[imc-scotland-discussion] discussion

[Anarcho Babe]

I pretty much agree with Chris's evaluation but for the assessment of the 
publish form. 

Whilst the little WYSIWIG function is nice, I still would prefer some fields 
and boxes to tickle out more information from contributors.

Especially the URL box, because for example I have an odd feeling that e.g. 
the St.Andrews feature might be a copy and paste and maybe not attributed, 
just because it uses a wide range of quotes which activist-based 
contributions (apart from Paul's notes of SSP rallies) rarely do.

One thing i noticed is the lack of colours options ( now that we have a 
WYSIWIG editor anyways in contrast to blogs). It would have been useful for 
the list of films to structure more into different sections. Also I can't 
switch to see the source code - there was a slight problem with lists open 
close and I would have liked to check how many lists I opened and closed as 
the intendation was getting a bit uneven.
My little blog WYSIWYG entry form also has a spellchecker, and custom/special  
character function, as well as alignment and indentation possibilities, as 
well as paste as plain text, paste from a word document and remove formatting 
button. Also like he paragraph/headline options.

Still, I do think it is a bit harming to not allow users to post under their 
DIY pseudonym without registering. Might even induce a further shrinkage of 
contributors.

I agree that one of the successes of indymedia was possibly to make user 
contributed content more acceptable to mainstream media. But it also came 
with a wide fragmentation of the internet. Therefore I do think that 
compiling all activist content on Indymedia Scotland to be used more as a 
portal with a VERY BIG links directory and as to act as an aggregator to 
compile as many rss-feeds of activist sites ( Scottish, Indymedia, Britain, 
English-speaking...) as possible would be of advantage.
Especially AnarchoTV and Camcorder Guerillas feeds would be good as that would 
take a load off the indy server and still be linked and regularily updated to 
make the site vibrant and lively and current.

cheerio Ulla


On Wednesday 07 May 2008 20:01, chris wrote:
> So my thoughts on current discussion.
>
> *Drupal*
> My understanding of Drupal is that it's used for a range of sites,
> Digg.com to smaller CMSs. If anything my concern was its adaptability
> would make it too hard to set up in the first place and this has proven
> to be not the case.
>
>
> *Publish Form*
> Overall the new publish form is I think an improvement. It feels like it
> would be familiar to people who have used a webmail interface for their
> email and the icons are recognisable to bloggers.
>
> I like the Creative Commons stuff and think it should be restored,
> though probably in a half-hidden way. We could decide on a default
> (NonCommercial-Attribution?) that we're happy with and say "unless you
> want to change it, this is the case". Then contributors who care about
> CC licenses can choose the right one; while people who don't, are
> protected (at least nominally) against theft by $bastards. For my part,
> I want my work to remain NC, and that means staying off of YouTube etc.
> Our practice has to educate people of these issues, even if only
> implicitly.
>
>
> *Number of contributions*
> My perception was is that we've been static for the last 2 years and if
> we're static, then we're going backwards, i.e. losing ground against
> competitors.
>
>
> *Number of viewers*
> July 2005 was a blip and will always be a blip. The peak in hits had
> much more to do with Tony Blair than us, sad to say. I also think that
> Indymedias' fortunes are (too) closely tied to that of the globalisation
> movement's. As that has declined, so has the use of IMCs, as far as i
> can tell. We need to break out of that dependency and for me that is a
> renewed focus on community issues. There's only so many times you can
> look at a report of a one-off protest before it gets same-y.
>
> Considering we have done very little promotion, I think we're lucky to
> be where we are. The newsheet is a postive move here. For every person I
> hand it to who says "I've seen it already", there are 2 who haven't
> heard of the website.
>
>
> *Broadness of Coverage*
> This is always going to be arguable. My feeling is that there has been
> no overall reduction in the types of issues featured (if anything, the
> opposite), but there has been a shrinkage of contributors.
> Reasons may be:
>  - activist groups have shifted their focus back to getting mainstream
> media attention
>  - some groups are (openly or otherwise) hostile to the IMC brand, i.e.
> we won't get STWC folk contributing
>  - some groups are simply *unaware* of us. I was in a discussion last
> year where someone suggested setting up a website for students to submit
> news about things, looked blank when I said, "why not indymedia"?
>  - "citizen journalism" has won to the extent that it has been
> assimilated by corporate media, i.e. the BBC, Guardian, CNN are all
> claiming to be participatory
>  - lots more campaign groups have a website to put their news out, they
> aren't seeing a need to stretch beyond their existing contents
>
> I see the way to fight these trends is to aggressively promote
> Indymedia, "here it is, use it, ask me how" and the new system plays an
> important role in that. For one thing, we now all have more time where
> we aren't deleting spam comments.
>
>
> *Anyone read this far?*
> Proper Independent Media is *really* *important*. After drifting for a
> while, scotland.indymedia.org is moving again and I think that is vital
> and encouraging. We still need more people to contribute though!