[IMC-NYC-Editorial] revisiting the editorial policy

[Chris Anderson]

I agree that it seems like we're moving forward to a
new editorial policy. I think that Jed should write up
his experiences, and Matt should comment as well, and
maybe Josh too. I'm willing to bottom line rewiriting
the ed. policy based on feedback and submitted to the
group for approval. Can we set a dealine where people
will have their feedback to me? Sept. 20?

I'm also excited by the idea of giving site users more
control over rating articles themselves, but we also
know that this rating system is abused by trolls. One
suggestion might be the following: in addition to
giving editors more editorial rating "authority" (ie,
ranging from -2 to 5) one could make it so only
registered users had the ability to rate articles. in
other words, only people with verified email
addresses, along with editors, could rate postings.

Obviously, there would probably need to be code
changes to the site, and from what I can tell, our
"verified email address" function isn't even working.
This then brings us to a second problem. I've been
having discussion with some of our far-away tech geeks
(spud and ski, mostly) and they've been expressing
extreme frustration that there's no local imc nyc tech
who can make these and other code changes to the site.
Its totally understandable that NY'ers should take the
responsibilty to maintain their own website. The
problem is, there's no one here who knows how :(

Just for example: apparently, adding an "author"
function the the editorial interface would be really
really easy. But there's no one in NYC who has either
the access or the tech abulity to do this. Same
probably goes with the rating change i mentioned
above. Which makes us rely on far away people who have
other things to do, to do things we should be doing
ourselves.

I'm truly at a loss to know how to solve this problem,
but its a huge problem. I'm really interested to hear
solutions or suggestions.

chris

--- Matt Wasserman <wassermm at reed.edu> wrote:

> Jed,
> I have no problem hiding the posts of trolls or
> people who are just 
> trashing everything--I was probably hiding upwards
> of 50 posts a day 
> for a while there--but my feeling is that the
> newswire is what people 
> choose to make of it. I personally would prefer a
> little more reporting 
> and a little less discussion but if people are going
> to use it largely 
> for discussion and reposting articles then
> discussing indymedia--which 
> I would differentiate from just calling moderators
> "fascists"--doesn't 
> seem inconsistent with this.
> I have another few hundred pages of reading to do
> for tomorrow so I 
> can't discuss this in detail but I would agree that
> with our collective 
> experience--especially yours--we can re-draft a
> better editorial 
> policy. (I'd also like to look for ways to make
> moderators publicly 
> accountable to the users of the site and to allow
> users to do more 
> regulation of the site w/out editorial intervention
> but I'm not sure 
> how to set this up so it can't be abused by trolls
> and thats another 
> discussion anyway).
>                                                     
>      --Matt
> 
> On Sep 7, 2004, at 8:00 PM, Jed Brandt wrote:
> 
> > Matt --
> >
> > This was the standard practice since moderation
> came into effect. The 
> > reason
> > was that there were a small number of trolls
> posting large numbers of
> > attacks under a variety of names. That, and the
> newswire is not 
> > "about" the
> > newswire.
> >
> > As of now, I can't moderate because of the
> technical changes. I'm 
> > happy with
> > that and will take this as my cue to step down
> from moderation for a 
> > while.
> > I'm happy you (and others) are picking it up.
> >
> > We should discuss the experience of the past year
> and re-draft the mod
> > policies with that experience under our belts. I
> know I made a few 
> > mistakes
> > and learned from them, with the incident around a
> certain cartoon 
> > sticking
> > out the most.
> >
> > I'm beat now, but I'll try to write a summary
> soon.
> >
> > Jed
> >
> > On 9/7/04 7:38 PM, "Matt Wasserman"
> <wassermm at reed.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> I agree we should include this in the policy; I
> was hiding such posts
> >> under a broad interpretation of spamming the
> newswire during the RNC.
> >> Also, I'd like to have a discussion of whether
> posts critiquing (the
> >> policies of) NYC IMC or Indymedia are in
> violation of the editorial
> >> policy--they are (debatably) non-political and
> directed to other
> >> newswire participants and have often been hidden
> under that rubric 
> >> this
> >> summer but I'm a bit uncomfortable w/ this.
> >>                                                  
>        --Matt
> >>
> >> On Sep 7, 2004, at 9:18 AM, Joshua Breitbart
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Can we have a meeting (possibly over irc) to
> discuss how we are going
> >>> to move
> >>> forward with the website?
> >>>
> >>> One of the things we need to do is revisit the
> editorial policy. I've
> >>> started
> >>> deleting posts which qualify as "intentionally
> disruptive" and I 
> >>> would
> >>> like to
> >>> include that language in our policy.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Josh
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> imc-nyc-editorial mailing list
> >>> imc-nyc-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
> >>>
>
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-nyc-editorial
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> imc-nyc-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
> >>
>
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-nyc-editorial
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > imc-nyc-editorial mailing list
> > imc-nyc-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
> >
>
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> 
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