[imc-scotland-discussion] Changes to the site/ Indymedia Scotland dieing a slow death

[Anarcho Babe]

Hi,

It is my strong belief that if the site stays as it is now you will loose half 
of the readership by the end of the summer, and most likely up to 2/3 by the 
end of next May - basically narrowing it down to the hardcore anarchists who 
will also visit the site less regularly - maybe once a week/forthnight 
instead of every day or so.

I do think that drastic measures are needed right now in order to avoid that 
the Indymedia Scotland project is killed off by how the new system is used.

Editorialwise the site is a disasterzone at the moment,  apart from its grey 
boring colour scheme, it is very hostile to user contributions such as 
posting and viewing comments, posting and viewing other press, turnover of 
features/middle column too slow, archive not accessible enough, lack of image 
gallery, not updated quickly enough and the publish form is even worse than 
the one we had 8 years ago under Active! 

As any suggestion made in a polite way is ignored, it seems only logical to 
try different means.

At the moment I am intending to standby watching whilst you destroy the 
project over the next three months, then I will start a little counter 
project in autumn after my dissertation to try to keep the social movements 
in Scotland together, and am then going to pick up the pieces of the site 
next summer when you all deserted it and given up on it.

Alternatively we could also split right now and I could do a counter indymedia  
site - however, given that you then won't recognise that it was your actions 
which destroy the project I prefer seeing it die a natural death without you 
having the excuse to say that the competition killed it off.

Yours Ulla







On Sunday 04 May 2008 01:46, Tom Morton wrote:
> Ulla,
>
> You might notice that I reverted some changes you made to the site. I
> should explain why i did this:
>
> - You placed syndicated content from other IMCs above basic components
> of our own site. For example, why did you put the anarchoTV feed above
> the 'publish' button and above the IMC scotland newswire? Why move the
> 'sections' menu down?
>
> - You moved the menu right to the bottom of the site making navigation
> slow and annoying.
>
> - You cluttered the site with loads of syndicated content
>
> We need to discuss next meeting what feeds we should take from other
> sites, and what  links to other sites we have. I'd like a return to
> normal process where changes to the site are discussed at meetings. In
> the mean time, since I have a mandate to set up the new site I'll revert
> bad changes made.
>
> Also, playing with different themes on the live site is bad. The test
> site at scotland.imcscotland.org is for that kind of experimentation.