[New-imc] New Victoria (BC, Canada) collective: editorial policy

[nick]

A few things Petros said could have been more clearly denoted as his
definitions, not universal indymedia definitions.

> So far we've been going according to the definition that "open
> publishing" for indymedia means that we provide to our communities the
> tools to publish online, enabling authors to do this without special
> technical skills, and that there is no censorship or restriction on
> expression, as long as some of the basic principles of the progressive
> community are upheld (for example no hate-speech) and general guidelines
> for simple decency are followed (for example no personal attacks,
> character assassination, or libellous materials).

this is not exactly the standard definition of "open publishing" that
you would find:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_publishing
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/static/openpublishing.html

> How exactly this is to be accomplished, is left up to each individual
> editorial group. Some imc groups (the majority) wait to see what is
> published and then remove, hide, or delete offensive material
> afterwards. Some groups don't care and do not remove materials (which is
> a violation of indymedia's general policies, but we haven't had the
> ability to do an auditing process).

What exactly are our "general principles"?  If you are referring to
the Principles of Unity
(http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/PrinciplesOfUnity) then I am
unclear what violation you could be referring to.  There are many
people in the network who think there are many things that go against
our general principles, such as collecting membership-dues or
requiring users to pre-register, however at most all we have all
agreed on is our principles of unity which are very vague and don't
prohibit much.

> And some groups ask that authors
> register with an email address or username/password before publishing.
> This last measure tends to be the most successful in limiting
> inappropriate or offensive materials while still retaining the open
> character of open publishing. It retains anonymity if an author needs it
> (anonymous email addresses or pen-names are very common and easy to
> acquire, providing varying degrees of anonymity), while at the same time
> it discourages spammers and makes it easier for editorial groups to
> communicate with an author to clear up misunderstandings, or to discuss
> editorial questions, suggestions, etc.

I accept that it is Petros' belief that pre-registering is the most
successful method for indymedias to follow, but it is important to
reiterate that most indymedias have found other methods to be more
useful, and that some consider pre-registration requirements to be
outside the realm of legitimate open-publishing.

peace,
Nick