[Imc-uk-features] 309191 - our approach to hiding

[Rich]

Hi,

My 2p on this issue...

I strongly agree with everything ionnek said, so won't waste your time
repeating all that.  On moving rather than hiding some stuff, I think
that's a great idea (although some stuff is clearly better off
hidden)...how do you actually do it?  Do you change it to a topic
special in admin?

Yossarian wrote:
> One thing I do wonder about though:  our editorial policy says that
> "party political" posts may be hidden, but doesn't stipulate that there
> is a blanket hiding policy.  Does this mean that we hide all mention of
> the fact that there is a national election campaign taking place, or is
> there some other way to deal with this?  This seems a little far-out to
> me, although thinking about it I can see the advantages of this
> approach.  What was the practice in the last election, does it offer any
> sort of guide?

I feel pretty strongly that if we are aiming to reach out and engage
with people beyond a fairly narrow set of political views, it's
important that we allow space for people to engage in the debates about
electoral politics, to some extent.  We are not a notice board for the
SWP/RESPECT or any other party and I generally favour removing anything
that treats us as such from the newswire.  We are, however, in the run
up to a general election - a time when 'ordinary people' are perhaps
thinking about 'politics' more than usual.

The launch of the RESPECT manifesto, while not in the least bit
interesting to me, is news in my opinion.

http://publish.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/04/309432.html

Politically, I'm not in the least bit bothered about it being there
because I've no doubt that there will be plenty of replies which will
range from "fuck off swapie wankers" through to reasoned explanations of
the limitations of electoral politics.  Many readers of Indymedia will
not have heard these arguments before and will potentially learn
something new and politically valid as a result of reading them.  I've
unhidden 309432 for the time being.

I think the crucial point here was summed up well by ionnek: this kind
of stuff *can* be rather than *must* be hidden.

ionnek said:

> We didn't intend to ban everything remotely attached to 
> the SWP or any other party, but we wanted to avoid becoming an swp 
> noticeboard.
> 
> If we would follow this guideline in a very narrow and strict way, the 
> whole thing could become rather comical. We couldn't have reported about 
> the esf, to start with. Or, another example: some local groups who are 
> active in dissent! are working with G8 alternatives. The top level of G8 
> alternatives includes, afaik, SWP people. Should that mean that we have 
> to hide dissent news?

We're not a notice board for political parties and we're not a
discussion forum like enrager, but we are a significant part of uk
alternative media and in the run up to the general election I think it's
entirely appropriate for us to give people the opportunity to debate
this stuff.

Interested to hear what others think...

:-)

Poon