[Italy-process] Documentone - eng

[cpunkpunk]

Di seguito la mia prima parte + la seconda di serafo. La mia ha di
sicuro bisogno di una riletta come suppongo pure quella di serafo se
nessuno gia' l'ha fatto.

Chiaramente la formattazione originale se n'e' andata in parte a puttane
quindi sarebbe il caso che qualcuno la ricontrollasse in tutto e per tutto.

Se non mi son perso dei pezzi in giro dovrebbe esserci tutto...


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[Indymedia Italy 2.0]

During December 2006 Indymedia Italy decided to stop the publishing on
its pages, with the intention to mark a radical discontinuity in the
political path the community was taking. The crisis the Italian network
was going through and that took (us) to this decision was determined by
different factors:

- The functionning of the "consenso" method (*magari spieghiamo il
consenso) used by the mailing lists;

- The dissolving of Indymedia Italy as a community;

- The collapsing of the involvement level and the awareness of the tool;

- The consequent bureaucratization of some decisional contexts, i.e.
Italy list and Italy editorial;

- the partial tool's backwardness towards the so called "web 2.0";

For a deeper analysis concerning the causes and the motivations that
took to freeze the site, please refer to the meeting X report (link).

During the very well attended meting in Turin, it was enacted, with the
"consenso" method and with some pain, the decision to freeze the site,
carried out at the deadline decided at the meeting X.

Having closed this phase would have though allowed, into many people
intentions, the opening of a new space to discuss Indymedia 2.

In the meanwhile, while the new national process was struggling to take
off, the activists of the old Indymedia Italy started to regather around
narrower communities, geographically determined, starting different
paths that took to the current structuring of different Italian IMC.

[Closure of Indymedia Italy]

 From the Independent Media Centre Italy to the Italian IMCs network.
The process that took to the interruption of the Indymedia Italy project
and its reconfiguration in different terms, starts from some
considerations that were lead by the activists network from 2006 to
present that committed into the redefinition of the project.

Here, schematically listed:

The dissolution of the community
Indymedia Italy constantly targeted the construction and the maintenance
of a national community able to allow a plurality of languages and the
gathering of different experiences of resistance and political practice
in Italy, as well as the collective and participated narration (telling)
of reality. In the last years the community was a simple empty box, an
already inadequate definition for a reality that no longer existed.

The existence of a unique, unifying and totalizing, community, as a
space to contain the differences, safeguarding them as single minorities
through the use of the "consenso" method, was not sufficient and
efficient any more. A general list (italy-list) and an editorial one
(italy-editorial) were no longer able to be the containners of the
energies and the burst coming from the spare territorial communities,
becoming in fact the maintenance tool of a  prevalently
procedural/instrumental status quo that was determining the block of any
technical innovation, methodology and politic.

The progressive appearing of single communities in defined territorial
areas (regions, cities et c.) was creating a contrast to the "national"
in a opposition way. The conflict in its own meaning was not perceived
any more as a push to a change and possible praxis able to renew the
project, but as a contraposition tending to the annihilation of the
"other", often played in at a undercommunity level. Moreover, the
greater easiness in meeting up and elaborate, allowed by the
geographical closure, was a determinant factor for the creation of
geographically determined "common identities" and not shareable at a
national level.

In this view, the closing of the Indymedia Italy site was nothing but
the unavoidable consequence of the acknowledgement of that particular
situation, let alone a necessary move to seek the ways and modalities to
relaunch the project.

The Italian Indymedia network starts from the analysis of this
particular situation. An independent media centre project needs a
community able to act as a stimulus and an analysis and action place.
The local groups, which are definitely able to interact face to face
more frequently and to discuss about topics and local and non-local
issues with more easiness, can answer to this necessity and produce
positive synergies. In fact, where a local node was established, though
keeping plurality of views and sensitivity, more involving and
productive discussions and elaborations can be made, avoiding
differences and conflicts as growing tips rather than empasse problems.

Community return
The fact that currently in Italy about ten local communities belonging
to the same project with different times and modes exist, does not mean
that a will to cooperate and build a national project that aims beyond
the single specificities is missing. The new network configuration,
conceived mainly from local revisions and a touch of randomness, takes
us to consider a new way to perceive Indymedia: not just a single
community but a variety of communities, a cooperation between similar
projects that individualize unique aims in their mutual autonomy rather
than seeking cooperation inside just a single project. In this way Italy
Indymedia 2.0 rises finding its strength and newness in the union
between local collectives requirements and a common project path. A
community, in this way, lived as an opportunity rather than a limit.

