subsections, and not local IMC's. Obviously this is very linked to the 
debate about having/not having a Uk tick box in admin that is ticked by 
default when publishing.

People that defend the idea that all postings should be going to the UK 
front page by default, argue that by doing so the visitors to the site 
can get an overview of what is going on around the country at a glance, 
and without having to visit every single regional page. There are also 
suggestions that an IMC-UK website only makes sense if it has a uk wide 
newswire that displays all postings and contributions. On the other 
hand, it is also argued that because of this reason, the postings 
intended only as local get massively trolled, because they appear in 
the uk newswire and this is where the trolls mainly 'live' and 
function. The argument goes that if postings only appeared in the local 
newswire the trolls would not notice them. People from Birmingham for 
example, mentioned that this has already disempowered a few local 
activists and imc volunteers, and that this alone is a strong enough 
reason to be able to publish only to a local newswire without having 
the UK ticked by default.

Also, people like Nottinhamshire imc are very interested in having a 
'full blown' local IMC. With all its sections and topics functioning 
fully independently from the UK ones. They never stated that they 
wanted to become an 'indeprendent' imc (such as scotland.indymedia.org 
or the Bristol one) but that their focuss was primarily local. Their 
main interest is to have an open media project for their local 
community, and the way I understood their idea of  'local community' is 
much wider than just the political activist/active communities. They do 
have different (although similar) Editorial Guidelines to the UK ones, 
and they are very strong about their autonomy as a kollective. What it 
was not clear to me is what kind of relationship with the network do 
they have/want, or for that matter, what is their idea of a uk wide 
network of IMC kollectives.

I guess there wasn't much time to get into too much detail. The 
discussion was generally quite unstructured and spontaneous, although 
very focussed and lively. Basically people let out concerns, visions 
and hinted at possible solutions.

I personally argued for the idea of a strong UK wide network (you can 
probably guess that :-) and that what we should be focussing on is in 
finding consensued solution(s) about moderation and administration. To 
me to have several fully independent imc's that only 'stick together' 
for practical reasons is not on .. well not politically interesting 
enough if you see what I mean. For me it would be like 'keeping the 
marriage on just because of the kids' type of thing. I listened and 
understood/agreed with many of the points being brought up, and it is 
clear to me that a full discussion and re-evaluation of what this 
network is/will be is now essential.

To me, the best solution would be to come to consensued solutions that 
all kollectives can live with and uphold. 'We are all in for the same 
thing' sort of solution. This can be reached by discussing the politics 
of the project (what contributions are acceptable in imc uk, what 
constitutes news, who do we want to address, how do we relate to each 
other, how, why and for what do we collaborate in a common project, 
what kind of moderation do we implement that it is acceptable to all, 
etc, etc, etc..) Then, hopefully, when these questions start to be 
answered they will be reflected in the sort of website imc-uk evolves 
into (what sort of newswire, how many middle columns, a front page made 
of feeds from local kollectives, multiple newswires, whatever ... the 
possibilities are endless).

Ok, I think I've been typing far too long now. But because I didn't 
take notes I been remembering what went on as I've been typing :-) So, 
now to cut it short I will just list other things that got mentioned in 
this discussion:

- Chris's idea of doing regional publish forms that "look like' the 
regional sites (now there's only the default one). This would make it 
clear to the contributor to what IMC is he/she is actually publishing 
to. Also his idea of letting local Kollectives decide if their forms 
will have a uk tick box or not, and whether uk is selected by default 
or not. I personally argued against this solution and, the same as 
ionnek stated in a mail, I prefer a common consensued solution for all. 
My worry is that this would probably led to the eventual break up of 
the network  .. but don't worry, I won't get into that right now :-)

- I proposed an idea for the imcuk front page to have a newswire that 
reverses from/to a sindication of regional features, to a 'view all' 
posts. What I mean, is that the viewer can choose to have a newswire 
like the global imc one, where the latest feature published in any 
regional or Topic page would appear on top. Or to have a 'view all' 
newswire showing all postings. The idea is to be able to reverse from 
one to the other at a click of a link, or to set up either as the 
personal default one (I presume this is possible tech-wise though).

- If we want a uk newswire *only* for UK wide relevant news, it will be 
almost impossible to find such postings. What sort of posting or news 
would not fall into a regional or Topic page. It was mentioned that, in 
fact, these do not exist as all postings have thematic or geographic 
references.

- People arguing for a 'stricter' interpretation of the Ed Guidelines 
and cleaner newswire mentioned that if we want to keep and increase 
visitors and contributors to the site, we need to improve the content. 
And this is only possible if the site is less trolled (specially in the 
comments) and features well written.

- A solution against trolls in comments could be just to display the 
title and author of the comments (an not the whole comment as now). The 
actual comment would be another click away. This, for example, is what 
http://madrid.indymedia.org have implemented.

