[Imc] posting at the U-C IMC

[John Wason]

At 11:33 AM 12/10/2001 -0600, Mike Lehman wrote:

>Paul, your offer to him sounds magnanimous; I'm OK with it, if others
>are. From the sound of his reply and the quickness of it, I imagine it's
>a form letter that he sends to everyone who complains. If he agrees to
>the limitations and abides by them, I have no problem letting him post
>weekly. Not that his stuff adds much to a website for progressives...
>Mike Lehman

Interesting that I should have a problem with this last statement, since I
argue in the context of the public i that the "progressive" viewpoint is the
one underrepresented in the dominant media.  But my concern with this and
other issues of "quality control" stems primarily from the fact that as a
print medium, we must pay roughly $300.00 for only 8 pages/month, so we have
to be selective.  I don't see such issues as being of equal importance in
the context of the web site.  So then I have to ask:  Are we a web site only
for 'progressives', whatever the hell exactly that is?  Or are we a web site
where people who don't have access to the corporate media can find a medium
of public expression?

Actually, I notice on the web site quite a few things that have already been
published somewhere in the mainstream media, so that would seem not to be
much of a criterion either.

I say one non-commercial message per poster per day across the board,
progressive or non-progressive, and let people skip the stuff they don't
want to read.  How difficult is that?  Interestingly enough, that policy
would probably end up being more of a constraint on M.L. than on any other
single individual, since M.L. seems frequently to post more than one message
per day, albeit messages taken for the most part from other sources.  I
happen to like most of the stuff M.L. posts, but he is the sole determiner
of what is 'progressive' or not, and what is 'of local interest'.  And his
also being on the Steering Group seems then to be something of a conflict of
interest.

To me the larger question is who are we as an IMC, and who is going to
determine and enforce all these rather arbitrary distinctions that seem to
be being made?

Ah, well, I suppose I should just stick to the public i.  Just, please,
don't start logging where everyone's web site post came from.

John