[imc-northern] Minutes from collective meeting 19.7.09

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Meeting held at 1in12 club, Bradford on Sunday, 19.7.09 12-4pm

Present: JO, JD, JC, P, M, +1 late arrival (JC's housemate - sorry I
forgot your name)

JO facilitating, M taking minutes

Minute taker's note: There are a few technical bits in this. If anyone
wants them explained, why not start a wiki on crabgrass so we can
collect techie questions & answers? Or if you're not bothered, just skip
to the next paragraph.


Mailing list setup
------------------

M has written a wiki on how to administer the mailing lists. It needs to
have a few sensitive bits taken out before release on crabgrass - at the
moment only the list owners have it.

People might not want to stay on the mailing list because of all the
auto-generated messages about article hiding and promotion. On the other
hand, it's important that the editorial collective know what's happening.

Proposed solution: Another mailing list, imc-northern-moderation be set
up; everyone with moderation privileges has to be subscribed to it; if
they find it too much they can have a daily digest; our process
documents to include instructions for how to give users moderation
priviledges and at the same time, subscribe them to the moderation list.
Agreed.

Messages forwarded from accounts on sol (our server) to lists with
implicit destination are being treated as spam. Some discussion about
whether we need any forwarded messages - no decision reached on that,
but we did agree that "To:" should be explicit.


New website update
------------------

Chat: JD has made a page that introduces visitors to our site to the
delights of IRC, via the java application at chat.indymedia.org

Ultimately it'd be nice to get the website authentication talking to
NickServ, so people have the same ID on both systems... but other
matters are more pressing now.

Generally people felt it was a very good thing that new users would be
introduced to the delightful, arcane world of IRC in a friendly way.
Massive thanks to JD for coding that.

Privacy: We will keep no IP logs once the site goes live, but at the
moment their absence is making it hard to diagnose 500 errors - so they
may be turned on until 31.7.09. There are some other unresolved issues
about privacy; we agreed that for now, we'd put advice on the publish
page that anyone needing to make an anonymous post should not log in to
the site, access it over tor if possible, and not include any personally
identifiable info in their content.

Structure: A long discussion about how to make the promoted newswire
differ in appearance from the open newswire. Having them looking
identical and alongside each other means that whatever you call it, it's
not actually promoted. Comparison with London site, where open newswire
is one click back from the homepage. Concensus was reached that we would
like both to appear on the frontpage, but with a clear difference giving
prominence to the promoted newswire. Exactly how to do that wasn't clear
- we agreed to let JD see what was possible, and do whatever's possible
in the remaining 2 weeks.

Menu bar: Too long, 'help' has fallen off the end.

Agreed that 'contact us' be removed, and that our contact details should
be in both the 'get involved' and 'help' pages

Other jobs relating to static content:

JO to write help page (& contact details)
JD to change menu structure & remove 'contact'
M to copy & paste Mission Statement & Editorial Guidelines from crabgrass
M to rewrite the Publish page to include privacy warning as above
JC to write 'get involved'

Categories: Disucssion about the taxonomy of information through imposed
structure and restrictions on thinking imposed by that, versus the
exigencies of enabling people to easily find the information they're
looking for. Can of fucking worms... eventually agreed to nick London's
schema, but swapping G20 for Animal Liberation

Neighbourhoods: agreed this term should be switched to 'Localities' and
examples given on the publish form: Great_Preston, Durham, HX1

News: people will be working on these stories:
P report on the "Marx in Soho" Play and discussion
JC to write about the recycling of tetrapaks and the Bradford Hole
+1 to write about cycling to the climate march

Feature: Countdown to the Launch of Northern Indymedia
 - all to contribute as an exercise in using our 'group' on hyperactive

Posters: why are they not displaying?
JD to discuss with Yossarian

Contingency plans:
Backup solution in place
Critical info in a safe place in case site admins incapacitated

Styling:
css & graphics low priority now
would be nice to play with later


Unity Day
---------

Leaflets - design agreed, duplication arranged by JC
JC was sewing a big black flag which we will fly from a tripod, along
with our solar panels.
JC and friends also working on a banner
Embargo on date now passed: it's on August 1st
Hopefully two terminals will be available for publishing
(M to reassemble old laptop)


Further events
--------------

* Tech skillshare 2.8.09 @ The Common Place 10-4pm
* Next collective meeting Sunday 9.8.09 @ The Common Place, Leeds - new
people very welcome
* Discussions ongoing about future meetings in York, Manchester,
Salford, Hebden Bridge, Newcastle.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

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