A net node
Every net has nodes and every node is simply functionning element, equal
to the rest for importance and roll.
In this way Italy Indymedia sets itself as a node of the Italian network
of Indymedia, in which needs and energies aimed to the collective
coverage and elaboration, different from the strictly local one, can
flow into. A “primus inter pares” node to convoy the information flow
produced by each single local Imc respecting the local node own
autonomy. A node able to gather the communicative chaos produced by 10
and more Imcs and make it usable.

[Web 2.0]

Communication 2.0, between production and availability
Let's start considering that: nowadays, in the social and cooperative
web, the problem of finding spaces where to publish own content no
longer exists. Thousands of services and chances of different kinds
allow anyone to publish, upload, edit info on-line. The fact that
majority of these services are of a commercial nature and gain profit
exactly from these contents produced by thousands of intelligences that
get nothing in return, don't discourage anyone.
Today the critical analysis concerning the web are not anymore just
about the places where users can puload some content, but are mainly
about the possibility of fruition of the contents themselves. Lots of
information is equal to none. In this way Italy Indymedia 2.0 sets
itself as a project aimed to  the research of free communication
modality, through these characteristics:

- Anonymity and no logs, because, if it's true that thousands of
publication services exist, basically none of these grants privacy
safeguarding and the right not to spread the details of those sharing
the content.

- Freedom of publication behind a common policy and the guardianship
that any published content will not be deleted or censored, but simply
(if out of policy) hidden. Majority of the social media prefer instead
the deletion of such contents if considered inconvenient for someone or
something.

- The possibility to manage and personalize the informative flow
according to each one's own requirement and necessity, in order to ease
access to content and to limit confusion due to too much information
(that could also be simply seen as a less visualization time for those
news disappearing rapidly).

Birth of the nodes
Starting from the first months in 2007, some activists that composed
Italy Indymedia, started some local processes. This local redefinition
project of work modalities and collaboration, took us to the birth of
geographically defined Indymedia Italian nodes. During 2007 were born:
Indymedia Toscana, Indymedia Napoli, Indymedia Piemonte, Indymedia
Emilia Romagna, Indymedia Lombardia, Indymedia Roma, Indymedia Liguria
and Indymedia Calabria. Indymedia Abruzzo is still completing the
international process.

The birth of these local nodes of Italy Indymedia progressively
redefined the approach to the tool, which was rebuilt on a local base,
inside the local conflicts and contradictions. During the meeting in
Rome, in November 2007, were therefore placed in place the basis for the
new structure of the Italian Imcs.

The scattering of Italy Indymeida into many nodes, autonomous between
each other, is obviosuly an on going subject of critiques and
reflections, from many point of views. Certain is the fact that this
leaded to a unavilability of a input/output information channel that was
massively used and of the huge comunity that developed during those 7
glorious years of Italy Indymedia, moreover studded with many
shuttingdown attempts from third party. It is likewise important to
understand the pros of the subdivision: smaller collectives to build
contents that can grow and share in the real life and not just through
the lists, more ways to link up with the territory, websites that can be
modified in their own functionality in a more open and reactive way,
more localised newswires, with less updating frequency but at the same
time less spam and/or out of policy contents.

[The new structure]

The new structure of the italian indymedia network is also constituted
according to different needed functions:

     * Aggregation: the connection of contents from the Italian imcs and
       from similar projects and the facilitation of the fruition of the
       communicative flow. No-editorial facilitation which starts from
       the demand for renewing the experience, also in the light of the
       changes of the web. Today the problem is not to give only the
       possibility to publish, but also to furnish some possibilities to
       order the flow of informations and to create an independent
       information network.

     * Events: Indymedia Italia is site of the international network as
       various Italian imcs, but with functions and specific
       particularities. Italy as "first between peers can develop
       particular roles that a territorial imc is not able to do.
       Particularly discussions and elaborations on

    * National issues considered important(mobilizations and national
demonstrations)

    * Situations of particular importance

     * International connections for returning to connect again the
       relationships with the network and to develop a plan ability which
       extends itself also through the international relationships.

It's been so decided to make Indymedia Italia to go out from the coma
nd to become point of aggregation of the contents produced by the
talian language indymedias (and not only), both at level of newswire and
at level of feature.

The evolution of the web, the transformation of the concept of open
publishing in "user generated content", the proliferation of blogs and
more and more manageable bases of information involve a different way of
reconsidering Indymedia that proposes itself in this moment to be
aggregation point of different media antagonists.

[Working of the feed aggregator]

The technical part

Indy Italia has decided to use Mir as simple feed aggregator of contents
in a logic of absolute respect of the autonomies of the nodes.

The aggregator cannot climb over in any way the decisions assumed by the

local node and it doesn't possess any editorial staff.

Central column

- A feature "in evidence", placed at the top of the page.

The contents can be articulated or as introductory paragraph to
different local features that deepens the same thematic or as elaborate
feature in a discussion of national breath and collectively written in a
special list: Italy-content.

