[Imc-uk-network] Crazy summer days...

[ekes]

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We've have a short storm that's produced some very bad feeling quite
unnecessarily in the last days. It's quieter now but it's important
people are aware of it, and actually act accordingly. Better that than
scarring the process of folks setting up new imc's and those imc's
networking with each other constructively.

As a now mainly detached imc uk'er who's been a little busy but
perpetually connected I've seen the discussions taking part on the lists
and in irc over IMC Northern and the posts to the wire.

There have been two main strands to the confrontation. One which you can
see on the imc-uk-moderation list over a post which certainly makes
inaccurate statements about the IMC UK site if nothing else. The post
has been hidden, and unhidden, a couple of times now. I can't say I've
been over impressed by the level of discussion on specifics of the post.

The other strand has been about chrisc being banned, and unbanned, from
#northern irc channel. He was accused by a member of northern of
personal off-list abuse, spamming and mounting a denial of service
attack. While specific, the details of these were never clear, and I
believe retracted. All these accusations have been done by one person,
and not as I understand it by the Northern collective. I have to say
that it is pretty serious stuff to throw around and I find this very
troubling behaviour.

Some facts surrounding this may make it easier for people to move forwards:-
 * In IRC yesterady it was made clear that no one is blocking the
creation of the Northern IMC.
 * There are however concerns raised about the _name_ Northern IMC
   * in a UK perspective over who should be involved
   * in a global perspective over vagueness (global north / south).
 * There has been an issue with e-mails not getting through moderation
on the new-imc list. None of the moderators of new-imc have anything to
do with IMC UK or as far as I know have a clue of the background to
this, however long queues for mails getting through to new-imc have been
an issue in the past anyway.
 * if northern want to start now, as London did, with a .org.uk
subdomain and asked for one, which as far as I know hasn't happened, no
one has said they would oppose it.
 * The reason the front page of the indymedia.org.uk site isn't already
an aggregator of Scotland Drupal/Bristol Oscalit/London Hyperactive and
UK Mir sites is because no one has done it. This is absolutely not
because of people involved in the Mir UK site. You can probably mainly
blame me. I've said I'd do it in the past and have had semi-working
versions of such an aggregator in the past that were never finished due
to lack of time, crap RSS feeds etc.

It is essential that neighbouring IMCs can work together. Degenerating
the battle and ending up with some SF/Bay, Belgium or whatever fuck-up
really must be avoided. Partying like it's 1999 with independent
unconnected Indymedia sites on the web isn't an option either. To make
this happen more people should get involved focused on actually doing
shit and making these new imc's happen in a positive way.

Focusing on doing shit does not involve making accusations without
really, really thinking about it. Certainly not attacking groups of
people who aren't actually hindering people from doing stuff (they may
or may not be helping but they aren't stopping anything).

Being able to move forward and work together means keeping all of our
processes open. Banning people is a painfully fraught process in IMC.
It's crap, but sometimes it's good that when you feel forced to use it
you have to really talk it through. Examples of IMCs starting from the
point of exclusion, rather than active inclusion, hasn't lead to success
in the past.

Focusing on doing shit *is* getting these sites set up.
It's getting them running so they can work along side each other.
It's getting them so that people can meet face-to-face occasionally. At
actions that will be covered over sites, and at meetings.
It's getting them so they can share and aggregate content too.

ekes
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