- There are only a very few people actively involved in cleaning the 
newswire at a daily basis. People like ftp, or phunkee (for example) 
put an incredible amount of time and effort into this right now. They 
feel that this is not sustainable, and other people mentioned that they 
burned out as a result of having done the same job in the past. There 
was a call for more people to get involved into admin and moderation at 
a regular basis, and  that a solution for some sort of rotas needs to 
be found. Also it is my view that, even with the help of the Ed 
Guidelines, moderating is often a quite subjective business (as 
everything else). Therefore, if the same few people keep doing the same 
job for a long period of time, there is the danger that their 
subjectivity show too much in the newswire. I am *not* criticising the 
people doing moderation right now, or implying that they control what 
shows and doesn't (basically because moderating is transparent through 
the features list) but that this can be an issue.

- Everyone agreed that there is a need to talk further about all this. 
It is important to redefine a network that reflects the current 
situation. In any case, reviewing our own project can only do good. So:

* NEXT IMC-UK NETWORK MEETING
Nottingham  peeps said that they will look into the possibility of 
hosting a full IMC UK newtork meeting soon(ish), probably in mid 
January. That one will be basically to talk about all this, and also it 
will be intended as a meting that actually decides things. Therefore it 
will be a *very* important meeting that everyone should attend and 
prepare for. Nottingham peeps will mail the network list confirming 
whether they will host it and proposing dates.

Ufff .... sorry I just remembered that there was another discussion on 
sunday!. But I will try to be brief about this one, promise! :-)

Most peeps had been partying all night long on Saturday night, so 
Sunday's sessions were a bit more .. erm ... slow :) Basically we 
talked about:

* SERVERS & HOSTS
Chris wanted to talk about servers. Apparently we do need another 
production server very soon. This would improve a big deal imc-uk's 
reliability and speed. Chris, Zak and gdm will look into possibilities 
and do a proposal to the network about which machine they think it is 
best to get. Also there was a talk about whether it was best to get one 
big powerful computer or several smaller ones. I think the tech view is 
that it is better to get a single powerful one.

This brought us into a discussion about where to host it. An easy 
possibility is at Riseup again, mainly because we wouldn't need to sign 
a contract with them. But on the other hand it may not be that good 
idea to put all the eggs in one basket. What about if Riseup went down? 
.. If all our machines are there, we would also go down.

*LEGAL ST UP: A COMPANY? A COOP?
This, in turn, took us into the discussion already had in the lists 
(but never fully addressed) about whether it is not the right time now 
to set up some sort of company or legal body that can sign contracts 
for the hosting of these servers, and then offer them to Indymedia. 
This 'thing' would be liable for what goes through these machines, and 
how they are used. A sort of legal body that attracts the attention of 
the forces of darkness, and that is prepared to fight potential legal 
cases.

The advantage of this is that if the shit hits the fan, Indymedia is 
not prosecuted rather that body (or better the people forming that body 
or company) Peeps from Scotland explained their experience of running a 
company that offers 'software support'. They say it is not something to 
be scared off, but that it needs to be done carefully and conciously. 
They say that the people willing to form that 'legal entity' need to 
know and trust each other as the legal small print is quite strict. 
Chris is eager to start this debate again, and to come to a decision 
a.s.a.p. We left the discussion there.

* STUFF LEFT OVER FROM G8
Scotland people wanted some clarification about what is happening with 
the stuff left over during the G8. They still need some stuff that is 
in London to go up to Scotland. This is currently at zcat's so please 
is you read this can you contact them?. They brought down quite a lot 
of kit, and 10 spare boxes are now going to IMC-Birminham for their 
(hopefully) new space :-)

* G8 IMC DEBT & FUND RISING
Fund rising was also brought up, specially for the debt incurred during 
the G8. I mentioned that in the past London people covered debts made 
by the whole network (ie: ESF) and that this time we will not do it 
again on our own. I mentioned that we will rise money during the 
Anarchist Bookfair, and that we will contribute to the debt, but that 
other groups need to do the same. We sort of put the end of November as 
the deadline to rise the amount needed to cover the whole debt, that, 
adding to it the latest phone bills from the media centre and so on, it 
will probably be something like between 1,500 and 1,800 quid.

* IMC-UK BIG FUN RAISIN PARTY :-)
Sheffield people said that they are up for organising a big party in 
the Matilda social centre. The last party at the building (a no-borders 
one) was very well attended and rose a fair amount of money. They are 
organising an IMC-Sheffield Film Festival at the end of November, so 
they proposed to make the party that weekend. They do have local access 
to sound systems, etc, but they asked for people from other kollectives 
to help out. Specially if it is a big party (bar, door, etc...) The 
will announce the exact date, but I think it was something like the 
26th november. If this party goes well it could cover most of the debt, 
therefore it should be seen as a IMC-UK network party and not as only 
an IMC-Sheffield one.

Ok, now it is really all I had to say .. ha! :-)

Apologies for the lenght of this mega mail, and cheers if you made it 
that far. Have a  break now! :-)

Soon

maqui