[Imc-uk-features] unhiding 374918

[charley allan]

hi ben, u raise some good points and the whole google issue is  
important, but i can't quite agree with u on everything.

On 4 Jul 2007, at 11:13, ben wrote:

> "In general, posts meeting the following guidelines will be promoted:
> * original, first hand reports on actions and other events
> * good, original analysis"
>
> "In general, the following types of posts will not be promoted:
> * re-posts from other sources (blogs etc)
> * announcements of events (unless with significant background/news  
> content)"

actually, u missed the first bit out:

"Articles may be promoted for the following reasons: The promoted  
newswire is to show the best of the newswire. Moderators will promote  
any good posts. The guidelines below cover common practice, but are  
neither mandatory or comprehensive."

that's it, plus the part that u quote. not very much at all, not  
nearly as much as there is for hiding.

>
> charley wrote (refering to the above lines from the guidelines):
>> that's just a couple of lines about showcasing "the
>> best of the newswire" and "good posts" - then adding "original"
>> reports or analysis - but it's too vague to mean anything. who
>> decides what's "good"? are the mods editors now? "original" i can
>> understand, but that's applied very inconsistently. generally, the
>> posts that are promoted are the ones that the mods personally think
>> are interesting and important, which is fine except that it goes
>> against the principle of open publishing and is elitist, imho.
>
> I'm also dubious about the value of the promoted wire but there are
> guidelines and the way they are applied is not significantly different
> from guidelines about hidding.

well, here's the part of the editorial guidelines which deals with that:

"Articles and/or comments may be hidden for the following reasons:

     * Repeated : content that is reposted or text that was  
originally a comment posted as a report.
     * Non-news : posts which are clearly purely comment, opinion or  
rants unrelated to a recent event or action etc.
     * Discrimination : posts using language, imagery, or other forms  
of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism,  
homophobia or any other form of discrimination.
     * Inaccurate : posts that are inaccurate or misleading.
     * Advertising : posts with personal or product promotions.
     * Hierarchy : The newswire is designed to generate a news  
resource, not a notice-board for political parties or any other  
hierarchically structured organizations.
     * Disruptive : Contributions by individuals who habitually  
publish above mentioned discouraged content. Posts where topical or  
regional selections disrupts the utility of the sub pages (ie  
spamming regional and topic selections).
     * Reposts : Articles that are simply pasted from corporate news  
sites. Please write something original, by all means link to articles  
elsewhere and quote from them but don't just copy them."

quite comprehensive. and necessary for quoting by mods when hiding,  
for the sake of transparency - although that's not always done.

> Elitist? Yes, sure, same as the rest of
> moderation.

the difference is that, when hiding, the moderators are performing a  
totally non-political role, ironically. the ability to hide dodgy  
posts is necessary, so you need people to do that - as transparently  
as possible. the ability to showcase star reporting is not necessary  
and introduces an element of editorialisation. whether certain  
dedicated individuals have earned the right to creatively edit the  
site is irrelevant - the recent furore over replacing a non-pc insult  
with something far ruder shows how opposed people here are to that  
kind of thing (unfortunately).

> It's a small group of people who for whatever reason feel it a
> necessary task and face the numerous barriers and hurdles in order  
> to do
> it. That said however, the guidelines on promotion are pretty  
> clear, not
> vague words at all unless you happen to cherry pick individual  
> words out
> of context as you just did.

i don't think that i cherry-picked words. the key words for the first  
bit (which i just quoted above) are "best" and "good" - they are the  
only stated criteria for promotion. this is then qualified by two -  
two! - "guidelines": (1) original reporting, (2) "good, original  
analysis." then it gives two examples of posts that normally would  
not be promoted. that's it for promotion.

> While I'm sure they could be improved, just
> like the guidelines on hiding, those guidelines were agreed by what  
> passes
> as consensus in a diverse network the size of indymedia and these  
> doing
> the promotion seem to do a pretty consistent job of it.

the guidelines on hiding are much better and there's no need to  
improve them because they're working fine (except when posts that  
don't break them are hidden). and i imagine that they were agreed  
before the hiding system came into place, which was not the case with  
the promoted wire. and let's face it, there was never any consensus  
on having a promoted wire in the first place. i'd also say that the  
problems come about when the promotion happens inconsistently, which  
is bound to happen when there are no clear guidelines and mods have  
to make judgements about what is good or original or not.

