[imc-scotland-discussion] "Why Indymedia Sucks"

[Tom]

chris wrote:
> http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/1541
> 
> A report from the weekend's Anarchism conference in London, gauging folks'
> attitudes to (an unspecified) "Indymedia".
> 
> Short, with food for thought.
> 
> Postively, I reckon IMC Scotland scores OK on this part:
> "Indymedia would be better if:
> 
>     * it could bring a more political perspective to things instead of
> having a laundry list of actions.  The "why" of an action is often left out
> of reports.
>     * it would shut down sites which had no moderation collectives
> immediately.  Some of the people we talked to had experiences where people
> were basically slandering their political groups (or them personally) on
> Cleveland Indymedia (or some such godforsaken place) but the moderators
> wouldn't do anything about it.
>     * the comments didn't suck so much
>     * it had more not-political stuff
>     * the sense of whining victimhood which shines through in most of the
> posts was not so apparent"
>
> What do others think?
> 

Yeah.

Regarding comments, I'm in favour of abolishing comments to articles and
having only moderated additions -- discussion can take place on the
forums. However, i don't think this opinion is popular so I haven't
implemented this.

I think a big problem is that Indymedia is just a site you post stuff
on. Instead the organization should be actively organizing journalists
collectives or cells or groups or whatever you'd like to call them.

A closer relationship with grassroots organisations would be nice too.
For example right now we follow the RSS feed of the burgh angel. This
isn't a very personal relationship at all, but it is a start and points
the way to Indymedia Scotland being a 'portal' to quality grassroots
journalism.

-- 
Tom