- Under this part there will be an other one divided in 3 columns where
are to aggregate the featureses coming from the italian languages imcs.
In it there will be also the contents of Indymedia Svizzera and the
translations (not always complete) of Indymedia.org.

This space will be tripartite according to the course of the matter of the

feature:

    * Local: it includes features of the single local nodes which are
considered as linked to own territory and therefore as geographically
defined.

    * National: it includes contributions and nationwide features
produced by the italian language imcs.

    * International: features that concern international issues, produced
by the Italian nodes, indymedia.org and swiss indymedia.


The new structure of Indymedia Italia tries to preserve the wealth of the

practice of the collective writing which is carried out in the list

Italy-content. In its first experimentation the list is born as
collaborative space among local imcs.

It's thought about experimenting this formality of construction of the
contents, mindful of the fact that one of the most greater problems of
Italy Indymedia has been the List Editorial and its degeneration. Such
list had lost in fact the wealth to be a space of collaboration among
the differences, because of formality of interaction which stirred of
fact according to

logics which had little to do with the consensus method. In the list

Italy-content it's wanted therefore to aim recovering the collaborative
and positive aspects of Editorial, with experimenting the production of

contents on initiative of the territorial nodes, but nevertheless
leaving opened to everyone the possibility of subscribing and partecipating.

- An underlying space where to admit the feeds from other similar sites, for

policy and planning sense. The possible similar sites, which at the
moment have been individualised, are the following ones:

    * supportolegale

    * ngvision

    * copydown

    * cavallette

    * ecn/antifa

Newswire

Aggregation of the feeds from the Italian indymedia nodes, with the
followings characteristics:

- Quadripartite Newswire: division of the newswire in 4 typologies of
contents, transversal to all the nodes:

News | Opinions | Reposting from other media | Communications.

It's been implementing other possibilities of visualization.

- Insertion of posts in 6 thematic macroareas, that welcome the
specificity and the differences of the categories defined by the local nodes

    * rights and social struggles (house, job, anti-prohibitionism,
anti-fascism, anti-psychiatry, gender...)

    * environments, animalisms and ecologies

    * systems and repressive trials (jail, trials, powers..)

    * saperi (students, hacking) * or + global trials (migrations, wars
and conflicts, mafias)

    * cultures, arts and medias

In a page apart, however, it will be built "a correspondences tree"
among the categories of the local imcs, which synthesizes the complexity
by specifying the single choices.

Coordination lists

- Italy-list - Managerial - Discussion of general character (opening

of new imcs, finances, merchandising, political problems)

- Italy-content - Production space of contents and collaboration among

the various imcs - free registration, with public files

- Italy-tech - place of technical coordination for feeds aggregator and
cms used by from the various sites, as well as for the management of the
file server.

- Italy-legal - legal matters, policy and aggregation guidelines

[The aggregation guidelines]

The presence of a policy approved by the global network of indymedia,
based on the affirmation of the principles of open publishing.

The guarantee of the anonymity for the publication and the consultation
of the material. The trust that such anonymity is guaranteed, by putting
aside from every typology of event or external pressure. The protection
of the sensitive data and the awareness that their popularization can
potentially have penal consequences.

The introduction of tools for the protection of the data as the editing
and moderation of the comments for specific posts, to effect in
extraordinary situations in which the local node appreciates that the
publication is penally remarkable or it injures the privacy. In the
orbit of the privacy names of those people that cover institutional
charges are not contemplated, in particular those on electoral
delegation or prominent public positions in the social, political and
economic, local or national scenery. Identical criterion is also worth
for celebrities.

The guarantee that the integrity and the availability of the published
contents are protected. The necessity therefore of a transparent
management from who assumes the responsibility to manage a node of
indymedia, with clarifying it throught the horizontal management of the
power. The recognition for every site of indymedia of the existence of
different typologies of out-policy contents and it's also necessary to
use different means to compare ourself with them, by dividing the
evident spam, the errors of publication and the out policy multimedial
contents, from controversial and strongly argued contents, that must be
anyway safeguarded and made ever enjoyable.

The recognition of the necessity of a collaborative circle that
overcomes the even important specificities of the territorial nodes by
offering a further place of synthesis than the nodes produce in their
own. The availability of the nodes and the people in its management
involved, to interact and to actively participate in the national lists
and to the maintenance and development of the aggregation project, which
is as well realized by the recognition of the community of Indymedia
Italia as place of cooperation and comparison.

This comparison is wished to be activated in all the situations in which
a node can be in difficulty: in front of choices that undermine the
nature of the open publishing, in front of legal applications, in front
of extraordinary situations in which the node doesn't succeed in facing
alone.