>
>> supposed to be quite loose anyway and i'm sure that one of the
>> arguments in favour of setting up the promoted wire was that mods
>> wouldn't have to spend so much time hiding stuff.
>
> Maybe so but there is  major flaw in there. google news doesn't
> differentiate between the promoted wire and the open wire. All  
> posts in
> the UK indymedia newswire are treated as coming from a legitimate news
> source (not a blog) and appear in google news. If we take a slack  
> attitude
> to inaccurate nonsense appearing in the wire then that is reflected on
> googlenews so that complete crap appears credited to indymedia.  
> That will
> do two things - discredit indymedia generally to those coming  
> across such
> crap, and risk google news receiving enough complaints that it  
> decides to
> remove indymedia from the google news search (as they have before).

yeah, i'm not saying forget about hiding, but you need to work out  
your priorities. i think that the extra work that the mods do in  
promoting stuff takes away from the job of cleaning the crap off the  
google-able wire, with bad decisions being taken too hastily, it  
would appear.

>
> We can't simply leave the open wire as a free for all just because  
> we have
> the promoted wire, at least not while the promoted wire is poorly
> considered afterthought bolted onto the site as a bit of an  
> experiment.

sure, that makes sense.

>
>> some of the non-promoted posts are great, which is one of the reasons
>> why i could never look at the promoted wire.
>
> Indeed, and me to. The promoted wire is flawed. It is too slow in  
> being
> updated so people will always need access to the un-premoderated  
> wire to
> see the latest new posts as soon as possible. And since the  
> promoted wire
> specifically excludes most event announcements, again, people must  
> have
> access to the open wire. As it stands, few if anyone would choose  
> to read
> only the promoted wire so it fundamentally flawed and it's  
> existence is no
> reason to be slack about removing crap etc from the wire.

agreed. but i'm curious about one thing - why all this effort to  
build the new wire and resize pictures and all that, but ignore the  
way that it can take up to two hours for posts to appear. why is  
that? surely fixing that is a higher priority that showcasing or  
google ranking, especially for an activist news site.

>
>> about the guidelines, "not being understandable by anyone" is not
>> actually in them - even if it was true. and you fail to explain how
>> "uncorroborated speculation" falls foul of them as well.
>
> 374918 is inaccurate. that often happens when somebody indulges in
> speculation. there is and always has been an guideline against  
> inaccurate
> and misleading posts that 374918 is such a post. It is blatantly  
> false to
> say that a burning car full of gas bottles could not have killed  
> anyone.
> Ask any fireman about their experiences with gas bottles in fires.
> Although safety features in incorporated in gas bottles, just like  
> fitting
> seat belts, that doesn't entirely take away the risk of injury or  
> death.
> 374918 is a rant which aims to twist the fews facts available to the
> author (gleamed entirely from mainstream coverage of the event) to fit
> their personal preferred scenario in which every act of resistance or
> terror is staged by the government or similar agencies. In order to  
> make
> these events fit their scenario they've taken liberties with the  
> truth and
> so their posts fall foul of the guidelines.

hmm, that's not really the kind of "inaccurate" that the guidelines  
are talking about, is it? i mean, he sounds pretty stupid - and  
doesn't help our google cred - but our readers are probably smart  
enough to figure out where he's coming from. he's not actually lying,  
just making some pretty wild claims. but he does back them up. i'm  
not saying that i agree with him, but i don't think that's enough of  
a reason to hide it. maybe there are other reasons for hiding it, i'm  
not disputing that. but there should be some consensus on whether  
something's inaccurate and if there's any dispute we should assume  
innocent until proven guilty.

as for 06/374741 (why does the url change like that every month?)  
again i may not agree with it, but that's not enough of a reason to  
ban it. firstly, because it doesn't breach any guidelines (my  
opinion), and secondly, because it was hidden without anyone claiming  
that it did breach any guidelines (fact), only that it was  
"incomprehensible" (it should technically be unhidden for that reason  
alone). u could even say that it's original analysis, so it should be  
promoted (just kidding!) - hope 2cu 2moro at the fraser clark talk,  
charley