[IMC-US] PROJECT: Quantifying the health of US-based IMC's

[Sascha Meinrath]

> Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 13:18:45 -0800 (PST)
> From: Chris Anderson <chanders_imc at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [IMC-US] PROJECT: Quantifying the health of US-based IMC's
> To: imc-us at lists.indymedia.org
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Here's an interesting notion-- while much debate rages, on imc-alternatives and elsewhere-- about the future of Indymedia, I thought it might be interesting to try to quantify the website health of US based IMC collectives. 
> 
> Using the following metrics, a team could go together though the us imc websites and gather data to answer following questions. Then, the numbers could be tweaked-- either weighted via  a percentage or curved based on overall rank. This info could then be shared with the broader IMC community.
> 
> I know that "defining" health would obviously be the most difficult part of this task, as it always is in this kind of research. The items below are only a very preliminary stab at a metric. Obviously, a healthy web collective will: make features; get input (in the form of newswire posts) from its local community, and moderate (in some form, even if is only to hide gibberish and porn) the newswire (because the question of newswire moderation is so fraught with disagreement, my idea would be to count the bare-minimum of moderation and nothing more).
> 
> If I were to weight these, I'd weight contributions from local community as #1, followed by moderation and features as a tied #2.
> 
> what do people think about this notion? And how would people add to / change the metrics?
> 
> best,
> Chris
> NYC IMC
> 
> ---
> 
> Mapping the Health of US Based IMCs
> 
> # of features posted over 6 mos
> # of local newswire items posted in the past 3 months
> # of ?spam posts? (unhidden) in 2 weeks (spam defined as: pornography; gibberish / nonsense posts; posts that say ?test?)

The one thing I'd add is that there needs to be some sort of information about
the population served (it's quite meaningful if a rural IMC has 25 posts/week
while a major metropolitan city IMC has 30 -- simple numbers wouldn't reflect
the "health" of the IMC in serving it's local community or the amount of local
involvement in the IMC).

--Sascha