[SBIMC-general] close up website

[Jon S]

QUESTION: Would you participate in online Wiki meetings (meaning free
flow editing or IRC chat versus meetings in person?

Hi,

I am one of a few people here in SB that are working on any tech
related items regarding sb indymedia.  Our current codebase (which is
at sbindymedia.org) is running dadaimc software on a LAMP
infrastructure.   It is a good IMC solution, but has not been updated
in many moons.  We are needing to jump faster into the next generation
blog / video blog / online channel type era.

More than one IMC has chosen to move away from dada and towards open
source cms solutions such as drupal.  This was the path that was
agreed upon by the collective at meetings in 2006.  The decision to
stop editing and disallow new postings was proposed at a meeting in
July-August?  The concern was not enough edijtors, and the amount of
spam was large.  Our mailing lists were messed up due to strange DNS
issues inherited by us.  We didn't have passwords and this caused
havok with the ability to manage the lists.  Attempting to solve this
we went through a couple options and eventually got things working
with the global IMC server for the list.  The website was agreed to be
closed to the public at the subsequent meeting and the beginning of
Oct we closed the site (? dates) .  I'll have to find my notes.
Dorothy may know.

We are planning to come back to the community with a fresh new look
and functional website that allows you to create your own independent
media channels.  Imagine a text/audio/video social network
specifically built around IMC.  Now imagine many more built the same
way for specific issues.  This is the goal that I see for this
project.  We got stalled over the holidays and I dealt with a
relative's death on christmas eve.

There is a lot of momentum for a project like this in this city.  I
have felt it for a long time.  This is why I volulnteered initially.
The goal is so noble to the idea of democracy that for us not to
participate seems too selfish for me.

I urge you to join us at meetings and become involved with the design
/ infrastructure of the new system.  If you know of anyone that can
help us with programming skills have them e-mail me.  I've set up the
current install and we've been building a new design for it.  I will
attach a prototype to the next e-mail. Here is the current thought for
design.  This is a rough sketch.  We will have to program this into
Drupal's infrastructure to some extent, but this should be minimal.

We are trying to implement the changes necessary, and some are very
specific to IMC's needs such as anonymization and hidden postings.
There are solutions to these and have been implemented, however ease
of use in certain areas of the interface could be improved and
simplified.

We are needing to move our system off the current host as we have some
ancient machine running there.  It has an earlier version of mysql and
linux kernel and needs an upgrade.  The option of hosting is a hard
one to answer.  We can host on Dreamhost, but I'd rather go with
someone who is local, with another IMC, or part of a collectively run
server farm.

The answer to managing the website isn't really the size, but the
number of posts that are entered.  IMC's are known for their open
publishing newswire.  We are proud of this, however it caused us to
require to turn off *all* posts for now.  The new software should help
issues like this also.

I do not agree to taking the current website down.  This makes no
sense while we still have some funds in our bank account and a new
website imminently on the way.  The archive of the site is important
enough to keep online.  We should strive to keep this information
available for everyone to enjoy and peruse.  Why take this offline
other than to give up completely.  There is focus and effort coming
from some of our members.  There is definitely a lot of positivity and
optimism for 2007 and sbimc from myself.  Others seem to have moved
on.

We have some great hardware and equipment that can be loaned out to
those who need them.  Send an e-mail to one of us to inquire more
about it.

Once the new site is online, it will flow pretty smoothly.  Patience.
If we have more developers, more speed with be attained with the
process now, though.

-Jon


On 1/11/07, Robert Bernstein <alist at swt.org> wrote:
> Hi Dorothy
>
> I manage my own Web site which is several gigabytes. But there has never
> been much in the way of technical support needed; it just works.
>
> What sort of support is needed to make Indy Media work?
>
> Best wishes,
> Robert
>
> At 07:19 AM 1/11/2007 -0800, Dorothy Littlejohn wrote:
> >One of the main issues is our inability to complete the technical
> >aspects of running the website. Do you have "tech support" abilities?
> >The new website is at http://givemethe.info/drupal/sbimc2
> >
> >
> >On Jan 10, 2007, at 10:13 PM, Andrew Culp wrote:
> >
> > > I, and a group of friends, are more than willing to post to SB
> > > IMC.  We participate in a lot of grassroots events including direct
> > > action.  We have sadly not been able to post because of the recent
> > > demise of the website has been.
> > >
> > > What needs to be done, maybe we can contribute some resources?
> > > Meetings are the only thing that scare most of us away.
> > >
> > > Andrew
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: sbimc-general-bounces at lists.indymedia.org on behalf of
> > > Dorothy Littlejohn
> > > Sent: Wed 1/10/2007 10:07 PM
> > > To: Santa Barbara IMC; SBIMC
> > > Subject: [SBIMC-general] close up website
> > >
> > > I'd like to propose that we close down the SB Indymedia website
> > > altogether, since it has not been functional for the past 6 months or
> > > so. We just don't have the people power to keep it going. We have
> > > been unsuccessful in replacing the people we originally had in the
> > > group who were so gung-ho grass roots media, and it has been a real
> > > struggle to keep the site going. Although it has been on the grid for
> > > the early part of the year, the numbers of people posting has been
> > > continually declining . We haven't even gotten many complaints, that
> > > I know of at least, from readers complaining about us being off the
> > > grid.
> > >
> > > I have run out of enthusiasm to keep this effort going any longer. I
> > > would like to see us take the website off the Indymedia grid and
> > > network, return all our funds to Fund for Santa Barbara, and just
> > > call it quits. The media has changed recently with blogging and video
> > > blogging and that may be a factor in this demise.
> > >
> > >
> > > Dorothy
> > > http://people2peopletv.blogspot.com/
> > > dlittlejohn1 at cox.net
> > > 962-8415
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > SBIMC-general mailing list
> > > SBIMC-general at lists.indymedia.org
> > > http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/sbimc-general
> > >
> > >
> >
> >Dorothy
> >http://people2peopletv.blogspot.com/
> >dlittlejohn1 at cox.net
> >
> >
> >
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> >SBIMC-general at lists.indymedia.org
> >http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/sbimc-general
>
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